Two mutant strains of the new coronavirus may have combined their genomes to create a new, strongly mutated variant of the deadly SARS-CoV-2 virus, which is responsible for causing COVID-19.
As New Scientist first reported, SARS-CoV-2 variant B.1.429 that originated in California somehow had a “recombination” event with highly transmissible variant B.1.1.7 that originated in the Kingdom United. If confirmed by other scientists, this would mark the first recorded time that the new coronavirus developed a recombinant strain during the pandemic, although it is not uncommon for coronaviruses in general to recombine.
The findings were publicly announced earlier this month at a meeting organized by the New York Academy of Sciences by Dr. Bette Korber of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Of course, a 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 emeritus and professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University, explained to the Salon, similar viruses can exchange genetic material while infecting cells.
Similar viruses that have some genetic variation, said Sommer, will “exchange” similar pieces of their genetic code during the replication process. ” “The ‘new’ virus,” he continued, “therefore contains mirrored parts of two viruses, and if these two original viruses had different mutations, the new ‘child virus’ would have them from both,” said Sommer.
Sommer noted that these types of recombination events can happen all the time, but we rarely notice them unless they “bring together genetic changes that, independently or collectively, increase the transmission or severity of the disease”. Sommer said the New Scientist article “does not claim any evidence that this is, for now, really the case.”
Dr. Georges Benjamin, Executive Director of the American Public Health Association, echoed Sommer’s observation that we still have no evidence for concern about the recombinant version of the virus. Benjamin wrote to the Salon that the danger “depends only if you continue to be copied with these changes and how these changes affect your ability to transmit from person to person and cause disease … Just because they contain both mutations, does not mean that you acquire the disease attributes of the two. Only time will tell. “
He added: “This is why we must continue to map the mutations and compare them to actual clinical findings in people.”
Dr. Russell Medford, president of the Center for Innovation in Global Health and the Global Health Crisis Coordination Center, told Salon that recombination is important to note because “represents another mechanism by which SARS-CoV-2 can mutate to form new strains that could potentially have increasingly problematic properties. ”
“Since recombination can bring together several mutations at the same time from different strains of SARS-CoV2 in a new mutant virus, it could, in theory, create new strains of coronavirus that contain, for example, both mutations that increase transmissibility and confer resistance to current vaccines, “Medford added.
There are several mutant variants of SARS-CoV-2 – coronaviruses are also exceptionally prone to mutation – but the B.1.1.7 strain is of particular concern because of its high transmissibility. Although the strain is not believed to be more lethal, its greater transmissibility means that more people can be infected with it and therefore lead to an increase in the number of COVID-19 cases.