Coronavirus: an Argentinian scientific project was p …

Argentine science has returned to the top. Two national projects won the LARA Research Prize in Latin America, which this year recognized 22 academic works “aimed at finding solutions to common social problems” and awarded $ 500,000 to help fund these initiatives.

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, at least five projects have focused on developing tools that help improve current technology for the detection, diagnosis and treatment of the disease. This is the case with the work of Mariana Viegas and Mercedes Soledad Nabaes Jodar from the National University of La Plata, awarded for their project “Genomics and metagenomics of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in Argentina: Comprehensive analysis of the genetic and evolutionary aspects of indigenous strains”.

Researchers from Virology Laboratory Ricardo Gutiérrez Pediatric Hospital they analyze the variants of the virus which circulate in the country, within the framework of the “Interinstitutional Consortium for the sequencing of the genome and the genomic studies of SARS-CoV-2 (PAIS project) ”, From the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation of the Nation. As part of this project, more than 400 viral genomes have already been sequenced in patients across the country.

“We sequenced the genome of strains from 26 Argentinian patients. we have identified four different lineages of the virus that had already been described, with their particularities of the country, had explained Viegas to this newspaper.

In turn, the ministry’s website gives more details about the work they are doing: “The team is working together and collaboratively to conduct genomic studies on SARS-CoV2 in our country and to contribute both knowledge and to the Global Viral Circulation Database GISAID (Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data). Its objectives include the sequencing of circulating SARS-CoV2 genomes in different regions of our country, large-scale sequence analysis, genome assembly, phylogenetic analysis and phylogeographic, epidemiological and molecular studies, and correlation studies. clinic ”.

Apart from the coronavirus, another Argentinian project, that of Axel Soto and María Virgínia Sabando from the National University of the South, with its work “Learning molecular incorporations for drug reuse”.