Mutation in SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Renders Virus up to Eight Times More Infectious
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Mutation in SARS-CoV-2 spike protein renders virus up to eight times more infectious:
A mutation in the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2-one of several genetic mutations in the concerning variants that have emerged in the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Brazil-makes the virus up to eight times more infectious in human cells than the initial virus that originated in China, according to research published in the journal eLife.
The study, led by researchers at New York University, the New York Genome Center, and Mount Sinai, corroborates findings that the D614G mutation makes SARS-CoV-2 more transmissible.
"In the months since we initially conducted this study, the importance of the D614G mutation has grown: the mutation has reached near universal prevalence and is included in all current variants of concern," said Neville Sanjana, assistant professor of biology at NYU, assistant professor of neuroscience and physiology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, and Core Faculty Member at the New York Genome Center. "Confirming that the mutation leads to more transmissibility may help explain, in part, why the virus has spread so rapidly over the past year."
[The researchers] found that the D614G variant increased transduction, or transmissibility, of the virus up to eight-fold as compared to the original virus. The researchers also found that the spike protein mutation made the virus more resistant to being cleaved or split by other proteins. This provides a possible mechanism for the variant's increased ability to infect cells, as the hardier variant resulted in a greater proportion of intact spike protein per virus.
"With our experimental setup we are able to quickly and specifically assess the contribution of G614 and other mutations to the increased spread of SARS-CoV-2," said Tristan Jordan, a postdoctoral scholar in the tenOever Lab at Mount Sinai and co-first author of the study.
Journal Reference:
Zharko Daniloski, Tristan X Jordan, Juliana K Ilmain, et al. The Spike D614G mutation increases SARS-CoV-2 infection of multiple human cell types, (DOI: 10.7554/eLife.65365)
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