Two mutant strains of the new coronavirus may have combined their genomes to create a new and highly mutated variant of the deadly SARS-CoV-2 virus, which is responsible for the cause of COVID-19.
As first reported by New Scientist, the B.1.429 variant of SARS-CoV-2 that originated in California somehow had a “recombination” event with the highly transmissible B .1.1.7 variant originating in the United Kingdom. If confirmed by other scientists, this is the first time that the new coronavirus will develop a recombinant strain during the pandemic, although it is not uncommon for coronaviruses to generally recombine.
The findings were first announced earlier this month during a meeting organized by the New York Academy of Sciences by Dr. Bette Korber of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Of course, one question that arises is how viruses can recombine in the first place. After all, viruses do not reproduce sexually like most multicellular organisms.
But as Dr. Alfred Sommer, dean of emeritus and professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University, explained to Salon, similar viruses can exchange genetic material while infecting cells.
Similar viruses with a degree of genetic variation will, according to Sommer, ‘exchange’ similar pieces of their genetic code during the replication process. “” The ‘new’ virus, ‘he continued,’ therefore contains mirror portions of two viruses, and if the two original viruses had different mutations, the new ‘daughter virus’ has it from both, “Sommer said.
Sommer noted that this type of recombination event can happen all the time, but we rarely notice it unless it “brings together genetic changes that independently or collectively increase the transmission or severity of disease.” Sommer said the New Scientist article “does not provide any evidence to suggest that this is actually the case so far.”
Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, told Sommer’s observation that we do not yet have evidence of the recombinant version of the virus. Benjamin wrote to Salon that the danger ‘only depends on if it continues to be copied with these changes and how the changes affect the ability to transmit from person to person and cause diseases …. Because it contains both mutations, does not mean that it has the disease characteristics of the two. Only time will tell. ‘
He added: “Therefore, we need to keep mapping the mutations and comparing them to the actual clinical findings in humans.”
Dr. Russell Medford, chair of the Center for Global Health Innovation and Global Health Crisis Coordination Center, told Salon that recombination is important to observe because it represents another mechanism by which SARS-CoV-2 can mutate to new strains form that may have increasingly problematic properties. ”
“Because recombination can combine multiple mutations of different SARS-CoV2 strains simultaneously into one new mutant virus, it could in theory create new coronavirus strains that contain, for example, both the mutations that increase transmissibility and resistance to current vaccines,” Medford said. added.
There are a number of mutant variants of SARS-CoV-2 – coronaviruses are also extremely prone to mutation – but the B.1.1.7 strain is of particular concern due to its high transmissibility. Although the strain is probably not more lethal, its higher transmissibility means that more people can become infected and thus lead to an increase in the number of COVID-19 cases.