Int J Biol Sci 2021; 17(1):97-106. doi:10.7150/ijbs.47827 This issue Cite
Review
1. Lab of Chemical Biology and Molecular Drug Design, College of Pharmaceutical Science, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, 310014, China.
2. Lab of Molecular Immunology, Virus Inspection Department, Zhejiang Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Hangzhou, 310051, China.
3. Department of Biochemistry & Food Sciences, University of Kordofan, El-Obeid, 51111, Sudan.
4. Center for Medical Innovation, Nagasaki University, 1-7-1 Sakamoto, Nagasaki 852-8588, Japan.
The outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The pandemic apparently started in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, and has since affected many countries worldwide, turning into a major global threat. Chinese researchers reported that SARS-CoV-2 could be classified into two major variants. They suggest that investigating the variations and characteristics of these variants might help assess risks and develop better treatment and prevention strategies. The two variants were named L-type and S-type, in which L-type was prevailed in an initial outbreak in Wuhan, Central China's Hubei Province, and S-type was phylogenetically older than L-type and less prevalent at an early stage, but with a later increase in frequency in Wuhan. There were 149 mutations in 103 sequenced SARS-CoV-2 genomes, 83 of which were nonsynonymous, leading to alteration in the amino acid sequence of proteins. Much effort is currently being devoted to elucidate whether or not these mutations affect viral transmissibility and virulence. In this review, we summarize the mutations in SARS-CoV-2 during the early phase of virus evolution and discuss the significance of the gene alterations in infections.
Keywords: COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, mutations, genomes, bioinformatics