This Coronavirus Continues Mutating

The new SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is changing, but much more slowly as it spreads, reported Nature on September 8, 2020. But one mutation stands out to various researchers. It was in the gene encoding the spike protein, which helps virus particles to penetrate cells.

At the 614th amino-acid position of the spike protein, the amino acid aspartate (D, in biochemical shorthand) was regularly being replaced by glycine (G) because of a copying fault that altered a single nucleotide in the virus’s 29,903-letter RNA code. Virologists were calling it the D614G mutation.

In the August issue of Cell, Korber et al. found that a SARS-CoV-2 variant in the spike protein D614G rapidly became dominant around the world. Although clinical and in vitro data suggest that D614G changes the virus phenotype, the impact of the mutation on transmission, disease, and vaccine and therapeutic development are largely unknown.

In laboratory tests, “all of us agree that D to G is making the particles more infectious”, stated Jeremy Luban, a virologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. In May 2020, the Massachusetts Consortium on Pathogen Readiness, a multi-institutional initiative convened by Harvard Medical School to combat the global COVID-19 pandemic.