The coronavirus is a master of camouflage - and San Antonio scientists caught it in the act

Could new treatments for hospitalized COVID-19 patients emerge from San Antonio?

Scientists at four local [San Antonio] research institutions have laid the groundwork for such discoveries with a study that showed how coronaviruses such as SARS-CoV-2 can hide in the body and circumvent our immune defenses.

“What we do is we isolate the virus’s proteins and RNA, assemble it, crystallize it in our lab and then send those crystals to a national laboratory, where we have very sophisticated instruments called synchrotrons to measure high-resolution X-ray diffraction data,” said Lead investigator Yogesh Gupta, an assistant professor of biochemistry and structural biology at UT Health San Antonio.

Gupta said the samples were sent to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory outside Chicago.

Published Date

06.10.2021