Coronavirus actively mutates: how it affects the level of its infectivity

Mutations of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 do not increase its transmission power from person to person. This is the conclusion made by researchers at London University College, having analyzed the genome of more than 15 virus samples from 000 countries. Writes about it "Voice of America".

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Scientists have found that mutations that accumulate in the RNA of a virus reduce or do not affect its spread.

Scientists identified almost 7000 mutations in the virus samples they studied. Of these, 273 occurred several times in different samples - they are important for the study, since they indicate that they have some weight for the virus in its evolution to adapt to a new host - humans. Of this number, 31 mutations occurred more than 10 times.

“We used new technology to determine whether viruses with the new mutation are more transmissible, and found that none of these mutations benefit the virus,” says Professor François Balot, one of the study’s authors.

Further analysis found that most of the identified mutations occurred as a result of interaction with the immune system of an infected person, which does not indicate that the virus adapts to people in general. The study was published on the BioRxiv server and has not yet been reviewed and peer-reviewed.

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Biohomic Elena Danilyuk says that British researchers paid special attention to mutations in the hairpin region of the virus (mutation D614G), which was also studied by scientists at the Andrew Ward Scripps Institute and came to other conclusions.

“In the viral variant most common in New York and Italy, a specific mutation, D614G, helps the virus infect cells more efficiently. Scientists say that when the GenBank database was checked in February, this D614G mutation was not observed. In samples from March, it could be detected in 1 out of 4 samples. In May, this mutation was observed in 70 percent of samples,” says Danyluk, who previously worked on US biomedical sensor projects and now works in the Patents and Technology Commercialization department at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan.

“The virus, under the pressure of natural selection, has remained in a form that is more stable for its survival,” she says, noting that all this data is preliminary, since in order to accurately prove an increase or decrease in the power of infection of the virus due to this mutation, it is necessary more data and detailed studies in controlled laboratory conditions.

The study did not address the issue of the effect of a virus mutation on the severity of COVID-19 symptoms and mortality.

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