A certain Mutation of the novel Coronavirus has caused under laboratory conditions, apparently, that the pathogen can infect more cells. This is reported by researchers from the Scripps Research – a medical research facility in the US state of California after the first experiments.
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A Virus changed with time, is normal. To replicate, you must copy the genome of the pathogen constantly. In the process, random errors, called mutations, which often have no effect happen.
A few weeks ago, researchers discovered a Mutation with the Code D614G, especially in the case of virus samples from Europe and North America occurred. At the end of April, researchers at the Los Alamos Laboratory reported in the US state of New Mexico that the Mutation might make the novel Coronavirus is contagious.
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Thus, patients in Sheffield, England that carried the virus variant had a higher pathogen load than other patients. That is to say, in your throat swabs, many of the Sars-CoV-2 viruses and a couple of particularly. However, you ill not heavier than patients who were infected by viruses, in which the change occurred. This could be an indication that the Mutation is not contagious or the Virus, but not dangerous power.
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“In just a few weeks, the dominant Form”
“Whenever this Mutation reached a Population that increased their frequency rapidly and in many cases, it was only a few weeks, the dominant Form,” reported the research team led by molecular biologist Bette Korber. For the first time the Mutation was detected in one case in Germany. In April, it was the most common variant in Europe.
In the experiments, the California scientists also suggest that the Mutation could make the Virus contagious. The pathogen-infected body cells by using so-called Spike proteins, which are like lumps on the outer shell of the Virus. Once penetrated, the pathogen of the cell, countless copies of the Virus to make. The cell is eventually broken, the viruses are free to leave and find a new host.
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The California researchers had examined how the known Mutation D614G effect on the Spike Protein. For this they built using genetic engineering, copies of the Coronavirus by planted harmless virus Spike proteins of Coronavirus. Such a vector virus is not able to penetrate, such as the Coronavirus in the cells of the body, but the sick.
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In the laboratory, the vector viruses are formed with the D614G Mutation significantly more functioning Spike proteins and were able to infest this body-cells easier. “The number – or density – of the functioning of the Spike proteins was due to the Mutation of four or five times higher,” says one of the researchers involved, Hyeryun Choe, Professor of immunology and Microbiology. Whether infections with this Virus there are more difficult, or even deadly, however, is unclear.
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Further studies must now show whether the Virus will behave under real-world conditions as well as in the laboratory. So there had been also in the case of Ebola is evidence that viruses can infect a particular Mutation under laboratory conditions, many cells. The effect disappeared, however, in experiments with animals. In addition, the laboratory experiments are in California so far, not by independent experts have been tested.
Laboratory experiments are no proof
Yet researchers do not consider it impossible that the Coronavirus with the Mutation D614G happen to be in Europe has spread, because it was the first version that arrived on the continent. In Washington and California, where the Mutation occurred also, there is no evidence that the virus variant has spread.
However, authorities have become worldwide noisy. Also, in the recent outbreak in Beijing, a virus variant spread, which has its origin in Europe. Further analysis is now to reconstruct the lineage of the Virus and how the Virus came to hack the boards of the Xinfadi wholesale market, which imported salmon processed had been.
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