Here's how the coronavirus can become part of our DNA

There is further confirmation that fragments of coronavirus can integrate into the DNA of our chromosomes. The study on Pnas

(photo: Gerd Altmann via Pixabay) Some fragments of coronavirus could integrate into our DNA, and it is for this reason that some people could test positive for long periods, even months after recovery. A hypothesis already put in place last December by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in a pre-print study on BioRxiv, which has generated quite a few controversies among the scientific community, and which today finds further and new confirmations. The same research team, in fact, has just published a new work on the pages of the Pnas journal, where it demonstrates that the viral genome can actually become part of our DNA. "We now have unequivocal evidence that coronavirus sequences can integrate into the genome," commented author Rudolf Jaenisch.

MIT researchers focused on the possibility that the coronavirus genome could integrate into chromosomes and to testing it had used reverse transcriptase (Rt), an enzyme typical of retroviruses, which uses RNA as a starting template to synthesize DNA, in human cells and cultured cells engineered with the coronavirus. In subsequent laboratory experiments, the researchers added an Rt from HIV and an Rt using human DNA sequences known as Line-1 elements, sequences of ancient retroviral infections that make up about 17% of our genome. Preliminary analyzes revealed that the cells that produce the enzyme had allowed fragments of the coronavirus' rna to convert into DNA and be integrated into chromosomes.

Although the data were scarce and the researchers pointed out that the integration of the coronavirus into the DNA does not mean viral replication and therefore lead to an active infection, the study has been the subject of numerous criticisms, such as that of fuel unfounded fears that mrna vaccines could somehow alter the human genome. "If I had had that data, I would not have submitted any publications," Cornell University expert Cedric Feschotte told Science. Furthermore, in subsequent studies also published in bioRxiv, some skeptical researchers concluded that human viral DNA sequences "are more likely to be a methodological product than the result of true reverse transcriptase."

In the new study published in PNAS, however, researchers have provided more solid evidence that the coronavirus genome can integrate into human DNA. "The new results support the original hypothesis," explained co-author of the new study, Stephen Hughes, of the National Cancer Institute. "The integration data in cell culture are much more convincing than those presented in the preprint, but they are not yet completely clear," added Feschotte, who now defines the hypothesis of the MIT researchers as "plausible". The question now is whether the laboratory data can have any relevance in reality. "In the absence of integration tests in patients, the most I can draw from these data is that it is possible to detect integration events", concludes the expert. "The clinical or biological significance of these observations, if any, is a matter of pure speculation."


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