This is how you make a virus yourself

Why wish someone a deadly disease when you can make one yourself? Making your own virus has never been so easy.

A virus: a piece of biological software

What is a virus? In fact, a virus is nothing but a piece of RNA, or in some species, DNA, that hijacks a cell of an organism. Instead of the cell of a plant, animal or human (or bacteria) doing its own cell thing, this cell starts manufacturing copies of the virus like a madman. The cell usually does not survive that, causing it to break down and a cloud of virus particles to spread.

Usually a virus consists of nucleic acids with a protein coat around it. Bacteria have a thick cell wall, which is why specialized bacterial viruses, called phages, have a special tail that allows them to pierce through the thick cell wall of the bacteria and inject their RNA.

Not everything is a virus

There is also a small group of huge viruses, such as the mimivirus, which is basically a complete wandering cell nucleus that hijacks a cell and multiplies inside it. So you shouldn’t actually call this a virus anymore, but something else.

Then there are viroids. These are loose pieces of RNA without a protein coat, which are much smaller than viruses. With the potato spindle virus as an extreme example, pictured in full above. 300 letters is enough to give potato growers a bad year.

Yes, all nice to know you will say. But instead of wishing your annoying neighbor an illness, you want to give one as a gift. That will teach him to turn up his annoying music too loud. So no mimivirus or potato blight, although it has a tuber head. No, a home, garden and kitchen cough and sneezing virus. Or something worse. How does that work?

Writing viruses for beginners

It sounds bizarre, but you can just write the RNA code for a virus in Notepad or any other text editor. The code for a virus is usually quite small, say a few tens of kilobase pairs (kBp). A few tens of thousands of letters, so to speak. Most web pages contain more code. A DNA base pair can consist of the letters C, G, A and T (each letter here represents a nucleotide, a small molecule). In RNA, the nucleotide thymine (T) has been replaced by another nucleotide (uracil, U).

A group of three of these letters stands for an amino acid, the building block of proteins. So basically DNA and RNA is nothing more than a blueprint for a number of proteins, with some control codes, indicating where special molecules (ribosomes) should start and stop reading and translating into proteins.

Proteins that you should definitely add are the enzyme RNA transcriptase (to copy your virus) and the protein for the virus coat. You can pick up that protein for the virus coat from an existing virus that infects people. Better stolen well than badly conceived. And of course don’t forget to add start and stop codons per protein, otherwise the ribosomes will get lost.

Now think about some mean jokes. For example, an enzyme that makes it smell really bad. Such as an enzyme that converts tryptophan into skatole, a substance with a foul stench. His girlfriend is guaranteed to run off screaming. Your revenge is sweet. Brilliant! That will teach him. Yes, that’s what we’re going for.

Translating the virus into RNA code

Translating code into RNA is not easy. You need an RNA synthesizer for that, which translates an RNA code into RNA letter by letter. For example, that of the company TriLink Technologies, where you can have your own string of mRNA produced. We assume for a moment that you do not run into problems with your virus proteins, and that you know a friend who works at a biolab and is not afraid of criminal prosecution for bioterrorism.

You will receive a quote for the costs within a few days. They are usually around 10-20 cents per base pair. Your virus has 20,000 base pairs, so that won’t be a flying holiday to Australia this year. But that neighbor drops the value of your house considerably, so those costs are fascinating. You say yes. Go with that banana.

Fixing the protein coat

RNA does not survive very long without a good protective protein coat. So when your refrigerated sample with virus RNA arrives after a few weeks, you have to add those proteins. Then they automatically fold around the virus RNA. Fortunately, you can also order it to size, for example at ProMab, although this is again an expensive joke of several thousand euros. Just call the bank for extra mortgage space. Carefully you mix your precious ampoules with virus protein and the virus RNA. And your first real virus disease is a fact.

Oh-oh…

Carefully, under a UV lamp with protective clothing on, pour your virus culture into a plant sprayer. You sneak into the neighbor’s garden and while he sings out of tune in the bathroom, you spray a cloud of virus through the open window. Justice is served. Congratulating yourself again on your genius action, you wait to see what will happen.

The virus turns out to be a resounding success. The neighbor stinks in the wind for an hour, his girlfriend breaks up with him and he is admitted to a hospital. You enjoy the peace. Then disturbing messages come. It turns out that people all over the country are getting the same disease. Quarantine. Corona passports that are dusted off again. Then you will also be affected. Because a virus cannot be tamed. And new mutations are popping up all the time, one more miserable than the other, infecting new people….

But what if there is a state behind it?

The scenario described above is not entirely realistic. Companies usually check closely, and if it turns out that there are problematic sequences in your supplied code, such as proteins of virus coats and RNA transcriptase, they will report this. But suppose you are an employee of a secret service or the military in an autocratically governed country such as China or Russia. Or, as it turned out earlier, in the US. You can then have this done without any problems.

Covid-19 from Chinese lab experiment?

According to the leading and very highly regarded conservative British newspaper The Times, the covid-19 virus escaped from the Chinese Wuhan Institute of Virology and a secret research program for the Chinese army was underway here at the time. Are some or all of the 29,903 base pairs of Covid-19 not naturally occurring? Most scientists, and the WHO, still think the virus has a natural origin. The arguments for a partially artificial origin in the Times article are very convincing. This also explains the extremely paranoid Chinese fight against the virus.

We have already seen that it is not very difficult for malicious people with the resources of a large country to put together a vicious virus. And if that has happened in Wuhan, then that moment has already passed.