A recently published study found that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the COVID-19 disease, is actually going through mutational bursts and then going back to its "normal" rate.
As indicated in a EurekAlert report, the new research led by the Doherty Institute has discovered that the SARS-CoV-2 virus has the ability to temporarily fast-track the normal evolutionary pace, allowing variants to occur more rapidly compared to other viruses.
According to Dr. Sebastian Duchene from the University of Melbourne, who led the research team, all viruses mutate at a "fairly constant rate," most of which takes a year or more to develop a new strain.
However, they noticed that the variant of SARS-CoV-2 mutates multiple times more than what was expected under the usual evolution of similar coronavirus.
For instance, "the delta variant occurred within only six weeks from its "ancestral form," explained Dr. Duchene, who's also an Australian Research Council DECRS Research Fellow at the Doherty Institute and lead author of the paper.
Focusing on the Variants of Concern
To better understand the reason for such an occurrence, the laboratory of Dr. Duchene carried out computational analyses of genome sequences from SARS-CoV-2 variants to understand the mechanisms under which variants of concern occur, focusing on the first four, including Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta.
At first, it was believed that the COVID-19-causing virus needed to increase its evolutionary rate in general. But they later learned that it's the virus that temporarily increases its speed which causes the difference in pace, explained the study lead.
Dr. Duchene compared the occurrence to someone "pumping the accelerator on a car." He added, these bursts could be driven by several factors, which include prolonged infections in individuals, strong natural selection, which is allowing the virus to favor immune escape, or enhanced transmissibility with unvaccinated populations enabling the virus to quickly spread and evolve.
The finding of the study published in the Molecular Biology and Evolution journal highlights the essentiality of continued genome surveillance initiatives to guarantee the early detection of new COVID-19 strains.
Importance of Increase Vaccination Emphasized
With COVID-19 evolving so fast, early detection is vital in allowing those in the field to monitor and respond to the virus. Dr. Duchene also emphasized the necessity for increased vaccination.
He explained anything that can be done to have fewer viruses out there would contribute to the reduction of the possibility that new variants are likely to occur.
The research team included Dr. Ash Porter and Dr. Wytamma Wirth of Doherty Institute, and John Tay, a Masters Student at the University of Melbourne.
As of this writing, according to the World Health Organization, worldwide, there have been more than 428,000,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19. The said number includes over 5.9 million deaths.
Related information about the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 is shown on the WHO's YouTube video below:
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