Chilean scientists participate in international study that discovers unknown key in the immune response to vaccines
Bioinformatics is an emerging area of science that uses computational technologies to analyze biological data. This methodology was used by a group of scientists from institutions such as the University of Cambridge, University of Sao Paulo and the University of Chile in research that identified certain chains of ribonucleic acid (Rna), who were considered the "genome garbage", are directly involved in the body's immune system response after vaccination.
The I am a student, featured by The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Pnas), official magazine of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, detected the activation of the so-called long non-coding RNA of people after vaccination. This activation would be directly related to the production of antibodies, points out Vinicius Maracaja-Coutinho, Faculty of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Chile and a researcher at the Advanced Center for Chronic Diseases (ACCDiS ), who was part of this investigation.
Ribonucleic acid (Rna) non-coding, explains the teacher of the House of Bello, until recently it was very little taken into account and considered as the "genome garbage", because they are not "encoded" in proteins, one of the most important processes that cells perform. This molecule, known to be involved in various cellular processes of living beings, between 70% and 80% of total RNA. However, there is still no absolute clarity about all the functions that this molecule performs and its role in the immunity that delivers a vaccine, had been very little explored, Add the academic.
Find, raises the academic of the University of Chile, provides the foundations for systematically understanding how the body's temporary response after exposure to vaccines works. "We propose that this RNA could be useful in quickly monitoring vaccine-induced antibody responses. Our findings suggest the existence of regulatory functions, but they are not definitive evidence for such activities. More functional validation experiments are required, that we plan to do. In addition, we intend to conduct similar studies to study both infection and vaccine response for other diseases of interest. In this way, research opens a way forward to help assess the effectiveness of current and future vaccines for diseases such as influenza, the hanta, COVID-19".
Bioinformatics
What's new about this work doesn't just lie in finding, but also in the particular way in which it was realized, since no experiment was conducted, but all the data were obtained from public sources of information and computer analysis. "We recovered a massive amount of data obtained by different studies, and we re-analyze them in an integrated way, to enable these conclusions to be drawn", comments the academic.
He study, entitled "Long noncoding RNAs are involved in multiple immunological pathways in response to vaccination" ("Non-coding long RNA is involved in multiple immune pathways in response to vaccination") analyzed 2.059 blood samples from 17 cohorts of patients vaccinated against yellow fever and influenza. "We did a public data integration using bioinformatics and systems biology. It was precisely this integration that allowed us to be able to identify certain long non-coding ARNs that are involved in immune responses to vaccination", says Maracaja-Coutinho.
"The idea was to show the power of bioinformatics, because a lot of people still think we need experimental validation in all cases, and this study shows that this is not the case. It is possible to do science with the integration of various experimental data and to obtain valuable information, just as happened in this case", says Maracaja-Coutinho.
Through a network of consensus, 16 subgroups of cohesive networks were identified (colored circles), which were enriched for different cells and processes related to the immune system, like the monocytes (CM1), platelet activation (CM4), T cells (CM5), the IFN response (CM6), B cells (CM7) and killer cells (Nk) Natural (CM9).
Dr. Vinicius Maracaja-Coutinho, researcher at the Advanced Center for Chronic Diseases and academic at the Faculty of Cs. U Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals. of Chile, was one of the experts who through bioinformatics identified that certain chains of ribonucleic acid (Rna) are involved in the body's immune responses to vaccination.
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