Results from the study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, suggest antibodies from vaccines or previous infection may provide some protection against Omicron, say researchers
A new peer-reviewed study has shown that the Omicron variant is unlikely of the coronavirus is able to completely bypass antibodies induced by previous Covid infections or vaccines.
The researchers who conducted this study discovered this by using an artificial intelligence (AI) tool to predict the structure of the SARSCoV2 virus variant based on its mutations and how it binds to antibodies.
In a study published on the bioRxiv prepress server, researchers found that although the Omicron variant can lead to a weaker interaction with some antibodies, the effect is not sufficient to completely bypass the immune response.
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Researchers from the University of North Carolina in the US worked with the SARSCoV2 genomic sequence, released on November 22nd by the Botswana-Harvard HIV Reference Laboratory. The sample was taken from a 59-year-old man with Covid in Botswana.
The variant of Omicron, which the World Health Organization (WHO) describes as a “variant of concern”, is of growing concern around the world.
How the study was conducted
The study was carried out using AlphaFold2, a neural network-based deep learning model from Google DeepMind that can predict protein structure based on the genetic code.
Proteins are the essential building blocks of life. How a protein works depends on its three-dimensional structure. Therefore, figuring out how proteins fold is critical to understanding biology.
This “protein folding problem” was a challenge in biology for more than 50 years until the artificial intelligence tool AlphaFold was developed in 2018, according to the researchers.
Using AI, AlphaFold can predict the structure of a protein without laboratory experiments, so scientists can quickly understand its functions.
Using computer software, the researchers discovered the amino acid sequence, the building blocks of proteins, in the receptor binding domain (RBD) of the Omicron variant. RBD is an key part of a virus that resides in the spike protein that allows it to enter cells and cause infection.
With little information on how the Omicron variant interacts with antibodies, researchers turned to “predictive computational methods” to model the “mutated structure of the spike protein receptor binding domain” to detect potential changes in the effectiveness of the Posit the vaccine, said the study.
The team calculated the binding energy of the predicted protein structure using antibodies from people who were previously infected with Covid19. In physics, “binding energy” describes the energy that is required to break up a particle system. The lower the binding energy, the less stable the bond between two particles is.
According to the study, the results indicate that the predicted structure of the mutated peak protein of the Omicron variant has a reduced affinity for antibodies, but that they still bind to the variant.
“This finding suggests that antibodies raised by vaccines or previous infection may offer some protection against Omicron,” the team concluded, according to the study.
Although there are a variety of mutations in Omicron’s RBD, these mutations do not appear to cause major structural changes that completely prevent antibody interaction, the team said.
The results of this study should be confirmed in laboratory tests.
“Given the public health urgency to quickly understand the effects of new varieties of SARSCoV2, we need to act faster than a laboratory can,” the study said.
