Genomic Epidemiology of SARS-COV-2
As we continue our fight against this pandemic, our scientists are surprised each day on the development of it. When the outbreak began, they started studying about the said virus on its origins until its pathogenesis and mutagenesis. There are rumors in the past days that this virus might mutate as it spreads in outside borders of China. (Image 1)
That's true and in fact I checked its mutagenesis which can be defined as production of genetic mutations, in the earlier days, studies shown that there are two strains roaming around, but now this might change a little bit as it turns out there are at least 8 strains of the virus now infecting countries. But question remains, should you be worried?
The genomic epidemiology of this pandemic has lead several scientists to track the virus on these mutations. Genomic epidemiology is one powerful tool to understand further how a pathogen affects a certain place or country. Two major methods are used most of the time to track the virus infection: PHYLOGENETIC ANALYSIS and GENOMIC SEQUENCING. These two methods can distinguish where the virus lies or what family does it belong to as it will compare its genome to other coronaviruses; thus, it also reveals its origin.
Bats are suspected as the primary hosts before reaching the humans. There are papers that show this statement while most are figuring out if there's an intermediate transmissions before humans. Earlier papers show snakes as intermediate, but the scientific peer rejected and turned their focus to pangolins which, in some genomic sequence analysis, there are quite high relativity to the virus.
The first genomic analysis of the virus can be seen on Accession no. MN908947, released on GenBank by Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center and School of Public Health, Fudan University, Shanghai, China). From the said sequencing, scientists evaluated that it is clear on its phylogenetic analysis that new human virus is most closely related to bat coronaviruses in the Betacoronaviruses genera.
A study was published titled, "On the origin and continuing evolution of SARS-CoV-2," cautioned the data it analyzed was still “very limited.” It was conducted by scientists at Peking University’s School of Life Sciences and the Institute Pasteur of Shanghai also points out same results above.
In a paper published in MedRxiv as preprint of this study, researcher/s used a tool they developed called METAGENOMIC SEQUENCING with spiked primer enrichment to recover viral genomes of COVID-19 patients in Northern California to better understand the genetic diversity of SARS-CoV-2 in the US and the nature of transmission of virus lineages in the community.
In the said paper, based on the virus genomes used as sampled from 29 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 infection from Feb 3rd through Mar 15th. Phylogenetic analyses revealed at least 8 different SARS-CoV-2 lineages, suggesting multiple independent introductions of the virus into the state.(Image 2)
According to Charles Chiu, Professor of Medicine and Infectious Disease at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine who also the author of the paper above mentioned," Virus mutates so slowly that the virus strains are fundamentally very similar to each other."
SARS-COV-2 does not mutate very fast. It does so 8 to 10 times more slowly than the influenza virus, said Anderson, making its evolution rate similar to other coronaviruses such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).
In addition, more strains does not mean if you infected back then, you can be infected again. To put this in layman term, think of our immune system like it's recognising a specific face. Antibodies recognise a specific "face" of the virus. If the change in virus does not affect its face, then it's the same for your immune system to recognise it. Your phone face recognition doesn't lock you out just because you have painted your fingernails. On the other hand, if you grew an extra nose, then your immune system or vaccine has to start again to recognise the change. This change to the virus does not make any other functional change in it, then for all intents and purposes, it's the same. The rate of change also seems so slow to date (11 out of 30,000 base pairs of the virus makeup) that it's probably not even akin to painting one toenail.
If you will suggest that more strains are now emerging and using it as supporting detail on any theory you have in mind, don't think about it. It's like you drop an atomic bomb to destroy a country, but it is not effective and now you're wasting money to create more bombs.
With this quick studies conducted by experts, we are shedding the mysteries of this pandemic. While we are in our home, always remember to fact check all posts you see before sharing.
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