Uncovering the Dangers and Potential Treatments of COVID-19 Variants.

Russian researchers from the National Research University Higher School of Economics have discovered that the emergence of new and dangerous Covid-19 variants, such as Alpha, Delta, and Omicron, is dependent on concordant substitutions occurring at multiple sites of the SARS-CoV-2 genome. The team analysed over three million genome sequences of different strains of SARS-CoV-2 and identified particular sites on the surface protein of the coronavirus where amino acid substitutions occurred, differentiating the variants from both the original Wuhan strain and from one another. The statistical method employed by the study's authors is versatile and can be utilised to investigate the evolution of numerous other pathogens.