UL Equine Science graduate deciphering covid-19 genome

[source Roscommon Herald]

A Ballaghaderreen academic is at the forefront in the global fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. Geneticist Dr Keith Durkin is currently working at the University of Liège in Belgium, helping to unpick the virus that has taken the lives of tens of thousands of people worldwide and brought the planet’s economy to a practical standstill.
Part of a global scientific endeavour, it is hoped that this work will help scientists better understand how the virus responsible for Covid-19 spreads and how infections are related. It could also help locate new sources of infection once lockdown measures are relaxed. Ultimately this work will inform medical treatments and save lives.
“At the moment we have sequenced about 180 SARS-CoV-2 genomes,” Dr Durkin told the Roscommon Herald.

“These are a subset of the positive samples from the clinical microbiology lab at the University Hospital in Liège. We are using a new technology from a company in the UK called Oxford Nanopore that allows for rapid sequencing using a very small device that can be attached to a laptop. A lot of the SARS-CoV-2 sequencing is being done with this technology.”

Carrying out this painstaking research is by necessity both time consuming and intricate, but it is vital work.

The son of well-known business people Mary Theresa Durkin and Colm Durkin, he is a past pupil of St Nathy’s College. Dr Durkin studied equine science at the University of Limerick, before completing a PhD in genetics at Texas A&M University, in College Station Texas, where he worked on horse genetics.

“I then moved to Liège, Belgium to work in the University of Liège, I have been here for 10 years now. I originally worked on cattle genetics but have moved to working on different viruses that cause cancer in cattle, sheep, and humans, as well as HIV,” he said.

“My wife, Maria Artesi, is Italian from Naples. We work together in the lab and it’s mainly me and her that have been doing the SARS-CoV-2 sequencing in Liège.”

Regarding whether pandemics will become more frequent, he could not say. “They have happened multiple times in the past and it will happen again, we just don’t know when and where. Many have warned about such an outbreak being a possibility given the recent near misses of SARS-1 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome).

“This outbreak does show how modern communications can spread a virus very effectively across the whole world.”

FameLab Ireland's final

We have been so proud this year to have both of the Limerick reps at the national final of Ireland as biggest science communication competition FameLab come out of our department.

Sandra Hurley, who is a PhD student studying what is best for horses, qualified as the winner of the Limerick heat. In the final Sandra gave a fantastic talk titled ‘Don’t fence me in’. Sandra managed to tie in the consequences of the COVID-19 crisis into deepening our empathy and understanding of animal welfare. Throughout the lockdown people have been feeling the pressure of restriction. A desire for freedom. Sandra drew on this feeling to show us how this is  exactly how animals who were born to be wild must feel when locked up or ‘fenced in’. It was a brilliantly composed and thought provoking talk.

Andrew McGovern is a teaching assistant with us studying sex differences in disease. He qualified through 2nd place in the Limerick heat and won the audience choice award there also. Andrews final talk was titled ‘Don’t be shy: The important difference between X and Y’. Andrew brought brilliant creativity to his talk using rhyming, puppets and a book reading to communicate about sex differences in disease today and throughout history – all in three minutes! He won the peoples vote claiming the FameLab Ireland audience choice prize, securing the double as the audiences choice for science communication not only in Limerick but in all of Ireland.

We are so proud of our award winning colleagues and cannot wait to get them both back in front of students, to continue to communicate and educate as effectively and passionately as ever.

Scientists at UL make solution to aid more testing

Prof Norelee Kennedy (left) of the UL Covid Action group with Dr Edel Durack, instrument scientist at Bernal Institute.

Scientists at the Bernal Institute at the University of Limerick have responded to the shortage of reagents by preparing a testing solution now being used at the city's acute hospital.
Bigger batches are being produced by pharma companies to meet the demand as the testing of patients rises across the country.

A Covid-19 action group has been established at the University of Limerick to co-ordinate its research activities in response to the pandemic.

A group of scientists at the Bernal Institute, as well as the departments of chemical and biological sciences, have responded to the shortage of reagents for testing by making a lysis buffer. This is an essential solution needed to break open cell membrane in the testing process.

University Hospital Limerick reached out to the UL Graduate Entry Medical School to help them in sourcing a lysis buffer after they ran short.

Dr Edel Durack - an instrument scientist at Bernal Bio Laboratories - and a team of technicians from the School of Natural Sciences at UL prepared the lysis buffer solution which is critical for DNA extraction and is required to generate results from patient swabs.

"It's a day-to-day struggle to source reagents for the testing process and we were able to fill that gap," Dr Durak said.

"The solution we made has been validated by UL Hospital for use, enabling pharmaceutical companies now to rapidly produce bigger volumes of this solution to help meet the demand for testing patients."

UL Vice President of Research Prof Norelee Kennedy, who is coordinating the Covid-19 action group, said academics at the university are also looking at a wide range of research around the pandemic, particularly the post-Covid-19 world, around antibody testing and how we know when patients are better, as well as their experiences and recovery from the illness.

[source: RTE]