Singapore: The researchers say that the genetic material of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is capable of changing shape and structure to boost its survival. They noted that the finding can help produce more effective drugs to treat the infection.
The researchers from Duke-NUS Medical School, the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) and Bioinformatics Institute (BII) led the study that showed the virus’ ribonucleic acid (RNA) can fold into complex and dynamic shapes for its growth and survival when inside infected cells, reported the Strait Times.
According to the researchers’ discovery, the virus RNA can interact with a lot of the human cell’s RNA to make use of it for its own survival.
“Aside from understanding the shape that the virus takes when inside human cells, recent work has also shown that its shapes are also very important for drugs targeting the RNA, which was what prompted us to start this project,” group leader of the Laboratory of RNA Genomics and Structure, Dr Wan Yue was quoted as saying by the paper.
Scientific journal Nature Communications published the findings.
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