TRIBUNTERNATE.COM – Scientist Singapore has made an important discovery about the shape and structure of the genetic material of the Sars-CoV-2 virus.
The discovery could help in producing more effective drugs to treat Covid-19.
They found that the ribonucleic acid (RNA) of the corona virus can change its shape into a complex and dynamic form so that it can grow and live when inside infected human cells.
The team, consisting of researchers from Duke-NUS Medical School, as well as the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) and the Bioinformatics Institute (BII), a unit under the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star), also found that coronavirus RNA can interacts with many of the RNAs of human cells to utilize them for their own survival.
“In addition to understanding the shape that viruses take while inside human cells, recent research has also shown that their shape is also very important for RNA-targeting drugs, which prompted us to start this project,” said Dr Wan Yue, group leader of the RNA Genomics and Structure Laboratory. as quoted from The Strait Times.
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Dr Wan, who is also associate director of Epigenetic and Epitranscriptomic Systems at GIS, led the research, which was published in the scientific journal Nature Communications.
Sars-CoV-2 virus, which causes Covid-19, has a single-stranded genome consisting of RNA as its genetic material.
RNA plays a key role in helping viruses produce their proteins.
When a virus infects and enters a human cell, the spike protein on its cell surface binds to a human or host cell receptor.
It then releases its genome into the host cell, where RNA is translated to make viral proteins.
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