Welcome to Sindh Biotechnologist Association

Introduction A global outbreak induced by SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome-CoronaVirus-2) caused COVID-19 pandemic, has spread rapidly around the world. Many governments, businesses and academic research organizations are contributing in the COVID-19 fight to stop the spread of the pandemic. Since December 2019, the COVID-19 was first reported in China, and then in various countries in the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), and on March 2020, COVID-19 was recognized as a pandemic. COVID-19 resulted in the deaths of millions of people and the economic damage it imposed to the world was immense   (Jianguo Chen, 2020, p. 1) . Increased inflammatory mediators caused by COVID-19 lead to multiple organ failure, which increases the mortality risk in patients with severe disease   (Hao Lv, 2021, p. 1) . People have been negatively impacted socially, mentally, and economically ...

As winter has come already, so does the other wave of COVID-19. However, the situation is a bit serious but a bit different. Yes, the race of vaccines across the globe. Currently, FDA has approved vaccines (derived by Pfizer and BioNTech) as safe, and a few months back, the UK has made Pfizer’s vaccine applicable to use among their population. About one or two months back, Pfizer and BioNTech came up with a vaccine of 95 percent efficacy in Clinical Trial Phase III and got approved. The vaccine, unlike previous others, is an mRNA, which was found to be stored at -70 C and expensive. However, as mentioned, FDA has now approved Pfizer’s vaccine but the question remains: Is it applicable to our population? As reported on Pfizer’s official site, 150 Clinical Trials were conducted in 6 countries, which comprises the United States, Germany, South Africa, Turkey, Argentina and Brazil. Among this trial, 40 percent were of diverse races and out of which,5 percent were of Asians.  About few ...

Introduction SARS-CoV-2 becomes a global challenge after it hits millions of deaths worldwide. Researchers from different parts of the world are doing vaccine trials against COVID-19. World Health Organization announced that the only way to reduce COVID-19 cases is by taking precautionary measures and maintaining social distances until an effective vaccine is produced. Many countries throughout the World also control the number of increasing cases by following these precautions. As scientists are trying to develop vaccines, they are also doing research on the structure, function and pathway of coronavirus when it attacks the host cells with the help of proteomics and multi-omics studies. Coronavirus and Proteomics In 2019, novel coronavirus was emerged as a pandemic flu from Wuhan city, China and spread throughout the world. The main source of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is contact with the infected patient via sneezing and coughing because of his/her respiratory droplets contains...

INTRODUCTION SARS-CoV-2 is the pathogen responsible for COVID-19. This disease got emerged from Wuhan city in China and has been declared as the global emergency situation by WHO (of the International, 2020) . This pandemic affected the economy of the world badly with about 2,101,164 confirmed cases. STRUCTURE OF VIRUS AND ITS ENTRY IN CELL It is a single-stranded RNA enveloped virus comprising of 4 proteins namely Spike, Envelope, Nucleo-capsid and Membrane proteins. Spike proteins cover its outer surface and are involved in attachment to the host cell receptor. SARS-CoV-2 gains entry into the cell through ACE-2 receptors (Walls et al., 2020) . When these spike proteins bind to the receptors, Transmembrane serine proteases get active and mediates viral entry into the host cell and after entrance viral RNA is released into the host cell (Wang et al., 2020) and then replication and transcription of the viral genome take place. The synthesis, assemblage and packaging of viral prot...