"Spike protein" had become a "spiked protein" as if someone added rohypnol to their favourite protein drink.
They do not have the education to "do the research" to understand that the protein makes a literal spike on the virus shell. This spike connects with a receptor on a human cell and that therefore allows the virus to enter the cell to start replicating.
A 'nonce' is something used when encrypting data - it adds randomness into the data, so that identical messages will be encrypted differently. This stops hackers executing attacks where they can guess the first bit of the message, and work backwards to the encryption key (among different attacks).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptographic_nonce