Decoded: How dangerous Covid variants emerge

A team of Russian researchers has uncovered the mechanisms behind the emergence of new and dangerous coronavirus variants such as Alpha Delta Omicron and othersThe team led by those from the National Research University Higher School of Economics HSE discovered that the likelihood of a substitution occurring at a specific site of the SARSCoV2 genome is dependent on concordant substitutions occurring at other sitesThis explains why new and more contagious variants of the virus can emerge unexpectedly and differ significantly from those that were previously circulating they wrote in the paper published in the journal eLifeAll viruses including the SARSCoV2 virus responsible for the coronavirus pandemic change over time The longer a virus circulates within the population and the more individuals it infects the more changes mutations it accumulates Typically new strains of a virus are similar to their parental strainsHowever in some cases mutations may result in variants that are better adapted to the environment and pose a higher risk to human health These variants tend to spread more quickly may not respond to existing vaccines or treatments and could be more difficult to diagnoseThe evolution of a virus within a population can be likened to a journey across a vast terrain with ravines valleys and hills The virus roams randomly through this landscape dying quickly if it falls into a cavity surviving longer in valleys and thriving when on peaks said Alexey Neverov from the HSE International Laboratory of Statistical and Computational GenomicsFor the study the team analysed over three million genome sequences of different strains of SARSCoV2 They identified particular sites on the surface protein of the coronavirus where amino acid substitutions occurred differentiating the variants from both the original Wuhan strain and from one anotherMany of these sites appeared to be concordantly evolving so that changes in amino acids at one site were rapidly followed by changes at another site All the active and dangerous variants of the virus were distinguished from the previously prevalent variants by patterns of multiple substitutionsIndividuals with longterm Covid19 may potentially harbour an accumulation of variants which are poorly adapted for survival in the general population However over time these variants can evolve into stronger forms that have the potential to spread widely and conquer the world Neverov explainedThe team suggest an explanation as to why intermediate variants that differ from the original virus by only one or two substitutions may not be visible Its possible that these weak variants only become strong when they gather the whole pattern of individually deleterious substitutions As a result predicting the emergence of a new highly adaptive strain is hard the researchers saidThe statistical method employed by the studys authors is versatile and can be utilised to investigate the evolution of numerous other pathogens In particular this approach has been successfully applied to studying the evolution of influenza and tuberculosisAlso Read Immunisation Need to catch up on time lost with Covid say expertsThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever