Though not technically alive, viruses mutate and evolve similar to living cells, producing new variants all the time.
The majority of mutations are harmful to a virus or cell, limiting the spread of an error through a population. For example, mutations can tweak the building blocks of proteins encoded in the DNA or RNA, which alters a protein’s final shape and prevents it from doing its intended job, Duffy explains.
“It doesn’t make the nice little curlicue alpha-helices it’s supposed to,” she says of a common structure found in proteins. “It doesn’t make the nice folded sheets it's supposed to.”
Many other mutations are neutral, having no effect on how efficiently a virus or cell reproduces. Such mutations sometimes spread at random, when a virus carrying the mutation spreads to a population that hasn’t been exposed to any variants of the virus yet. “It’s the only kid on the block,” Anthony says.
However, a select few mutations prove useful to a virus or cell. For example, some changes could make a virus better at jumping from one host to the next, helping it outcompete other variants in the area. This was what happened with the SARS-CoV-2 variant B.1.1.7 that was first identified in the United Kingdombut has now spread to dozens of countries around the world. Scientists estimate the variant is roughly 50 percent more transmissible than past forms of the virus, giving it an evolutionary edge.
The pace of evolution
Mutations may happen randomly, but the rate at which they occur depends on the virus. The enzymes that copy DNA viruses, called DNA polymerases, can proofread and fix errors in the resulting strings of genetic letters, leaving few mutations in each generation of copies.
But RNA viruses, like SARS-CoV-2, are the evolutionary gamblers of the microscopic world. The RNA polymerase that copies the virus’s genes generally lacks proofreading skills, which makes RNA viruses prone to high mutation rates—up to a million times greater than the DNA-containing cells of their hosts.
Coronaviruses have a slightly lower mutation rate than many other RNA viruses because they can do some light genetic proofreading. “But it’s not enough that it prevents these mutations from accumulating,” says virologist Louis Mansky, the director for the Institute for Molecular Virology at the University of Minnesota. So as the novel coronavirus ran amok around the world, it was inevitable that a range of variants would arise.
The true mutation rate of a virus is difficult to measure though. “Most of those mutations are going to be lethal to the virus, and you’ll never see them in the actively growing, evolving virus population,” Mansky says.
Instead, genetic surveys of sick people can help determine what’s known as the fixation rate, which is a measure of how often accumulated mutations become “fixed” within a viral population. Unlike mutation rate, this is measured over a period of time. So the more a virus spreads, the more opportunities it has to replicate, the higher its fixation rate will be, and the more the virus will evolve, Duffy says.
For SARS-CoV-2, scientists estimate that one mutation becomes established in the population every 11 days or so. But this process may not always happen at a steady pace.
In December 2020, the variant B.1.1.7 caught scientists’ attention when its 23 mutations seemed to suddenly crop up as the virus rampaged through Kent, England. Some scientists speculate that a chronically ill patient provided more opportunities for replication and mutation, and the use of therapies such as convalescent plasma may have pressured the virus to evolve. Not every change was necessarily useful to the virus, Duffy notes, yet some mutations that emerged allowed the variant to spread rapidly.
The wide world of viruses
Mutations drive evolution, but they are not the only way that a virus can change over time. Some viruses, like influenza, have other ways to increase their diversity.
Influenza is made up of eight genetic segments, which can be rearranged—a process called reassortment—if multiple viruses infect a single cell to replicate at the same time. As the viral progeny are packaged into their protein capsules, the RNA segments from the parent viruses can be mixed and matched like viral Legos. This process can cause rapid shifts in the viral function. For example, reassortments of flu strains circulating in pigs, birds, and humans led to the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic.
Unlike influenza, however, coronaviruses possess no physical segmentation to undergo reassortment. Coronaviruses can experience some shifts in function through a process known as recombination, when segments of one viral genome are spliced onto another by the enzyme making the viral copy. But researchers are still working to determine how important this process is for SARS-CoV-2’s evolution.
Understanding these evolutionary dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 is vital to ensure that treatments and vaccines keep pace with the virus. For now, the available vaccines are effective in preventing severe disease from all the viral variants.
And the study of SARS-CoV-2’s evolution could help answer another looming question: Where did the virus come from? While the disease likely originated from bats, there are still missing chapters in the tale of SARS-CoV-2’s leap to human hosts. Filling in these blanks could help us learn how to protect ourselves in the future.
“As a society, globally, we don’t want this to happen again,” Mansky says.
Source: here
This National Geographic article explores the natural history of viruses to mutate as a normal part of their evolution. Global concern has been expressed about the appearance of new COVID-19 variants: the UK variant, South African Variant etc etc. The article explains that with such a large exposure to Covid worldwide, mutation is the norm. Vaccinations are still effective against the variants but with our understanding of how the virus mutates and evolves, so will our approach to modifying the vaccines we manufacture to be as efficacious. This is no different from, for example, influenza (albeit less deadly). Each year there is a Northern and Southern influenza vaccine produced to take account of new influenza mutations. It is a reality that Covid is now part of living on planet Earth and will not be eradicated for the foreseeable future if ever but the direction of coping with the viral pandemic is containment and adaptive immunisation. - Doctor Donald Greig
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