Modelling infection susceptibility to Covid19

The symptoms of the SARS-CoV2 infection are extremely variable, ranging from some individuals being completely asymptomatic to others having severe respiratory and organ failure. It is not known why some individuals have higher prevalence to infection with Covid19. A number of research groups have recently identified a role for the protein FURIN as an activating factor of the Covid19 infection.

In this project Agnieszka Nagorska, a PhD student at Warwick Medical School aims to explore the link between Furin’s role in cardiac development, using zebrafish as a model and the potential infection susceptibility to Covid19.

This research which the Medical and Life Sciences Research Fund is providing funding has a potential to address many interesting questions regarding heart development though uncovering of the novel mechanisms of molecular factors and whether these affect susceptibility to infection with Covid-19.

Reporting:  Agnieszka and her colleagues have found an exciting function of furina in cardiovascular development in zebrafish and results are currently being prepared for publication Nagorska et al., ‘Translational control of furina by an RNA regulon is essential for heart morphogenesis and cardiac valve function’.