1/ The capsid is a strong protein structure that encloses and protects the viral genome. The most basic viruses will use a single protein produced many times to build the capsid. The more complex viruses will use multiple proteins to build their capsid structure.
2/ The basic structure of the viral capsid comes in 3 basic designs. They are Icosahedral, Helical and Complex.
3/ The Helical symmetry of capsids takes 1 protein and links them together into a very long string. That string is then wrapped into a helical structure like a tube.
4/ An example of a helical capsid virus is Ebola. This virus actually looks like a worm because of its helical capsid.
5/ The Icosahedral capsid is made up of triangles to form a sphere like shape. If you ever seen a 20 sided die from the D&D game, that is a perfect example of an icosahedral shape.
6/ The basic unit of the icosahedral capsid is a single viral protein often designated as Viral Protein 1 (VP1). Some viruses will use multiple proteins to form its basic triangle structure and will designate them VP1, VP2 and VP3.
7/ This small structure is the most basic building block of the icosahedral structure. When 3 of these proteins come together, they form the basic triangle of the icosahedral capsid. The single triangle is called a facet.
8/ The most basic virus is made up of only 20 facets. This is also called its T number. A T-1 virus would have 20 facets. A T-2 virus would have 40 facets and a T-3 virus would have 60 facets.
9/ Since each facet is made up of the 3 basic proteins, the T number that represents the facets gets multiplied by 3 to find out the total proteins in the capsid. For example a T-1 capsid has 20 facets with 3 proteins per facet = 60 total proteins.
10/ A T-3 capsid would have 20 x 3 facets or 60 total facets with 3 proteins to make up every facet. That would be 60 x 3 = 180 total proteins.
11/ When a capsid falls into icosahedral symmetry, it will have specific shapes if forms. There are 2 fold, 3 fold and 5 fold axes in each 20 facet capsid.
12/ As the virus capsid gets bigger into the T scale, the number of 5 fold axes increase so that the capsid goes from a basic of triangle faces to pentagon shaped faces made up of these 5 fold triangles shown below.
13/ In a large enough capsid, you will begin to see 6 fold axes of symmetry. They begin to look like the pattern on a soccer ball.
14/ The last Capsid is the Complex which is made up of both helical and icosahedral parts. The classic example of this type of virus is the bacteriophage.
15/ The head of the bacteriophage is made up of a basic icosahedral shape which is attached to a long tube that is made up of a helical structure. These do not harm humans and prey on bacteria hence their names.
16/ The Adeno Associated Virus (AAV) is a basic T-1 icosahedral capsid. Its made up of 20 facets. The most basic uses only 1 protein VP1 with 60 copies to make up the capsid. Others will use 3 different proteins with VP1, VP2 and VP3 in 20 copies of each to build the capsid.
17/ The AAV capsid is the smallest you can find. It only holds about 4,500 bases (4.5kb) of RNA or DNA genetic material.
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Over the weekend, I spent a ton of time picking through the $NBI and $ARKG looking for ideas. I shared my comments on many, but not all the companies I looked at. Here is a list of links to those threads.
They have 35 holdings in the $ARKG and I am going to look at them all and give you my opinion.
$TWST is a DNA company that makes and sell DNA sequences to biotech companies. I don't see them becoming a very huge company. I think the potential is actually small. One of the reasons I sold them when I really got to know the company.
$RXRX I owned for a few years but recently sold them as I felt the company had a few issues that needed to be fixed like sticking with a failed drug, not allowing analysts to ask tough questions, and the constant insider selling. I would rather wait for them to prove me wrong before I risk my money as I got too many other good ideas.
There was a lot of hype over the FDA announcement for replacing animal testing with AI modeling over time. A lot of the companies in the TechBio space rocketed higher yesterday. The market is not smart enough to know the winners and losers. It paints with a broad brush. My plan over the coming weeks it does dig into these TechBio companies. This has been a major theme of mine for years now. With all my study of the space, I will be able to help you sort the winners from the pack.
Here is the link to the FDA announcement where they are going to replace animal testing with alternatives over time. That is right. The huge pop in the TechBio names seems to be very premature. Nothing it going to change right away.
They are going to be replaced with AI based models of toxicology. This means the digital chemistry companies will be driving this technology both Big and Small. These will be companies like $SDGR, $RXRX, $TEM, $ABSI Insilico, GenerateBio, Asimov and Iambic
I know in a market that is super bubbly with the indexes trading at over 27x earnings many investors are wondering where to put their money. I know I have been looking and searching for value of any kind in this market.
1/ #Tech is a very big space, but there are some key themes here I am focused on as I think they are still innovative and disruptive. They are #Cloud, #Cybersecturity and #Automation.
2/ Automation is the easiest to cover first as it is all about replacing laborers in repetitive tasks with robots and equipping those robots with controller enabled with #AI and #ML to allow them to learn and improve the processes.
I know in a market that is super bubbly with the indexes trading at over 27x earnings many investors are wondering where to put their money. I know I have been looking and searching for value of any kind in this market.
1/ The next major theme is Financial Technology called #FinTech. This has been very disruptive to the old school financial industry which has been very complicated and unfriendly to consumers for many decades. I know last year I abandoned my obsolete old bank for fintech.
2/ Many of these companies disrupted the space by just building simple to use and very easy apps. I have been doing online banking and trading for over 20 years and its never been easier for consumers. These apps are very simple and very easy to use.
I know in a market that is super bubbly with the indexes trading at over 27x earnings many investors are wondering where to put their money. I know I have been looking and searching for value of any kind in this market.
1/ I have been an innovation investor for many years. I put out a thread a few years ago about my thematic investing style. Some of my top themes at the time where #AI, #Automation, #Cybersecurity in Tech, #Fintech, #TechBio and #CRISPR in Biotech.
2/ Today, were are going to look at these themes again. There were 2 themes I opted out of over that time since my last big thematic post. They were #eVTOL and #SynBio. Both seem to be way too early and way too risky at this stage of development.