According to the Cyprus Post, on January 8, local time, Cypriot scientists announced the discovery of a new variant strain of the new coronavirus in the local community, which is a recombinant of Delta and Aumequeron.
Subsequently, the Minister of Health of the Republic of Cyprus, Michaelis Hadjipantelas, said: "We are proud of this discovery by our national scientists. ”
Dr Leontios Kostrikis, member of the National Scientific Advisory Committee on COVID-19 in Cyprus and director of the Laboratory of Biotechnology and Molecular Virology at the University of Cyprus, said that the new variant found in the local community was a recombinant of Delta and Omilon, which had the same genetic background as some of the mutations of the two variants: the gene sequence was closer to Delta, but had a large number of variants specific to Omiqueron. Therefore, they named it "Deltacron".
Leontios Kostrikis
In an interview with local media, Kostrikis explained: "We found a large number of mutations that were previously only found in the Case of Omikejong, which is different from other variants because it has 30 mutations. Of these samples taken in Cyprus we found 10 of these mutations. ”
Currently, the Delta Kerong variant has been found in a total of 25 samples in Cyprus, 11 of which are hospitalized patients with COVID-19.
Kostrikis said the higher mutation rate in hospitalized patients could mean that "Delta Kerong" leads to a higher risk of hospitalization.
He added: "It is very likely that this particular variant strain has not yet been discovered in other parts of the world, so our findings may be of global interest." The sequence of these 25 samples we have uploaded to the GISAID database will allow the global scientific community to study them. ”
Kostrikis said it's too early to predict whether Delta Kerong will overwhelm Delta and Omi kerong.
On January 9, local time, the Cyprus Post updated the report, and Thomas Peacock, a virologist at the new crown response expert group of Imperial College London in the United Kingdom, said that the "Delta Croon" variant strain found by Cypriot researchers is likely to be because the sequence was contaminated.
Peacock gave a technical explanation for the above problem in a tweet. "True recombinants often don't appear until weeks or even months after the two viruses coexist in large numbers; and we found that Omiljung was only a few weeks old, and I really doubt that there will be an epidemic recombinant...", he said.
He noted that the "Delta Kerong" sequence in Cyprus reported by several major media appears to be clearly contaminated.
Peacock said there have been many reports that the Omikeron sequence carries delta-like mutations such as P681R or L452R. Although some of them may be true, the vast majority are most likely contaminated or co-infected.
"So far, there is no clear indication that something nasty is happening." He added.
"To determine that a recombinant strain like 'Delta Kerong' is real, multiple sequencing laboratories need to independently discover the same recombination or homoplasm, ideally you should also look at the original sequence file and show that there are no mixed bases," Peacock said. ”
Peacock believes there are two reasons for this to happen. One is that there are a large number of Delta and Omikeron coexisting in the same area; the other is that some old sequencing primers are not efficient in extracting the Omikeron components, so low-level contaminated Delta strains are selectively collected.
Peacock concludes: "Finally, it's worth adding that we already know a lot about what makes the Delta mutation more contagious, and That's already in place, but it's unclear what Amikeron can get out of Delta." ”
In addition, Greek virologist Dr. Gkikas Magiorkinis and members of the Greek scientific team also expressed their views, posting on Facebook: "Regarding the recent hearing of 'Deltakron' in Cyprus, our first independent analysis shows that this is a technical error in the process of reading the genome in the laboratory. ”
Source: China Biotechnology Network