Millions of coronavirus mutations offer a new insight into evolution

Using the publicly available SARS-CoV-2 sequence, researchers have uncovered genetic sites where the coronavirus must be in certain states to survive and can tolerate change.

To Michael Le Paige

Genome sequencing of millions of individual SARS-CoV-2 viruses has enabled researchers to study evolution in ways never before possible. The global proliferation of coronaviruses has a sufficient amount of sequence data to track all possible mutations affecting a single letter of its RNA and their effects on pathogen fitness. It means that there is

This finding could help develop drugs that target portions of viral proteins that cannot be easily mutated to evade existing viruses…