Tens of millions of people has infected about half a year ago-emerged Coronavirus already – it mutates and becomes more dangerous?
In a not-yet-peer-reviewed Preprint publication, researchers at the American Scripps Research Institute genome analyses conclude that a Mutation with the name D614G makes the Virus infectious.
Under laboratory conditions can infect the pathogen more cells, reported the Team recently.
coincidences play with mutations with a major role
The D614G Mutation in the in Europe and on the East coast of the United States circulating virus strains, in fact, a strong presence, says Richard Neher from the University of Basel to do so.
“From this domination, however, do not conclude that the Virus spread with the Mutation more quickly.”
The dominance is not necessarily due to a higher transmission rate or virulence, but the coincidence, says the head of the research group on Evolution of viruses and bacteria: The D614G-virus variant have been at the beginning of the individual larger outbreaks and more spread out than other variants.
“coincidences are playing at the beginning of an incredibly large role.”
in General, mutations in the Coronavirus is absolutely not uncommon, stresses Neher. In its 30,000 bases come in the middle every two weeks to a Mutation.
Thus, the mutation rate per Base is slightly lower than, for example, in the case of Influenza, or HIV, because of the larger genome of Sars-CoV-2, the value that is ultimately about the same.
on the Basis of the mutations, it is possible to conclude on whether the two outbreaks are linked chains of Infection from person to person not to understand about it.
The recent outbreak in Beijing, for example, genome comparisons, therefore, suggest that the pathogen was introduced from the outside to the country – where exactly, is not to say.
drugs are mostly insensitive to single mutations
Sars-CoV-2 was already well adapted to the people, says Friedemann Weber, Director of the Institute for Virology, Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen. “Because I ask myself first: What it takes anymore?”
According to a recent study, the D614G Mutation rentals, however, a little more stability, this could be for the particle to be quite an advantage. That a single Mutation make a big difference, in particular to only one specific enzyme acting drug conceivable.
Many drugs and vaccine candidates are placed on a broader Basis and therefore usually insensitive to individual mutations.
there is not a single Virus isolate with changed pathogenicity is known around the world, stresses Neher also. “We can’t exclude that it exists, but it’s unlikely.”
His Team together with U.S. colleagues, developed the web application ‘next train’ (nextstrain.org), with the on fed-genome sequences can be used to track which way viruses spread.
The Software analyzes how a pathogen is changing, so what mutations it accumulates during the propagation of a kind of family tree is created.
Sars-CoV-2 is several times introduced
From the data collected, will not let, for example, shows that Sars-CoV-2 landed only once, in countries such as Germany, Austria or the USA, but several times was introduced, explained Andreas mountain Thaler from the research Institute for Molecular medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (CeMM) in Vienna.
conclusions as to the consequences of detected mutations were after half a year of pandemic is not yet possible. But genome comparisons could help to determine where the Virus came behind a given outbreak. The chains, in turn, use the interrupt of Infection.
The data of the ‘next train’ to draw conclusions on the origin of Sars-CoV-2. “We expect with great certainty that the Virus in China from animals to humans has jumped,” says Neher. It was once, and in the Region of Wuhan happen.
To future adjustments and changes, on the other hand, the data do not close. Mountain Thaler: “The time will show in which direction the Virus is developed.”
Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa)
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