A group of UO biologists has developed a promising new model to study how underlying conditions exacerbate the health issues caused by COVID-19.
The key to the model’s potential is the use of zebrafish, because they have the same cellular components that the virus uses to infect humans. And they also have the same biological mechanisms that cause the underlying conditions.
Biology Professor Emeritus John Postlethwait’s lab is leading the collaborative effort alongside researchers from the labs of fellow UO biologists Karen Guilleman and Adam Miller. All three labs use zebrafish in their biomedical research because the animals share 80 percent of human disease genes and are a valuable resource for understanding human biology.
The new study will use zebrafish to uncover more information about how COVID-19, a disease caused by a new coronavirus that emerged in 2019, disproportionately affects people with preexisting conditions like diabetes, obesity and high blood pressure. To investigate that question, the group of researchers is examining a specific protein that is involved with both the viral infection with the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 and with other fundamental processes in the body, including the regulation of blood pressure, inflammation and a system involved in diabetes.
