Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology Researchers Develop a Tool for Studying Inflammatory Diseases Related to COVID-19

A new bioinformatics pipeline can help examine the mechanism underlying the development of autoimmune diseases pursuing SARS-CoV-2 infection

GWANGJU, South Korea, Might 17, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — The SARS-CoV-2, or the novel coronavirus, has influenced far more than 500 million individuals around the world. Aside from the indicators linked with COVID-19 an infection, it has not long ago been documented that the virus also leads to a subsequent advancement of autoimmune health conditions in patients.

Autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, or multi-inflammatory syndromes occur when the immune program confuses nutritious cells with pathogens and commences attacking them. But the precise system fundamental this “breach of self-tolerance” is unidentified. 1 of the probable mechanisms proposed to be included is what is known as “molecular mimicry,” in which an autoimmune reaction is activated when a T-mobile receptor or an antibody developed from a B-cell directed against a certain antigen (overseas entire body) binds with an autoantigen, which is an antigen made from our personal human body. This happens because of to a molecular or structural resemblance in between the “epitopes” (the portion of antigen hooked up to the antibody) of the antigens. Nevertheless, a comprehensive investigation of the part of molecular mimicry in the advancement of these types of autoimmune diseases has not still been carried out thanks to the complexity of the epitope search and the absence of standardized equipment.

To this stop, a workforce of scientists from the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technological know-how (GIST) led by Prof. Jihwan Park developed a new bioinformatics pipeline. Their new device, identified as cross-reactive-epitope-lookup-working with-structural-properties-of-proteins (CRESSP), was just lately reported in the journal Briefings in Bioinformatics. “Earlier scientific studies on molecular mimicry utilised bioinformatics pipelines distinctive from just one yet another that normally involved intricate algorithms and were not scalable to proteome scales. In mild of this, we developed a pipeline that is easily available and scalable,” points out Prof. Park. “It uses the structural homes of proteins to discover epitope similarities amongst two proteins of curiosity, this sort of as human and SARS-CoV-2 proteins.”

Working with CRESSP, the crew screened 4,911,245 proteins from 196,352 SARS-CoV-2 genomes received from an open up-access databases. The pipeline narrowed down 133 cross-reactive B-cell and 648 CD8+ T-mobile epitopes that could be dependable for COVID-connected autoimmune ailments. It even further recognized a protein focus on, PARP14, to be a opportunity initiator of epitope spreading amongst COVID-19 virus and human lung proteins.

The pipeline also predicted the cross-reactive epitopes of diverse coronavirus spike proteins. What’s more, the group formulated an interactive world-wide-web application to empower an interactive visualization of the molecular mimicry map of SARS-CoV-2. The pipeline is also out there as an open-supply bundle.

The workforce hopes their new instrument will aid comparison in between reports, providing a strong framework for additional investigation on molecular mimicry and autoimmune illnesses. “Although autoimmune conditions influence a lot less than 10% of the populace, researching them is essential considering the fact that it seriously impacts the good quality of life. Our new instrument can be employed to examine the doable involvement of molecular mimicry in the development of other autoimmune situations in a systemic and scalable fashion,” concludes Prof Park.

With any luck ,, the new invention will help us offer with SARS-CoV-2 and other viral infections better.

Reference

Title of authentic paper: CRESSP: a in depth pipeline for prediction of immunopathogenic SARS-CoV-2 epitopes working with structural properties of proteins

Journal: Briefings in Bioinformatics

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/bib/bbac056

About the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technologies (GIST)

please take a look at: http://www.gist.ac.kr/.

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