Deadly coronavirus comes in three variants, researchers find
- Types A, B and C are all derived from the pathogen first found in bats but have evolved in different ways, according to a report by British and German geneticists
- Findings show the virus has become well adapted to human transmission and mutates as it spreads, Chinese epidemiologist says
The discovery of how the variants were formed and then spread could help scientists to identify its source and explain why it is so contagious.
The researchers analysed the first 160 complete viral genomes sequenced from human patients between December 24 and March 4, then reconstructed the early evolutionary pathway of Covid-19 in humans through its mutations.
“There are too many rapid mutations to neatly trace a Covid-19 family tree. We used a mathematical network algorithm to visualise all the plausible trees simultaneously,” said Peter Forster, a geneticist at University of Cambridge and lead author of the study.
“These techniques are mostly known for mapping the movements of prehistoric human populations through DNA. We think this is one of the first times they have been used to trace the infection routes of a coronavirus like Covid-19,” he said in a report about the study on the university’s website.
The team labelled the three variants A, B and C.