What happens if COVID-19 mutates?
Hello everyone hope you're all safe and healthy at home. Well, today I wanted to talk about SCIENCE for the current situation. Yes, the COVID-19, I know it's been long and that we have started becoming a little careless. Nothing is better than now, so let me enlighten you about why the spread should stop or slow down. It is an apparent reason on the bases of the economic and the political context that the people of the country matter with their routine lifestyles. But, what people don't know much about is the growth or the evolutionary pathway of a viruses lifestyle.
When the virus spreads from one body to another, it is adapting and changing every single time it replicates and multiplies with the influence of the human body's environment. Don't be surprised this is common within all species of life as well, we are all adapting to our surrounding to be the survival of the best fit. The primary alarming signal here is the adaptation process. In sciences, adaptation is the physical change happening over time, this fearful process with the virus is referred to mutation. You heard it right its the same mutation process causing cancers as well. So what exactly happens with the virus? How does it mutate? And why does it implicate us? Is what we are going to see.
In biology, (the study of living organisms) the basic or simplest form of life is the cells. These cells are the tiny life units creating a functional human. Most of us would be very familiar with the term DNA, the fancy jargon of biology. But what is this DNA? How is it related to cell and mutation is what is going to be discussed.
As we know cells are the basic unit of life, they are also a mechanic system requiring instructions known as the DNA. Just like computers these instructions are in the form of codes and need an intermediate application (like proteins) to process and perform a function. This is done by the specific proteins within the body. So how are they related? Through genes. The DNA is a long double strand of molecules, contain genes in the form of a compressed coiled structure called the chromosomes. These genes have codes or base pairs giving instructions for the cell to make protein and perform a respective function. This hierarchy can be seen in the figure below, starting from the cell with chromosomes to the smallest unit of base-pairs.
(source: DNA, Genes and Chromosomes — University of Leicester)
Now consider the aspect of mutation. It is a change in the DNA molecule, so we should know what a DNA molecule is and how it is mutated. As we saw with the genes, the base pairs make up the DNA, this is the unit where the mutation occurs. The 4 base pair making up the DNA is Adenine (A), Thymine (T), Guanine (G), Cytosine (C). These structures are again further simplified with the binding interactions, that is A always binds with T and G with C.
So when a mutation is occurring these codes mismatch, this is seen in the figure below. The two complementary strands are shown with a small change in the base pair changing the amino acid sequence making up the protein. So when the protein is altered, the functioning will also change, and thereby having either a positive or a negative implication on the body.
(Source : Substitution (DNA Mutation),Expii)
This is the basic of mutation. It is mostly incited due to external factors like radiation. Still, in viruses, the cause of the mutation is of high probability as they replication often (that is the copying of the DNA). During this process, there is a possibility of errors changing the base pair sequence. As a virus is also considered as living within a living organism, it also replicates to spread. So if the number of spread is more, the chances of mutation are also more and thus changing the viruses properties. But lucky till now all the mutations caused with COVID-19 virus have not changed the amino acid sequence. The mutation in COVID-19 till now has only resulted in influencing the process of replication by either fastening or slowing the copying process. This is because each of the base pair varies in time with the process of copying. The reason for the amino acid to not change even after a mutation is because there is only 20 basic amino acid having a various combination of base-pair coding. These codes come in triplets known as codons. This is seen in the figure below.
(source: DNA, Genes and Chromosomes — University of Leicester)
This way if the mutation proceeds even further, it may cause a change in amino acid sequence. Then the vaccine we have been waiting for could become inefficient as it is made currently to counter only the amino acids making up the spike protein on the surface of the virus. So before it gets worse, let's come together to put a stop to this deadly spread killing thousands daily. STAY HOME, STAY SAFE!!!
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