Pick up a newspaper, look at the internet or listen to radio or TV and you\u2019ll discover research on the coronavirus from Temple\u2019s Institute of Genomics and Evolutionary Medicine (IGEM) in the news\u2014on CNN, SciTech Daily, News Medical, the Economist and more. IGEM, led by Director Sudhir Kumar, Laura H. Carnell Professor of Biology, has been working on developing methods to study evolution among live organisms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, they have been applying these methods to determine if the coronavirus observed in Wuhan, China, at the end of December 2019, was the progenitor of all worldwide coronavirus infections, or if it was only one particular strain of a large family of strains. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In their article published in August 2021 entitled \u201cAn Evolutionary Portrait of the Progenitor SARS-CoV-2 and its Dominant Offshoots in COVID-19 Pandemic<\/a>,\u201d they answered this question by tracing back the progenitor of the coronavirus. The study shows the progenitor was three steps older than the strain first found in Wuhan\u2014making it the great grandfather of that strain. The research also pointed to evidence that the progenitor likely existed in October 2019, a few months before the Wuhan outbreak. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The virus mutation that manifested in Wuhan was infectious, highly transmissible and deadly to humans. Although the research doesn\u2019t make it clear that the Wuhan virus was the source of original infection in people, humanity has a long history of variant pathogens that jumped from other species and adapted to infect humans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMutations happen all the time, viruses multiply creating new strains and variants,\u201d said Kumar. \u201cThen, when people infect other people, they transmit their variant type to others.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Because coronavirus mutations are quite fast and display large genetic diversity, the question is which particular mutation made humans hospitable to the virus and gave it its high rate of transmissibility. A variety of strains are found in different parts of each country around the world, but they haven\u2019t all precipitated a super-spreader event, so some mutations are more impactful than others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Evolutionary analyses, such as those conducted by IGEM, indicate the probable sequence of mutations. Knowing which particular mutations are likely to be the most successful can help us predict and be prepared for what might happen next. An evolutionary study published by Biology Professor Sergei Pond, an IGEM researcher, has shown that the next wave of coronavirus adaptations pose threats to humanity (\u201cThe emergence and ongoing convergent evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 N501Y lineages<\/a>\u201d). <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf you don’t do evolutionary analysis, all you can do is look at the data on the screen. It’s data, but no knowledge.\u201d <\/p>\u2014Sudhir Kumar, Laura H. Carnell Professor of Biology<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n IGEM’s ongoing research highlights the importance of tracing back the history of a particular disease in order to understand its spread to humans. \u201cIf you don’t do evolutionary analysis, all you can do is look at the data on the screen,\u201d Kumar said. \u201cIt’s data, but no knowledge.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n By Renata Buscher Kaminski, International Affairs Communications Intern Pick up a newspaper, look at the internet or listen to radio or TV and you\u2019ll discover research on the coronavirus from Temple\u2019s Institute of…<\/p>\n
Photo by Joseph V. Labolito<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"