— Day 1 — Day 2 — Day 3 — Day 4 — Day 5 —

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Summary:
Today was the fourth day of the “Outbreak!” project. We began by discussing the reproduction of the virus; this is an important topic when you’re preparing to make a vaccine. Specifically, there were three questions we tried to answer: Are we sure it’s a virus? Is it reproducing sexually or asexually? And is it mutating?

The first two questions were rather obvious. Yes, it’s a virus; we determined that yesterday. And of course it reproduces asexually (by forcing the host cells to make copies). But the last question was trickier. Is it mutating? By comparing the virus code found in Patient 6 to the one found in Patient 13, we were able to conclude that the virus was not mutating. The code was exactly the same. And that’s great news. That means our T-cells will have an easier time managing it. And it also means we would only need one vaccine.

Resources:
December 12-15 – Outbreak! (pg317).docx