WSU Scientist building searchable coronavirus database

PULLMAN, Wash. -- Long before any of us had ever heard of COVID-19, Dr. Michael Letko was studying coronaviruses.

"This type of virus was one we actually had seen circulating in bats for awhile," said Letko, an Assistant Professor at the Paul G. Allen School for Global Animal Health at Washington State University.

He started out studying HIV, specifically looking at how the virus and host interact. About five years ago, he started looking at the same relationship in coronaviruses. Dr. Letko says there are more than 40,000 sequences for just coronaviruses.

"Right now, the general order of things is we have a pile of sequences and viruses that we know that are circulating for the most part and then we just wait for one of them to spillover and then we all study it," said Dr. Letko.

He wants to change that process by building a searchable database. A scientist could plug a virus' genetic sequence into the database and it would match it to all of the collected data. The result would be more knowledge about what that virus is capable of doing and who it could infect.

"One of the things that we're looking at is how some of these other coronaviruses might be able to infect humans and human cells," added Dr. Letko.

His work is taking place in a lab at Washington State University.

"The whole kind of goal for this is there's a little bit less of a scramble whenever new sequences are coming out. We can already have some kind of preliminary functional data on it," said Dr. Letko.

In January of 2020, he was able to put his work into action after Chinese Scientists published the genetic sequence of what we now call COVID-19.

"We were able to really quickly show pretty convincingly that it was using the same type of receptor that the original SARS virus was using," Dr. Letko.

Knowing the receptor for a virus can help scientists begin to understand how it transmits and is information that would be included in the database he's building.

"The work that we're doing now at WSU is trying to look at the next kind of wave of coronaviruses that we know a little bit less about," said Dr. Letko.

That way when the next pandemic hits the world is a little more prepared, which in turn could hopefully save lives.

The database is still in the prototype phase. Dr. Letko is hoping to launch it next year.

Dr. Letko is new to Washington State University. He’s approaching his one year anniversary this summer. He says WSU was willing to invest in his work and help him start a lab, which is why he made the move from the NIH’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Montana.