ZAGREB, July 7, 2020- The Ministry of the Interior’s “Ivan Vucetic”Forensic Science Centre has joined in a project studying COVID-19 and for the first time in the world, a potential connection between a particular part of the human genome and clinical manifestations of COVID-19 will be examined in its laboratory.
The centre’s laboratory for massive parallel sequencing joined the project at the invitation of the Zagreb Faculty of Science.
The project will focus on determining the connection between the severity of clinical symptoms and genetic traits of persons infected with the novel coronavirus, with the help of gene sequencing.
The genetic sequence of the virus in each patient will be determined, as will mutations of the virus RNA in the Croatian population, and it will be studied how the course of the disease is affected by the relationship between virus mutations and an individual’s genetic basis.
Experts from Italy and Germany are also involved in the project.