Faced with the Covid-19 crisis, a Moroccan team of doctors from the laboratory of medical biotechnology of the Rabat Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy has analyzed more than 3,000 genomes of the virus worldwide, researchers told APA.
By Hicham Alaoui
This is part of a Moroccan project aimed at analyzing and deciphering the strand of Covid-19 present in Morocco with a view to identifying several of its characteristics.
“This is a genomic project that will determine the characteristics of the Moroccan genome, understand the stability of the virus and also allow– if a vaccine is developed– to benefit from it,” Pr. Azeddine Ibrahimi, Director of the biotechnology laboratory at the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy of Rabat told APA.
It added that this project makes it possible to characterize the virulence of the virus and the link, which makes it possible to infect the cell of a living organism.
Describing this project as “promising”, Pr. Ibrahimi explained that the team’s work, submitted for publication, has made it possible to determine the geographic distribution of virus genomes in more than 58 countries, describing the genetic diversity, the evolution of the virus and the most important genetic changes in its genome, allowing the identification of the most relevant mutations.
According to a document from the scientific team overseeing this project, the results of this research will allow better strategies to confront the spread of the virus and improve the possibilities for managing the pathology of Covid-19.
This work falls within the framework of the great “Genoma” Project of the medical biotechnology laboratory of the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy of Rabat.
It is aimed at creating a national platform for the analysis of the sequences of all Moroccan genomes, starting with the genome of Moroccan human reference and the genomes of bacteria and viruses from Moroccan samples available at the national level or in international databases.
HA/fss/as/APA