came to be.
They found that 13 of those mutations were rarely, if ever, found in other coronaviruses, suggesting they should have been harmful to Omicron. Over most of 2020, scientists found that different lineages of the coronavirus around the world gradually picked up a handful of mutations. The evolutionary process was slow and steady until the end of the year.In December 2020, British researchers were jolted to discover a new variant in England carrying 23 mutations not found in the original coronavirus isolated in Wuhan, China, a year before.
But the scientists found a different pattern when they looked at the"spike" protein that studs Omicron's surface and allows it to latch on to cells. But if it is rare or missing altogether, that is typically a sign that it is harmful to the virus, preventing it from multiplying."Anything that sustains a change at those sites is probably going to be defective and isn't going to survive for very long and will die out."CDC says Omicron now accounts for 95% of US Covid-19 cases
As a result, Omicron is good at infecting even people who have antibodies from vaccinations or a previous Covid-19 infection. But Omicron's fusion domain usually does something different. Rather than merging into the cell membrane, the whole virus gets swallowed up in a kind of cellular sinkhole, which pinches off to form a bubble inside the cell.This new pathway to infection may help to explain why Omicron is less severe than Delta.
Omicron may have turned a batch of 13 bad mutations to its advantage by evolving under unusual conditions.One possibility is that it arose after a sustained period inside the body of a person with an especially weak immune system, such as an HIV patient. People with chronic Covid-19 infections can become evolutionary laboratories, hosting many generations of coronaviruses.
Because an immunocompromised host does not produce a lot of antibodies, many viruses are left to propagate. And new mutant viruses that resist the antibodies can multiply.
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