Malevolent Designer News - Creationism's Beloved Malevolence is Fighting Back

SARS-CoV-2 Y453F and L452R variants contribute to evasion from cellular immunity and the L452R variant also increases viral infectivity.

From: Motozono, C. et.al., Cell Host & Microbe, 2021.(CC BY 4.0)

SARS-CoV-2 spike mutation L452R evades human immune response and enhances infectivity | News | Kumamoto University

Creationist mode:

Creationism's malevolent designer, having gone to such lengths, catalogued in this blog, to design the SARS-CoV-2 virus to kill as many people as possible and make many more sick, was never going to take defeat by human medical science with its clever vaccines, lightly.

Now scientists from Kumamoto University, Japan, have shown how it has redesigned the virus' spike protein so it not only makes it more infective but also helps it evade the immunity produced in response to the vaccines, which specifically target the spike protein.

This mutation, or as Creationists would call it, the new design, is known to science as L452R and is already present in both the δ-variant and the ε-variant. The δ-variant is the one currently responsible for the massive increase in infections in much of the world, include the UK, where new cases have rocketed from under 1,700 daily new cases in early May to over 54,000 four days ago, although we have seen a slight falling back from that figure to 44,000 new cases today. Most experts are predicting a large increase over the next few weeks, possibly reaching 100,000 new cases next month. Unless some of the restrictions, including obligatory wearing of face coverings in enclosed public spaces and public transport are reimposed, I think this figure is easily achievable.

UK Daily New Covid-19 infections (21 Jul, 2021)

Source: GOV.UK Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the UK

Immunity in response to the vaccines has two components:

1. Humoral immunity (antibodies circulating in the blood which attack the viral spike proteins rendering them innactive).
2. Cellular immunity (pre-programmed helper and killer T-cells, produced in the bone marrow on demand when cells signal that they have been infected).

The new 'design' appears to lessen the effect of the humoral immunity because the modification in the spike protein means they don't bind so firmly to the virus. It makes the virus more infective because it binds more firmly to the ACE2 proteins on the cell surface, so gains entry to the cell more quickly, and it reduces the mobilisation of T-cells, especially in people who carry the HLA-A24 allel, which is common in East and South-Asian people.

So, it seems the intelligent [sic] designer has left no stone unturned in its search for its next move in the arms race with human medical science.

Creationist mode:

Now the real science:

The L452R mutation is a hallmark of the Delta variant that is currently spreading worldwide, and in Japan, about 60% of the population have HLA-A24, which is responsible for cellular immunity. The L452R mutation not only evades the HLA-A24 cellular immunity but can also enhance the infectivity of the virus. We have been carefully investigating the immune response against emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants in real time to monitor how the mutations affect human immunity and viral infectivity.

Dr. Chihiro Motozono, Senior author
Division of Infection and Immunity,
Joint Research Center for Human Retrovirus Infection,
Kumamoto University, Kumamoto, Japan

In this study, the research group first used immunological experiments to demonstrate that an antigen derived from the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is strongly recognized by HLA-A24-restricted cellular immunity, which is often found in Japanese people. They then performed a large-scale (>750,000) sequence analysis of SARS-CoV-2 strains and found several important mutations in the spike protein region typically recognized by HLA-A24. These are the Y453F spike mutations found in strain B.1.1.298, which was prevalent in Denmark in 2020, and the L452R mutation in B.1.427/429 and B.1.617 (commonly known as the Epsilon and Delta variants respectively) that are currently spreading around the world. Further immunological experiments demonstrated that these mutations escape HLA-A24 cellular immunity. The researchers believe that this is the first time a “variant of concern" has been demonstrated to evade cellular immunity.

The Y453F and L452R mutations were located in the receptor binding domain of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, which are crucial for gaining entry into host cells. Researchers thus examined the effects of these mutations on the infection and replication efficiency of the virus. They found that the L452R mutation enhances its membrane fusion activity, infectivity, and viral replication.

The team's findings were published recently, open access, in the journal, Cell Host & Microbe:

Highlights

• L452R and Y453F mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 spike RBM have emerged
• L452R and Y453F mutants escape HLA-A24-restricted cellular immunity
• L452R increases viral infectivity and fusogenicity and promotes viral replication

Summary

Many SARS-CoV-2 variants with naturally acquired mutations have emerged. These mutations can affect viral properties such as infectivity and immune resistance. Although the sensitivity of naturally occurring SARS-CoV-2 variants to humoral immunity has been investigated, sensitivity to human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-restricted cellular immunity remains largely unexplored. Here, we demonstrate that two recently emerging mutations in the receptor-binding domain of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, L452R (in B.1.427/429 and B.1.617) and Y453F (in B.1.1.298), confer escape from HLA-A24-restricted cellular immunity. These mutations reinforce affinity toward the host entry receptor ACE2. Notably, the L452R mutation increases spike stability, viral infectivity, viral fusogenicity, and thereby promotes viral replication. These data suggest that HLA-restricted cellular immunity potentially affects the evolution of viral phenotypes and that a further threat of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is escape from cellular immunity.

Motozono, Chihiro; Toyoda, Mako; Zahradnik, Jiri; Saito, Akatsuki; Nasser, Hesham; Tan, Toong Seng; Ngare, Isaac; Kimura, Izumi; Uriu, Keiya; Kosugi, Yusuke; Yue, Yuan; Shimizu, Ryo; Ito, Jumpei; Torii, Shiho; Yonekawa, Akiko; Shimono, Nobuyuki; Nagasaki, Yoji; Minami, Rumi; Toya, Takashi; Sekiya, Noritaka; Fukuhara, Takasuke; Matsuura, Yoshiharu; Schreiber, Gideon; Ikeda, Terumasa; Nakagawa, So; Ueno, Takamasa; Sato, Kei
SARS-CoV-2 spike L452R variant evades cellular immunity and increases infectivity
Cell Host & Microbe, Volume 29, Issue 7, 1124 - 1136.e11

Copyright: © 2021 The authors. Published by Elsevier Inc.
Open access.
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

The reason this is happening with the SARS-CoV-2 virus is obvious to anyone who has even a rudimentary understanding of evolution. Occasional variations in the replication of the viral RNA in infected cells are sifted by the sieve of natural selection, so that those few that are better at surviving and reproducing in the environment we are creating with our vaccines will quite quickly become the dominant form in the viral gene pool. A higher survival rate is a consequence of becoming more infective, producing more viruses and/or evading the immunity the vaccines are conferring on us.

Hospital Admissions (21 July 2021)

Source: GOV.UK Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the UK

Deaths (21 July, 2021)

Source: GOV.UK Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the UK

The significant factor here is that these mutations don't need to arise in people who have been vaccinated; they only need to infect vaccinated people to be selected for. So long as there are billions of people who have not been vaccinated, there is a high probability that a billion to one chance mutation will happen daily in the viral population numbered in the trillions. It is only by massively reducing this breeding ground by vaccinating as many people as possible that we can reduce the chance of these mutations arising.

The good news is, that, as the figures from the UK show, while new infections are approaching figures last seen last January and February, the number of hospitalisations and deaths are only a small fraction of what they were then. The vaccines are working to prevent serious illnesses and deaths.

Menwhile, we can only wonder at the mindset of those fanatical Creationists who are so full of admiration for what they believe to be the creator of this terrible pandemic.