Coronavirus Mutations Explained
Here's a new worry: Mutation of SARS-CoV-2.
When is it going to mutate? Will it be worse once it mutates?
Well, the good news is the bad news. Or maybe the bad new is the good news – The virus has mutated, 1,000's of times over. The current strain wreaking havoc throughout the world is the SARS-CoV-2 strain G614. This strain is different from the virus from the one that originally made headlines in early 2020. The key difference in the G614 phenotype is that its spike protein, yes those little spikes we've all seen on the images of coronaviruses. This phenotype's spike proteins are more efficient when binding itself to human cells. This makes the G614 phenotype a more transmissible disease than the original virus that spread out of Wuhan.
The good news is that scientists think this hasn't had any affect on the death rate of the virus, and that its genetic variance from the original SARS-CoV-2 virus isn't great enough to implicate further challenges in the development of a vaccine. However, it certainly makes sense that the disease has become more transmissible from when the virus first began its spread.
For more reading on this, check out this research article where we found many of our ideas.
