Study: SARS-CoV-2 can alter genome structure of our cells
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People infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, may experience genome structure changes that not only may explain our immunological symptoms after infection, but also potentially link to long COVID, according to a new study by researchers at UTHealth Houston.
"This particular finding is quite unique and has not been seen in other coronaviruses before," said Wenbo Li, Ph.D., senior author on the study and associate professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology with McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston. "What we found here is a unique mechanism of SARS-CoV-2 that is associated with its severe impacts on human health."
The genetic materials in our cells are stored in a structure called chromatin. Some viruses of other categories have been reported to hijack or change our chromatin so that they can successfully reproduce in our cells. Whether and how SARS-CoV-2 may affect our chromatin was not known. In this study, researchers used leading-edge methods and comprehensively characterized the chromatin architecture in human cells after a COVID-19 infection.
