The genetic trait that is mutated or altered is called 677. The different changes are so similar that the researchers think that evolution favors these particular variants. And it’s in a disturbing place, said Vaughn Cooper, director of the Center for Evolutionary Biology and Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, who worked on the study.
“This piece of Spike is important because of its proximity to a regional key to virulence,” Cooper told CNN in an email.
“We actually think these mutations are relatively rare (compared to other types of mutation), but they are chosen disproportionately when they occur,” he added.
The team reviewed revisions of genomic sequences deposited in GISAID, a global database that researchers use to share genetic information about the virus. This is where scientists first noticed the emergence of worrying new variants, such as B.1.1.7, first seen in the UK, and B.1.351, first seen in South Africa.
“At the end of January of 2021, we have two independent SARS-CoV-2 genomic observation programs, based at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in Shreveport, Louisiana, each ” an increasing number of … viruses with an S: Q677P mutation were observed, and that this variant increased in frequency in samples collected at the end of 2020 to mid-January, ” the researchers wrote.
The shorthand – Q677P – refers to the specific change in the amino acid that is part of the ear protein.
They identified seven similar mutations at 677 – each of which appears to have originated independently. They named them after birds to make them easier to identify.
The one, named Robin 1, showed up in more than thirty U.S. states, mostly in the Midwest, they said. ‘A second’ appears for the first time from a Oct. 6, 2020, sample from Alabama and is called ‘Robin 2’ because of its resemblance to the parent Robin 1 sub-series, ‘they wrote. It is especially seen in the southeast. One named Pelican was first seen in a sample from Oregon, and has since appeared in 12 other states as well as Australia, Denmark, Sweden and India.
Pelican was the first variant to attract the researchers’ attention, in part because it was found in nearly 28% of the samples from Louisiana and 11% of the samples from New Mexico.
“The remaining Q677H sublines each contain about 100 or less series, and are called: Yellow Hammer, mostly found in the southeastern United States; Bluebird, mostly in the northeastern United States; quail, mainly in the southwest and northeast; and Mockingbird, mainly in the southern and eastern coastal states, ‘wrote the research team.
The United States has barely studied the genomic sequences of circulating coronaviruses. If these variants appear so often in databases, they are likely to occur a lot, the researchers said. The occurrence of so many similar mutations at the same time is ‘remarkable’, they said.
“These variants were only detected in mid-August 2020, but on February 3, 2021, more than 2,327 of the 102,462 genomes deposited with the US at GISAID were already there,” they wrote. It needs a lot of attention, they said.