UCBM together with a group of American scientists he discovers what made the virus different in the world
14 April 2020 - Scientists fromInstitute of Human Virology (IHV) of the University of Maryland led by Robert C. Gallo and Davide cella together with Massimo Ciccozzi e Silvia Angeletti dell 'Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma and in collaboration with Area Science Park of Trieste led by Rudy Ippodrino and Bruna Marini have identified a new mutation of the SARS-Cov-2 virus, related to viral strains present in European and North American patients. In particular, the study found that the mutation is very frequent in the strains analyzed in Europe and North America, while it is absent in the Asian strains.
The data was obtained through the analysis of over 200 complete genomic sequences present in the databases of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) and the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID) from December 2019 to March 2020. With this discovery it was possible to differentiate the Asian strain of SARS-Cov-2 from that European and North American.
According to the study, published in the Journal of Translation Medicine, therefore it would be possible coexistence of different viral strains, each with a different mutation strategy, occurred within the dependent RNA polymerase, an enzyme functional to virus replication.
"This is an important result in the direction of a greater knowledge of the behavior of the virus and, in perspective, for the development of a specific vaccine and the most appropriate therapies" stressed Massimo Ciccozzi, molecular epidemiologist and director of the Medical Statistics and Molecular Epidemiology Unit of theUniversità Campus Bio-Medico di Roma.
