Computational Systems Biology for Viral Detection and Classification of Emerging Infections and Rapid Identification of Causal Agents and Mechanisms

Project Description

The goal of this project is to identify several potential solutions for the COVID-19 outbreak using three main approaches: In Aim 1, we will use crystal structures and high quality structural models of COVID-19 proteins and two key human proteins using our workflows to infer their impact on function and viral interaction with human cells. In Aim 2, we will use metagenomic data from individuals infected with COVID-19 to demonstrate the power of our ParaKraken application 1, which can detect not only COVID-19 but any other viruses (and microbes) present in a given sample be it human or animal.

The world is facing a global health threat from COVID-19. Computational Systems Biology expertise, in conjunction with computational resources at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) can help to address this national challenge. Further development of this kind of research can unleash the potential to find cures and rapid detection for COVID-19 and other emergent pathogens.