How the new COVID-19 virus strain produced?
Viruses are simple entities lacking an energy-generating system with limited biosynthetic capabilities. Viruses can only be functional when inside the host cells.
Viruses formed from amino acids linked together to form a genetic material. There are two types of this genetics, DNA and RNA. All viruses are continuously (mutate) changing because of genetic selection. Viral changes may happen by subtle genetic changes through mutation or by recombination in which co-infecting viruses exchange genetic information creating a new novel virus. Co-infection means the two related viruses infect the same host in the same time to be able to change genetic material. This is what happened when the new SARS-COV-2 resulted in COVID-19 infection in December 2019.
Viral genetic mutations may occur by 3 ways: (1) by the effects of UV light or X-Ray on the virus genome; (2) by the behavior of the genetic bases; and (3) the enzymes replicate the nucleic acid fallibility. The SARS-COV-2 mutated many times however the last UK and South African strains are associated with faster spread-ability. No body knows what will happen next. We hope it will mutate to produce weak virus that can give immunity but the opposite can happen too.
The RNA viruses like COVID-19 virus have much higher mutation rates. The mutation will result in a new strain of the virus, which can be harmful, neutral or favorable. The shape of the virus may change because of the new mutation. The resultant new virus may be able to cause disease in immune hosts; hence, the vaccine, which works against the mother virus, may not work against the new one.
The favorable mutation results in a virus, which is weaker than the mother one in which case it may be used as a vaccine.
The same process of genetic changes may be used to create vaccine of a weakened virus that only able to produce antibody immune response.
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