New research has found that a mutation in the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, present in variants from the UK, South Africa and Brazil, can make the virus up to eight times more infectious than the original.
The new research on the D614G mutation in the spike protein in SARS-CoV-2, present in all of the most recent variants currently plaguing health systems worldwide, was led by researchers from New York University, the Genome Research Center. New York and Mount Sinai.
“Confirming that the mutation leads to more transmissibility may help explain, in part, why the virus has spread so quickly in the past year,” said Neville Sanjana, assistant professor of biology at NYU, who added that the mutation hit “Almost universal prevalence” among coronavirus variants that spread across the globe.
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Mount Sinai researchers injected a virus with the D614G mutation into the human lung, liver and colon cells and compared it with cells from the original strain detected in Wuhan at the beginning of the pandemic.
They found a colossal eight-fold increase in transmissibility between the two strains, with the mutated spike protein making the virus more resistant to being divided by other proteins in the human immune system, highlighting the importance of continuous vaccine research and development to combat this virus. version.
“…[O]our experimental data was quite unambiguous – the D614G variant infects human cells much more efficiently than the wild type, ” said Zharko Daniloski, a postdoctoral fellow at the Sanjana lab at NYU and co-author of the study.
Fortunately, however, the mutation has not yet been associated with a more intense progression of Covid-19, leading to more severe forms of the disease or an increase in hospitalization.
On the other hand, this represents another issue: the current generation of vaccines was developed based on the structure of the spike protein of the original Wuhan variant, highlighting the need for booster vaccines or even annual vaccination programs to stop the spread of the coronavirus forever.
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