Scientists of France, Spain and Mexico found that SARS-COV-2 coronavirus can awaken sleeping retroviral sequences in the human genome, which can lead to the development of serious chronic diseases. This is reported in the article published in the preprints of MedRXIV.
Researchers found out that the coronavirus S-protein can activate in the blood cells of the human endogenous retrovirus of a person (HERV), which encodes the ENV protein involved in the assembly of virus shells. Expression of the ENV protein in T-lymphocytes was previously connected with severe respiratory distress syndrome in patients with SARS-COV-2, but the mechanism remained unknown.
In the course of the experiment, scientists have added recombinant S-protein to the culture of mononuclear cells of peripheral blood patients with SARS-COV-2. As a result, they observed the activation of the gene encoding ENV, in 20-30 percent of people infected with COVID-19. This is likely to indicate a genetic predisposition among the activation of the ENV and the respiratory distress syndrome.
It is known that more than one percent of the human genome is the remnants of the retrovirus Herv-W, which is more than the encoding sequence protein. Some of these residues during activation can lead to various diseases, including multiple sclerosis.