Omicron mutations could provide clues to their origin

The unusually high number of omicron variant mutations in the gene that helps spread the coronavirus could provide clues as to how it developed, according to a computational analysis of the variant.

The coexistence of mutations in the so-called S gene that would normally inhibit the virus’s ability to thrive suggests that such mutations are making the variant more efficient at spreading, according to a blog post by researchers led by Darren Martin, Senior Lecturer at the Institute. of Infectious Diseases and Molecular Medicine at the University of Cape Town.

“While individually mutations might diminish the fitness of any genome in which they occur, collectively they might compensate for the deficits of others to produce a fitter virus genotype.”The researchers wrote on the blog.

Scientists have been quick to answer questions raised by the emergence of the omicron variant – which was first sequenced in Botswana and South Africa last month – such as how it developed, how contagious it is, and the severity of the disease. disease caused by the variant compared to its predecessors, such as delta.

The gen S allows the formation of the spike protein of the virus, which allows it to enter human cells. The mutations show that “there could be cooperation between different parts of the virus“Martin said in an interview.

According to the researchers, some of the hypotheses about its development are: that the variant arose from an area where genomic surveillance is low or people have little access to medical care; that the variant may have developed in an immunosuppressed person, who would have harbored the virus for a prolonged period, allowing it to mutate; or that the virus has returned to an animal population, mutated, and then reinfected humans.

World Health Organization (WHO) and global health experts have repeatedly warned that Africa’s lack of access to vaccines and the inability of some nations to administer them could lead to new mutations of the coronavirus.

Only 7% of the continent’s 1.2 billion population have completed their vaccination schedule, compared to approximately 69% in the UK. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, a nation of 100 million people, has vaccinated only 0.1% of its population, while Eritrea has not yet started the process.

In southern Africa, the high rate of infections by VIH translates into millions of immunosuppressed people.

“We can only distinguish between these hypotheses with more data“Said the researchers. “A discovery of one or more SARS-CoV-2 lineages closely related to the omicron variant would support the hypothesis of a surveillance failure.”.

But the discovery of equally divergent variants in long-term human infections or in other animal species would support the other hypotheses, they noted.