New studies highlight how coronaviruses often mix their genetic components, which are potential contributors to the increase of dangerous strains.
The New York Times report said that in the past weeks, "researchers have sounded the alarm about new variants" of the COVID-19 " that carry a handful of tiny mutations," some of which appear to make vaccines less effective.
However, it is not just these small genetic changes that have raised concerns. COVID-19 tends to mix large chunks of its genome each time it's replicating itself.
Different from small mutations akin to typos in the sequence, a phenomenon identified as 'recombination' looks like a major copy-and-paste mistake in which a sentence's second half is totally overwritten with a slightly different version.
'Recombination'
A series of new studies propose that recombination may enable the virus to shapeshift in many dangerous ways.
However, in the long run, this biological machinery may provide a silver lining, helping scientists search for drugs to halt the virus in its tracks.
According to University of Utah evolutionary generics Nels Elde, there is no question there is an occurrence of recombination, and in fact, "it is probably a bit underappreciated and could be at play" even in the appearance of some new strains of concern.
The COVID-19 mutations that most people have heard of, like the ones in the B.1.351 variant first traced in South Africa, are found to be changes in a "single 'letter' of the long genetic sequence or RNA.
The expert also said, since the virus has a strong system for proofreading its RNA code, these tiny mutations are comparatively infrequent.
Essentially, as indicated in the said report, recombination, on the contrary, is widespread or common in coronaviruses.
Extensive Recombination in 3 Coronaviruses
Scientists at Vanderbilt University Medical Center headed by virologist Mark Denison recently examined how things are going awry while replication is occurring in three coronaviruses that include SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19.
The research team discovered that all three coronaviruses exhibited "extensive recombination" while separately replicating in the lab.
Scientists are worried that recombination might allow for various strains of coronavirus to mix into more dangerous versions inside the body of a person.
For instance, the B.1.1.7 strain initially discovered in Britain was found to have a lot of mutations that seemed to emerge instantaneously.
Dr. Elde explained recombination might have mixed mutations from different coronavirus variants that arose suddenly within "the same person over time or that co-infected" an individual at the same time.
For now, he continued, the notion is hypothetical that it is "really hard to see these invisible scars" from a recombination occurrence. And, even though getting infected with two different variants "at once is possible," it is thought to be a rare event.
Rare Occurrences That Can Lead to a Huge Effect
Britain-based Oxford Big Data evolutionary epidemiologist Katrina Lythgoe is doubtful if co-infection is happening frequently. However, she said, the new variants of concern "have taught us that rare occurrences" can still lead to a huge effect.
Recombination might also allow two different coronaviruses from the same taxonomic group to swap some of their genes. To examine that risk more closely, Dr. Elde and his colleagues compared the genetic sequences of many different coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2 and some of its distant relatives known to infect pigs and cattle.
Through the use of specially designed software, the scientists underscored the areas where these sequences of the viruses aligned and matched, as well as the places they didn't.
Essentially, this software proposed that over the last couple of centuries of the evolution of the viruses, a lot of recombination occurrences involved sections that made the spike protein, which is helping the virus penetrate human cells.
That, according to scientists, is troubling as it could be a route through which a single virus critically equip another to infect humans.
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