Scientists at New York University, the Genomic Center in New York and the Mount Sinai Medical Center have confirmed that a mutation characteristic of the British, South African and Brazilian strains of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus increases the infectiousness of the pathogen by up to eight times. The article was published in eLife magazine, briefly described in a press release on Phys.org.
The D614G mutation in the spike protein (S-protein), commonly referred to as “variant G,” probably emerged in early 2020 and is currently the most common and dominant form of SARS-CoV-2 virus in the United States. During the study, scientists injected the virus with D614G into the cells of the lungs, liver and colon of humans. For comparison, similar cultures were infected with the original virus type.
The D614G variant turned out to increase the transduction (transfer from cell to cell) or transmissibility of the virus up to eight times compared to the original virus. At the same time, SARS-CoV-2 has become more resistant to cleavage, which increases the ability of the variant to infect cells, since the more resistant variant is characterized by a higher proportion of intact spike protein per virus.
Scientists speculate that vaccines targeting the D614 mutation virus may protect against the new form, although more research is needed to understand how the multiple mutations might interact with each other and affect the immune response.