The Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde da Universidade do Porto (i3S) in partnership with the Instituto de Saúde Pública da Universidade do Porto (ISPUP) and clinicians at the Centro Hospitalar Universitário de São João are going to study the evolution of the new coronavirus, within the scope of a project developed, through the financing line of the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) ‘RESEARCH 4 COVID-19’.
The project, led by i3S, and in which ISPUP is one of the partners, aims to study the evolution of SARS-CoV-2, namely chains of transmission and mutations. To this end, the team will sequence the genome of the virus based on samples from 240 infected patients from the Northern region.
“As the North started out as the first infected region in the country, in the beginning it was easy to follow the chains of transmission. Then the transmission began to be communal and it became impossible”, explains Verónica Fernandes, researcher at i3S that leads the project. The path now, adds, is “to put together the molecular information from the virus genome with epidemiological and clinical data from the infected to understand how it was transmitted over time, among the various people, as well as the different cycles of the chain and how many mutations it has accumulated”.
At the same time, the team will also compare the data with genomes from around the world that will become available. This junction of data will allow “to understand which strain of the virus is transmitting in the northern region of the country, what might be important in a future vaccine. The team of researchers will also study the “virus mutation rate”, as explains Verónica Fernandes. “If the mutation is very fast evolving a vaccine is needed every year, such as the one of seasonal influenza, if it is a slower mutation, the vaccine will be, for example, every 10 years, such as the one of tetanus.”
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