Merck Health Foundation. Call for VII Solidarity Awards with Multiple Sclerosis
September 20, 2022
Pay attention to the scale: This is the risk of suffering from Alzheimer's, depending on your weight
September 21, 2022The Aragonese scientist (Sabiñánigo, 1958) highlights that "if you hold back, you won't get ahead" and the three-year work opens new paths to combat the pandemic.
A team of Spanish researchers led by Aragonese scientist Carlos López Otin, professor in Biochemistry at the University of Oviedo, have identified the essential genes in the infection process respiratory and intestinal cells humans for the virus that causes covid, which had gone unnoticed until now.
The study has been published in the 'The Embo Journal' magazine, of the European Organization for Molecular Biology, and has involved carrying out a complex genetic screening of the entire human genome until the genes necessary for coronavirus infection are identified.
Shortly after the pandemic was declared, The Carlos III Health Institute opened a call for specific projects on covid-19. “We do not work in virology but It was time to contribute, and that's what we did. We thought of a very complex project but one that took advantage of our long experience in genomic and molecular studies, and three years later and with a lot of effort we have managed to reap the fruits," highlights the Aragonese professor.
The article has 19 co-authors belonging to various Spanish institutions. “Since Don Santiago Ramón y Cajal, science is no longer written in the singular, it must always be expressed in the plural”, highlights López Otín. Among the main authors, Alejandro Piñeiro and Gabriel Bretones belong to the Oviedo laboratory directed by the Aragonese scientist. “They have shown me such extraordinary talent and commitment that it stimulates hope for the future,” he says.
Genetic engineering of the Sars virus
In their work, the researchers genetically engineered a artificial version of the Sars-Civ-2 virus, that did not replicate and was incapable of expanding in the environment. Then eliminated in human lung cells, individually, each of the more than 20.000 protein-coding genes and interrogated cell susceptibility to infection with the artificial pseudovirus gene by gene. In this way, this work led to identify the human genes Plac8 and Spns1, encoding proteins involved in biological processes such as endocytosis and autophagy that may contribute to viral infections.
Likewise, they needed corroborate the findings with the director of Animal Health Research Center, Marisa Arias, to carry out experiments with natural and fully infectious Sars-Cov-2 viruses. With this verification at the international reference center, the researchers confirmed their previous findings using a strain of the original virus isolated from the group during the first wave of the pandemic.
"We work with human lung cell lines which represent an accessible and reproducible source of material. Then, to validate the expression of the genes identified in lung cells, we exhaustively analyzed data from publicly accessible repositories that contain information from thousands of patients with covid-19,” Carlos López Otín lists the steps of the research.
Furthermore, the scientist born in Sabinanigo (1958) considers that The expansion of the virus that causes covid-19 and those that will come in the future “is not a surprise for scientists”. “It was anticipated, in my book 'Life in four letters' published a year before the pandemic already spoke about the great lie of human invulnerability, and commented that our health was going to be subject to new challenges. "New social uses, cultural evolution, horizontal transmission of information, human mobility, lack of responsibility for our health and that of the planet are just some of the determining facts of the rapid expansion of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus." , he lists.
Main authors of the research
Alejandro Piñeiro, first author of the article, acknowledged that there have been other studies of this type in the world, but the experimental design, having used the human lung cells and complex gene editing techniques have allowed them identify essential genes for the virus infection that has affected the entire world since March 2020 (since its origin in China) and had gone unnoticed in other studies.
“Our work has focused on find human genes necessary for the early phases of virus infection, before its replication occurs inside the cell,” said researcher Alejandro Piñeiro.
Likewise, Gabriel Bretones He stressed that the findings achieved lead to a better understanding “the mechanism of virus internationalization” and, therefore, the “identification of new therapeutic targets for the treatment of covid-19” and “other diseases caused by the coronavirus that may affect the future.” “This will allow the development of targeted therapies to improve treatment and help vaccines contain the spread of the disease,” he concluded.
The research, directed by the Aragonese scientist, has been financed by the Carlos III Health Institute, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Science and Innovation and the Ministry of Science, Innovation and University of the Principality of Asturias.
"If you complain, you won't get ahead"
For López Otín, “nothing makes sense if it is not in the light of evolution”, and uses a phrase from the scientist T. Dobzhansky that he learned from his Biology professor, Horacio Marco, in the University of Zaragoza. "Viruses evolve in the face of adversity, in your case the challenges posed by vaccines and our immune system; our laboratory has had to face very unique, unsuspected and serious adversities, and it has done so to survive", he says.
Likewise, López Otín remembers that a few days ago with the work of the immortal jellyfish he used the Aragonese word reblar for its meaning, after having lost an investigation after the death of 6.000 mice. “If you speak, you will not get ahead, neither in science nor in today's society.. As I told my students and disciples, 'we lost the mice, because jellyfish and virions'. And in the meantime we have rebuilt the vivarium. Many things can be taken away from you, but as long as you maintain your imagination and commitment you will be able to continue your path and your purpose.", concludes the Aragonese researcher after the latest discovery about the virus that causes covid.
Source: Heraldo de Aragón