Singapore, Singapore, August 27, 2021 –(PR.com)– A team of researchers from Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)’s Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) and Bioinformatics Institute (BII), together with Duke-NUS Medical School, integrated a variety of technologies to study not only the whole genome of SARS-CoV-2, but also its RNA structures, and discovered an important host factor for infection. Additionally, they also mapped the shapes of a deletion variant that was isolated from a patient in Singapore, allowing them to determine the structures of both wildtype and other variants. The study was published in Nature Communications on 25 August 2021 (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-25357-1).

SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, is an RNA virus whereby its genome is made up of a single 30 kilobases long RNA. This long RNA can fold into complex and dynamic shapes to allow the virus to interact with other factors for virus growth…