Hi I'm Jennifer Leavey and this is the
Spring Break edition of stay at home
journal club where each episode
describes a recent research article and
explains what was done, what was found,
and why it matters in less than two
minutes. Today we're discussing this
paper, "A serological assay to detect
SARS-CoV-2 seroconversion in humans" by
Fatima Amanat et. al. from the Icahn
School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and it
was uploaded to the MedrXiv on March
18t.  MedrXiv is a pre-publication
database where people can post articles
before they've been peer-reviewed or
published, and the primary reason for
this is to let people know about
important discoveries in a timely manner.
In this article the authors purified
the spike protein from the SARS-CoV-2
virus and coated a plastic plate with it. They then added serum which is the non
cellular part of blood from a few
different individuals: some that had
recovered from COVID-19, one who had a
different corona virus and recovered
from that and then a few other controls,
and then they washed away any unbound
antibody and added another antibody
against those antibodies that have been
made in a goat, and that antibody was
very special because it was tethered to
an enzyme that caused a color change
reaction. It's impossible to visualize
antibodies and so this color change
reaction
allows you to see how much antibody is
present. The researchers found that
individuals who had never had the corona
virus or who had had a different corona
virus did not have antibodies that would
bind to the spike protein, but the
patients who had recovered from COVID-19 did have antibodies that would bind
to the spike protein. This is exciting
because now we have a test to know
whether people are immune to the SARS CoV-2 virus the virus that causes COVID-19.
This will help us know whether
asymptomatic cases have recovered from
the virus and will help us get back to
work in a safe way. As always the link to
this paper can be
in the description below if you'd like
to read along, and I'll see you next time!
