What does the new coronavirus mutation mean? Virus mutations are common, and "mass changes" have not yet arrived.

Recently, whether the new coronavirus mutates has raised concerns.
the public on what kind of mutation has occurred, whether the virus mutation affects its pathogenicity and transmission and other issues, Science and Technology Daily reporterwith with these questions consulted a number of genomics and virology scholars. What does
new coronavirus mutation mean? Virus mutation is common, "mass change" has not yet arrived" virus mutation is very common, each strain of the virus sequence is more or less different.
" Li Kefeng, an associate professor at the University of California, San Diego Medical Center, said the differences between the strains of the virus are similar to "thousands of people."
, the paper "On the Origin and Continuous Evolution of SARS-CoV-2" in the genome of more than 100 new coronavirus strains of the genome sequence comparison found that the virus in the genome of a protein coding site mutation formed two "groups", known in the media as "subtype." "At the moment, the difference caused by this degree of variation is not enough to be called 'subtype', and it is appropriate to call branching (clade),"
.
" virus experts said, "subtype" has a unique meaning, different virus definitions are not the same, not as long as there are one or two mutations can be divided into "subtypes."
experts said that the virus has not long ago, it is not possible to change much, according to the existing understanding of the virus, the rate of variation of the virus is about 1 000 bases per year in the change of 1 base, only changes in the key site can lead to prominent variation.
in response to the question that the new coronavirus mutation will not affect vaccine research and development, Zhou Qi, deputy secretary-general of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that at present, the virus mutation has not affected drug development, antibody preparation and vaccine preparation.
we need more cases and more in-depth research in the process of virus mutation.
at present, researchers are actively observing the degree of virus variation, layout of scientific research projects.
sequence sharing, to achieve real big data mining of the current gene sequence comparison research sample size is mostly about 100 cases. Li Kefeng,
, said that the study sample size is too small, does not explain when the mutation and whether it mutated in Wuhan.
in addition, for the coronavirus sample data mining, should also pay attention to representative, for example, the paper selected data, Wuhan samples are mostly around New Year's Day, before the end of January after the sample is concentrated abroad, there are a small number of mid-January Sample data in Guangdong, Yunnan, scattered data is difficult to tell the virus breeding, evolution, transmission of the "story."
" a serious lack of data, which is likely to result in one-sided analysis.
" a national scientific data center head said, according to the National Biological Information Center (National Genomics Science Data Center) established by the 2019 New Crown Virus Information Library released statistics, the current global open new crown virus sequences have 283, of which only 200 genome-wide sequences.
this equates to a "glass of water" for the need for data mining.
understand the "habit" of viruses, need to be associated with clinical data research in the above paper mentioned that the new coronavirus can be divided into S-type and L-type, the former is more aggressive, the latter is more moderate. "At present, the viral habit is not possible to judge individually according to the genetic sequence of the virus, " said Li Kefeng,
.
scientists are trying to explore the degree to which the virus's protein binds to the host receptor as a basis for judging the spread of the virus, but its pathogenicity has not yet been found.
"a virus is "murderous", is it a "temper", how to infer? "This paper uses sequence analysis software to sort the differences in the genes of the new coronavirus, and then to obtain the correlation between each genotype and the clinical performance of the patient, i think this can only be a speculative conclusion.
" Dong Yafeng, a professor at the University of Kansas School of Medicine, believes that it is only practical to analyze the clinical data of patients after the virus variant.
" finding genetic mutations is a very important task, but it is difficult.
find fragments of the mutation in the genes of tens of thousands of patients, the equivalent of looking for a needle in a haystack.
we can't, and there's no need to sequence each patient's genes, to find the genetic mutation.
to speed up the search for mutated genes by selecting specific patients, patients with different epidemiological histories, or different regions.
" Dong Yafeng explained, for example, some special patients, its nucleic acid test has been negative, but CT imaging and other clinical data tend to be positive;
the search for a mutation in the new coronavirus not only indicates the depth of human understanding of the new coronavirus, but also has a lot of practical significance.
Dong Yafeng, for example, the test kit negative may be due to certain gene fragments of specific region mutations, so that can not detect.
by discovering genetic variation, we can also design a better nucleic acid testing kit, and for example, by statistical analysis of the clinical data of patients with mutated and non-mutated genes, the genetic variation can be associated with the development of the disease, the later, and so on, and then guide more effective precision treatment.
"different variants of the virus may have completely different clinical symptoms, if the law can be found will be clinically instructive."
" Dong Yafeng stressed that scientific research is not only different in discovery, but also pay attention to clinical application.
Source: Science Daily.