Webinar by Ernesto Estrada

Date: 16 July, 16h (CET, GMT+2, Barcelona/Madrid/Paris/Berlin)

Speaker: Ernesto Estrada, IUMA, Universidad de Zaragoza

Title:  “Fractional diffusion on the human proteome as an alternative explanation to the multi-organ damage of SARS CoV-2"

Link to the webinar: https://eu.bbcollab.com/guest/a13864e69a1b4ea28d116e5bba005662

Abstract: 

SARS CoV-2 is the new coronavirus causing the pandemic known as COVID-19. This respiratory disease is characterized by multi-organ and systemic damages in patients. The abundance of ACE2 on human organs has been claimed as responsible for such multi-organ spread of the virus damages. However, once on circulation the virus could spread to practically every organ in the human body as
ACE2 is ubiquitous on endothelia and smooth muscle cells of virtually all organs. Contrastingly, SARS CoV-2 only damages selectively a few organs. Here, we develop the hypothesis that the effects of the SARS CoV-2 virus can be spread through the human protein-protein interaction (PPI) network in a subdiffusive way. We then elaborate a time-fractional diffusion model on networks which allow
us to study this phenomenon. Starting the diffusion from the SARS CoV-2 Spike protein to the human PPI network we show here that the pertubations can spread across the whole network in very few steps. Consequently, we discover a few potential routes of propagation of these perturbations from proteins mainly expressed in the lungs to proteins mainly expressed in other different tissues, such as
the heart, cerebral cortex, thymus, lymph node, testis, prostate, liver, small intestine, duodenum, kidney, among others already reported as damaged by COVID-19.

https://eu.bbcollab.com/guest/a13864e69a1b4ea28d116e5bba005662