The results of this unprecedented scientific work carried out by Dr. Luoise Zanella have been published in the influential scientific journal Scientific Reports of the recognized publishing house Nature Research.

It is one of the most common viruses in the human being. The Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) – a type of herpes virus – is transmitted in 90% of the cases during childhood, without symptoms. But if the infection occurs during adolescence or adulthood, it can cause different pathologies. Amongst the most dangerous are the lymphoma and gastric cancer.

Despite of the huge scientific efforts to genetically classify this virus in order to associate it to clinical or epidemiological aspects of the diseases it causes, the results have not been consistent at all, because of its high genetic complexity, leading to mutations and recombination of its genome with the genome of the human cells.

But it was Dr. Louise Zanella, a researcher of the Universidad de La Frontera (UFRO), who combined this scenery and achieved to design a new classification scheme of the EBV. “I realized that there was a real problem in the literature about the Epstein-Barr; there was no consensus regarding the classification of the virus, because of the noise generated by its recombination, what did not allow a comparison of the classifications and affected the understanding of its viral evolution,” she explained.

In order to solve this problem, she started to establish a different kind of classification than the traditional one, with new variations, identifying those mutations and recombinations that had hindered the process; an effort, no one had made until now. She started to explore the genomes of EBV and analyzed them systematically, with the help of the database that already exists and bioinformatics tools.

“We are working with 188 genomes. We choose the preserved parts, identify and remove the recombination and analyze the different classifications,” the researcher explained. This is how they achieved to propose a new scheme of classification of the virus, with major evolutive coherence and potential application in the medical clinic.

The results of this unprecedented experience, published in one of the most influential scientific journals, Scientific Reports, of the recognized publishing house Nature Research, also allowed to identify 12 EBV populations, of which three are associated with malignant tumors, what affects the possibilities of an assertive prognosis in patients who are infected by the virus.

This is undoubtedly a very important contribution, especially in a country like Chile, where gastric cancer is one of the main causes of death, with a prevalence that puts Chile in first place in Latin America.

Dr. Zanella is from Brazil and came to the Universidad de La Frontera two years ago in order to develop a postdoctoral project that is financed by the Performance Agreement. She admitted that genetics and viruses are her passion since she was young. At the Laboratory of Integrative Biology, which is part of BIOREN-UFRO and directed by Dr. Priscilla Brebi, she found a place where to create knowledge in this field.

Currently, the researcher is working on two new papers, one about the speed of evolution of EBV and its geographical origin; and the other one about the evolutionary rate of the different identified populations and the age of the virus.