American and Swiss researchers have created replicons of coronavirus – self-associated RNAs that are identical to the virus, but they are unsuccessful. The article of scientists has been published in the journal Science.
In order to study the effect of such a contagious virus as SARS-COV-2, specialists are forced to do this in compliance with strict protocols in biosafety laboratories. Simplify their work can replica, which copy almost every aspect of the cycle of the virus life. They are usually created by cloning the RNA genome in DNA fragments in test tubes, of which synthetic RNA is obtained. But RNA coronavirus is extremely long.
Therefore, researchers from Berne and Rockefeller universities under the leadership of the Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine 2020 Charles Rice applied another approach: the fragments of the coronavirus genome “collected” in small fragments, but not in test tubes, but in bakery yeast. The resulting genome contains all the necessary information to replicate the virus – except for “instructions” to assemble the S-protein, allowing the virus to penetrate and infect cells.
However, this protein is the main object of a large number of coronavirus studies. To circumvent this obstacle, the researchers expressed the S-protein in parallel with the replicon. The resulting particles are able to penetrate into the cells, but in their contigate are limited by one cycle of the virus.
Virologist hopes that their replicates will help scientists find out many previously unknown details of the work of coronavirus, as well as experience the effectiveness of drugs against COVID-19. So, in one of the experiments, scientists experienced Remidesivir’s action on the replica. “We found that it suppresses repulicone in the same concentrations as a real virus. This shows that the replicular system can be a reliable alternative to SARS-COV-2 in testing various drugs,” the first author of Inna Ricardo Lax was noted.