Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), who were examining SARS-CoV-2 - a strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19, have identified several new mutations that accumulated through recombination at a high rate and affected viral proteins, especially different parts (domains) of the viral spike protein.
Researchers from the institute’s Department of Microbiology & Cell Biology, and Centre for Infectious Diseases Research in a study published in the Journal of Medical Virology have identified several new mutations that accumulated through recombination at a high rate and affected viral proteins.
According to IISc in January 2022, around the time that the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 started spreading rapidly, a team of researchers led by Shashank Tripathi, Assistant Professor at the Department of Microbiology & Cell Biology, and Centre for Infectious Diseases Research, noticed that there was an unusually high increase in the number of recombinant strains of the Omicron variant.
The team analysed genomic sequences of all the viral strains that appeared between November 2019 and July 2022 in various databases worldwide.
The team showed that with the aid of these mutations, several such Omicron recombinant and mutant strains were able to escape from the host’s defenses and bind more tightly to the host cell.
Their observations add to growing evidence about how efficient new strains of the virus are at escaping immune attack and at causing infections, said IISc. Viruses like SARS-CoV-2 are known to change constantly, making it hard for our immune system to identify and destroy them. This is a major concern when generating vaccines. The genetic material in SARS-CoV-2 is a long single-stranded RNA. In addition, the protein that is required to make copies of this RNA – RNA polymerase – is known to be error-prone in this virus.
Viruses can evolve via one of two mechanisms: mutation or recombination, said Mr. Tripathi. “Our findings show that the virus is not cooling down but is actually warming up as far as mutations go,” he said.
