Virus chimera apa

A bat, a pangolin or another wild species? Where does it come from? From a cave or a forest in the Chinese province of Hubei, or elsewhere? In December , 27 of the first 41 people hospitalised 66 percent passed through a market located in the heart of Wuhan city in Hubei province. But, according to a study conducted at Wuhan Hospital , the very first human case identified did not frequent this market.

It is an RNA molecule of about 30, bases containing 15 genes, including the S gene which codes for a protein located on the surface of the viral envelope for comparison, our genome is in the form of a double helix of DNA about 3 billion bases in size and contains about 30, genes.

Comparative genomic analyses have shown that SARS-CoV-2 belongs to the group of Betacoronaviruses and that it is very close to SARS-CoV , responsible for an epidemic of acute pneumonia which appeared in November in the Chinese province of Guangdong and then spread to 29 countries in A total of 8, cases were recorded, including deaths. It is known that bats of the genus Rhinolophus potentially several cave species were the reservoir of this virus and that a small carnivore, the palm civet Paguma larvata , may have served as an intermediate host between bats and the first human cases.

Since then, many Betacoronaviruses have been discovered, mainly in bats, but also in humans. Chimeras can help to fight diseases. In , Portuguese researchers created a chimera virus , a mouse virus with a human viral gene, which enables them to investigate new ways to treat cancer caused by human herpes virus infection.

The team found out that when the cancer-causing virus loses a protein, called LANA, it also loses its ability to cause cancer. In March, Japan loosened its guidelines, lifting a two-week limit on the growth of human-animal chimeras and allowing the transplantation of chimeric embryos or hybrids into animals, but not humans. Pending approval, a Japanese stem cell scientist, Hiromitsu Nakauchi , plans to insert human stem cells into mice or rats in an attempt to grow a human pancreas in the animal.

The five: chimeras created by science. Without this protein, called LANA, the virus looses its ability to cause cancer. The team found that when LANA is cloned into a virus similar to Kaposi, but which infects mice instead of humans, it preserves its functionality.

This finding came as a surprise since it was assumed that as a consequence of the evolutionary divergence between human and other animal viruses, the genes that code for LANA could not be switched. However, the work now published in PlosPathogens, showed that even though there are more than 60 million years of evolutive divergence between the human Kaposi sarcoma herpesvirus and its rodent homologue, LANA's functional mechanisms are preserved.

These findings allowed researchers to create a chimera virus: a mouse virus with a human viral gene that can be used to test molecules that inhibit human LANA protein in an animal model of disease, treating not only human herpes virus infection but also its associated cancers. These molecules will hopefully be used in the future as drugs to treat Kaposi virus associated lymphomas.

Materials provided by Instituto de Medicina Molecular. Note: Content may be edited for style and length. Science News. Journal Reference : Aline C.