Sars-CoV-2 Covid-19 Part 3, Spike Protein Mutation
Mutation is random; natural selection is the very opposite of random ~ Richard Dawkins Mutations merely furnish random raw material for evolution, and rarely, if ever determine the course of the process. ~ Sewall Wright A specific mutation in the Sars-CoV-2 genome has been in the news lately. This preprint by Korber et al. describes a mutation, D614G, in the Sars-CoV-2 spike protein. The D614G notation describes a change from the reference sequence Aspartic Acid base to a Glycine at position 614 in the protein amino sequence. This is a non-synonymous substitution caused by a single nucleotide change from an A to a G at position 23,403 in the genome. The position refers to the location in the reference sequence, NC_045512 . The article makes some strong claims, including that this is a new strain and that the mutation make the virus more transmissible and perhaps more deadly. The paper was subject to some debate on scientific twitter and blogs, with a fair amount of push ba...