Nature: New crown patients become virus testing ground, constantly mutated to adapt to antibody pressure

Recently, the international academic journal Nature published a research article on the University of Cambridge in the form of an "accelerated preview of articles".
article reported a special case of patient.
, a man in his 70s, was hospitalized in the summer of 2020 and tested positive for nucleic acid.
was treated with antibiotics, steroids, and redsiwe and recovery plasma within 101 days there were no effects and died on the 102nd day.
, however, the virus samples left by the patient allowed the researchers to observe that during a prolonged period of chronic infection, the new coronavirus developed multiple mutations in the patient's body.
virus turns the patient's body into a testing ground, "all-in-one" to try a variety of mutation combinations, trial and error, to find the most able to evade the immune system or make the virus more infectious mutations.
the researchers took virus samples from the patient at 23 different points in time and carried a D614G mutation on the prickly protein.
in the initial stage (within the initial 57 days), the patient received two courses of medication and the virus remained largely unchanged.
but on the 66th to 82nd days.
patients received two recovery plasma treatments, the virus mutated significantly.
of a mutant strain began to increase.
two mutations in the hedgehog protein are noteworthy: one is a 69-70 missing mutation, and the other is a D796H replacement mutation.
in the ensuing period, the dominant position of the strain was replaced.
re-emerged after resuming plasma therapy (day 95).
the researchers speculated that plasma therapy put production pressure on the virus, and that the two mutations provided a survival advantage for the virus.
, the researchers designed a series of in-body experiments.
the researchers synthesized 69-70 missing and D796H double mutant prickly proteins in the lab.
cell infection experiments have found that the double mutation makes the virus more resistant to antibodies to the recovery plasma, but the infectiousness remains the same.
, D796H has the potential to escape antibody meso-acting, and the absence of 69-70 may double the virus's infectious power.
, the new coronavirus uses these two mutations to make the virus more adaptable.
the findings are of widespread concern because the fast-spreading mutant strain B.1.1.7, found in the UK, also has a 69-70 missing mutation.
in Nature's news report that B.1.1.7 not only spreads faster than previous mutants, but also increases the risk of death among infected people by about 35 percent.
, the researchers also suggest that the phenomenon is only found in a single specific case and is in patients with low immunity.
are less likely to mutate in individuals with a normal immune system.
more research data are needed to confirm this.
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