When the SARS-CoV-2 protein Nsp6 is made in a fruit fly heart (center), the heart has structural flaws (arrows) compared to a regular heart without the viral protein (left). The SARS-CoV-2 infection consists of the hereditary details for 29 different proteins, and in a paper released in Communications Biology in September, scientists figured out that one of those proteins, Nsp6, supercharges energy use in heart cells in a method that may cause heart damage.See “Doctors and Researchers Probe How COVID-19 Attacks the Heart”The researchers first picked 12 of SARS-CoV-2s proteins with the greatest likelihood of initiating a pathogenic reaction in host cells, as identified by a computational method that forecasted their function based on structure. The team then engineered 12 different lines of fruit flies to each reveal one of the proteins in their heart cells, and observed the proteins results on death, the morphology of the flies hearts, and gene expression in the heart cells.They found that one protein, Nsp6, had an especially detrimental result– flies in the Nsp6 transgenic line had a much greater rate of death than control flies and revealed “pronounced structural and functional damage” in their hearts, according to the paper.
When the SARS-CoV-2 protein Nsp6 is made in a fruit fly heart (center), the heart has structural problems (arrows) compared to a typical heart without the viral protein (left). The SARS-CoV-2 infection includes the hereditary details for 29 various proteins, and in a paper published in Communications Biology in September, researchers figured out that one of those proteins, Nsp6, supercharges energy usage in heart cells in a way that may cause heart damage.See “Researchers and medical professionals Probe How COVID-19 Attacks the Heart”The scientists first picked 12 of SARS-CoV-2s proteins with the greatest possibility of instigating a pathogenic action in host cells, as determined by a computational method that predicted their function based on structure. The group then engineered 12 different lines of fruit flies to each reveal one of the proteins in their heart cells, and observed the proteins results on death, the morphology of the flies hearts, and gene expression in the heart cells.They found that one protein, Nsp6, had an especially harmful result– flies in the Nsp6 transgenic line had a much higher rate of death than control flies and showed “noticable structural and functional damage” in their hearts, according to the paper.