Mutations-Covid19

Hat Tip to 'Treyfish', FluTrackers:

‘Striking’ coronavirus mutationhttps://www.scmp.com/print/news/china/science/article/3048772/striking-coronavirus-mutations-found-within-one-family-clusters found within one family cluster, Chinese scientists say

11:30pm, 3 Feb, 2020

While the effects of the mutations on the virus are not known, they do have the potential to alter the way the virus behaves.

Researchers studying a cluster of infections within a family in the southern province of Guangdong said the genes of the virus went through some significant changes as it spread within the family.

Viruses mutate all the time, but most changes are synonymous or “silent”, having little effect on the way the virus behaves. Others, known as nonsynonymous substitutions, can alter biological traits, allowing them to adapt to different environments.

Two nonsynonymous changes took place in the viral strains isolated from the family, according to new study by professor Cui Jie and colleagues from the Institut Pasteur of Shanghai...
..It is not clear yet what the mutations mean for patients. Qiu Haibo, a member of the national expert panel advising the government on the fight against the virus, said on Sunday that so far there was no evidence that mutations could cause . . . .CONTINUED

Hat Tip to 'Shiloh', FluTrackers:

Coronavirus far more likely than Sars to bond to human cells due to HIV-like mutation, scientists say
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3052495/coronavirus-far-more-likely-sars-bond-human-cells-scientists-say

Research by team from Nankai University shows new virus has mutated gene similar to those found in HIV and Ebola
Finding may help scientists understand how the infection spreads and where it came from

Stephen Chen in Beijing
Published: 12:30am, 27 Feb, 2020
Updated: 1:32am, 27 Feb, 2020

The new coronavirus has an HIV-like mutation that means its ability to bind with human cells could be up to 1,000 times as strong as the Sars virus, according to new research by scientists in China and Europe.

The discovery could help to explain not only how the infection has spread but also where it came from and how best to fight it.

Scientists showed that Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome) entered the human body by binding with a receptor protein called ACE2 on a cell membrane. And some early studies suggested that the new coronavirus, which shares about 80 per cent of the genetic structure of Sars, might follow a similar path.

But the ACE2 protein does not exist in large quantities in healthy people, and this partly helped to limit the scale of the Sars outbreak of 2002-03, in which infected about 8,000 people around the world...

There are THREE distinct strains of the novel coronavirus in the world and the virus 'may be mutating to thrive in different immune systems'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8204255/There-THREE-separate-types-coronavirus.html

Type A is closest to the one found in bats and pangolins and has two sub-clusters
One sub-cluster has links to Wuhan and the other is found in the US and Australia
Type B is derived from type A and is the dominant variation seen in Wuhan
Type C is the 'daughter' of type B and was spread to Europe via Singapore

MORE at link, above

This is a good video from Dr. John Campbell that explains the mutation of the virus. This is from early March, when he was explaining the A & B strains.

COVID-19 Mutation and Evolution
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYPZHA-UjUY

Very good video.
It is about a month old, so we have learned the answer to a couple of the questions he presents, but the stuff in the video is still very, very, good.

TRex2 wrote:Very good video.
It is about a month old, so we have learned the answer to a couple of the questions he presents, but the stuff in the video is still very, very, good.

Yea ... I don't know why, but I forgot to post it, when it first came out.