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“We unexpectedly found at least two different variants of the virus in a sample. This indicates that a person infected with the coronavirus can be re-infected. It is likely that a double infection of this type can complicate the course of the disease, cause further damage to the body “, – Lukas Žemaitis, a doctoral student at LSMU, is investigating the genome of the virus.
Ingrida Olendraitė, another researcher on the project, a PhD student at Cambridge University and a bioinformatics scientist in the Department of Virology, says that a mutation in the virus is spreading rapidly in Europe.
“Already in the spring, attention was drawn to a variant of the virus that spreads in Europe and China and has an amino acid change: replacing amino acid D with amino acid G, a mutation in the virus that quickly began to dominate Europe. and then the United States, Canada and Australia, “he said.
According to the researcher, the first wave in the samples had 93 percent of the D amino acid variant samples, but a single G mutation was found in the second wave virus genome.
“After examining the genome of the second wave of the coronavirus, we saw that the situation had turned upside down. A 100% G mutation was detected in the second wave samples: this type of virus also became dominant in Lithuania. Without a doubt, this and several other mutations in the virus attracted the attention of our research team, so in the next stages of the research we will strive to better understand their clinical importance ”, says I. Olendraitė.
According to L. Žemaitis, the research carried out so far confirms that, in the absence of a vaccine, it is necessary to focus on controlling the spread of infection.
“The current type of virus in the second wave of COVID infection may be more adapted to spread. We also found that one person can be infected with several coronaviruses at the same time, and the example of the Marijampolė outbreak showed that even one case can be enough to infect dozens of people, ”he says.
These facts only confirm that today we must act with great responsibility, follow the recommendations and try to control the spread of the disease as soon as possible. There is still something to be done for researchers to better understand this unsolicited guest, so we must meet and cooperate, ”the researcher emphasized.
On September 15, a team of LSMU researchers published the first coronavirus genome sequence scanned in Lithuania in the international database. Since then, LSMU researchers have supplemented the database with sequences from more than 150 genomes from five Lithuanian cities.
“This is the largest study of coronavirus genomes in the Baltic States and neighboring countries,” says Professor Vaiva Lesauskaitė, Vice Chancellor for Science at LSMU.
To date, Latvia has published 135 genomes, Estonia 20, Belarus three, and Poland 117.
According to L. Žemaitis, genome research is necessary to develop a vaccine, drugs or diagnostic methods. In addition, according to the profile of the virus mutations, it is possible to accurately trace the ways of the virus spread to study the foci of the disease.
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