Nearly 50 years after they first terrorized the folks at Amity Islands and got their own week-long TV programming block on Discovery...are sharks becoming our allies? A new study in Nature Communications, reported by the Daily Beast, suggests shark proteins can act as antibodies against COVID and its variants. According to the report, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison ("UWM") have discovered a protein unique to sharks that is small and nimble enough to "get into nooks and crannies" of Covid-19's spiky structure that human antibodies cannot, which allows them to recognize coronavirus proteins more effectively than our own antibodies. As a result, they are better able to neutralize the COVID-19 virus. The proteins, called VNARs, are produced by shark immune systems naturally and are about one-tenth of the size of human antibodies.
That's promising news with Delta, Omicron and other variants possibly on the way. Oh Jaws...frenemies?
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