Is the current "Deltakron" strain in Cyprus a technical error?

Recently, Leondios Kostrikis, professor of biological sciences at the University of Cyprus and head of the Laboratory of Biotechnology and Molecular Virology, said that a new type of new coronavirus strain combining delta strains and Omilkejun strains has been found in Cyprus.

After the news came out, some scientists speculated that the discovery was caused by laboratory contamination. On January 9, local time, Coastricks responded that what he found showed that "the ancestral strain was mutated by an evolutionary pressure, rather than the result of a single recombination event."

However, according to US media reports, Cyprus Health Minister Michael Hadjipantela said on January 9 that the new strain was not worrying. More details will be announced at this week's press conference.

The scientist: Not a technical error

On Jan. 7, Coasterikis said they had found genetic signatures similar to the Amicoren strain in the genome of the Delta strain. He considered the strain to be a combination of the Delta strain and the Omilton strain and named it the deltacron strain.

According to local media reports in Cyprus, the Delta Kerong strain was found in 25 samples collected in Cyprus, of which 11 were from hospitalized patients and 14 from the general public. The sequence of 25 cases was sent to the Global Shared Influenza Data Initiative (GISAID) to track changes in the coronavirus on 7 January.

As for the "laboratory contamination" hypothesis, Coasterikis countered that the Delta Kerong strain had a higher infection rate among patients hospitalized for COVID-19 infection compared to non-hospitalized patients. What's more, the samples were processed in multiple sequencing procedures in more than one country or region. He said more than one sequence from Israel stored in a global database exhibited the genetic characteristics of the Deltakjong strain.

"These findings refute the unproven claim that Delta Croon was the result of a technical error," Costrickys said. He believes it is too early to judge the possible effects of the strain. "We will see in the future whether this strain is more pathological or more contagious, or whether it will outperform Delta and Omikeron," he said. But he believes that the strain will eventually be replaced by the highly contagious Olmikeron strain.

Restructuring is common in the coronavirus

In December 2021, Paul Burton, chief medical officer of Moderna, told the House of Commons that the coexistence of delta and Omilon strains increased the chances of new variants because they could exchange genes, according to British media reports. According to US media reports, this restructuring is common in the new crown virus. Some studies have suggested that recombination may cause the virus to change in a "dangerous way," but it could also help researchers develop drugs to treat the virus.

Nick Loman, a professor of microbial genomics who studies coronaviruses at the University of Birmingham in England, said that when multiple variants of a pathogen are transmitted, a recombinant form of the virus occurs. While delta and Omicron's recombinant form isn't entirely surprising, he said, the Cyprus discovery is more likely to be a "technical artifact" that emerged during the sequencing of the viral genome.

Tom Peacock, a virologist in the Infectious Diseases Department at Imperial College London, said several Cypriot media outlets of deltakron strains appeared to be "fairly obvious contamination" because "they have no clustering on the evolutionary tree and have ARTIC primer sequencing amplicons for the entire Omilkeron strain on the delta strain architecture." ”

Because amplicon 72 in the Delta strain has poor pick-up capacity, "any contamination, even insignificant, will be amplified preferentially, and you end up with a mixed sequence," Picock said.