“Viral evolution remains largely unpredictable”

“Viral evolution remains largely unpredictable”

Two years ago, France experienced its first imprisonment after the Covid-19 pandemic. Two more followed and new variants emerged. and today, “ Where is the evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus , Samuel Elizon, an expert in the modeling and development of infectious diseases at CNRS, takes stock of the issue.

It begins with an important reminder: Our perception of the pandemic is very easily influenced by its trends in France: the picture becomes very dark when it increases, everything seems rosy when it decreases. This reaction also exists among researchers, but beware. Internationally, we can clearly see that the situation is not synchronous, especially a wave of the Omicron variant that is causing a lot of deaths in Southeast Asia. ,

, Omicron marks a pause to the point that one wonders whether we are not experiencing an evolutionary branch, that is, the transition from one species to two different species.The researcher adds.

He ends with a point on mutation:

, Each time someone is infected, billions of new viral particles are generated and increased, following copycat errors, the risk of random mutants emerging.

This effect is stronger when a person is infected from several different lines due to recombination: if two viruses are present in the same cell, exchange of entire parts of the genome can occur.

Again, mutations and recombination are very likely to be harmful to the virus, but some can be problematic for us. And with huge population sizes, the impossible can happen again and again., ,

To know more about the subject, we can only recommend you to read this CNRS In-House Interview.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *