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    N440K in Gujarat: The new super infective virus strain on the block

    Synopsis

    Researchers found that Maharashtra reported the highest number of samples, 91, consisting of the N440K mutant of the 772 Covid virus genes sequenced. Telangana reported 81 samples with the variant in the 773 samples sequenced. Karnataka reported 54 in the 339 samples sequenced.

    1Agencies
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    (This story originally appeared in on Jun 05, 2021)
    An especially infective Covid variant known as N440K has a mutation in its spike protein and had lingered for quite a while in the southern states along with the now dominant double mutant B.1.617. It is B.1.617 that has wreaked havoc across the country during the second wave. But few know that the N440K variant was also seen in Gujarat in at least nine Covid samples of the 293 tested between January and April 24 this year.

    This fact was revealed in a research paper published recently by the Academy for Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), headquartered on the CSIR campus in Ghaziabad.

    “The N440K variant produces ten times higher infectious viral titers than a prevalent A2a strain,” says the paper. The authors of the paper are Dixit Tandel, Divya Gupta, and Krishnan Harinivas Harshan of AcSIR; and Vishal Sah, of the infectious disease department at Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad. Sah had explained in a tweet, “We did not compare the infective titer of N440K with the UK or the double mutant B.1.617 in this study.”

    He had gone on to say: “We compared it with its parent strain which did not have mutation and with another strain which is now almost lost among the population.”

    2021-06-04


    The AcSIR researchers had analyzed 1,555 genome sequencing entries on GISAID, a worldwide Covid information collaboration platform. The Indian SARS-CoV-2 Consortium on Genomics (INSACOG), a grouping of 10 national laboratories under the Union ministry of health, provides information to the platform.

    The researchers found that Maharashtra reported the highest number of samples, 91, consisting of the N440K mutant of the 772 Covid virus genes sequenced. Telangana reported 81 samples with the variant in the 773 samples sequenced. Karnataka reported 54 in the 339 samples sequenced.

    The AcSIR study says that Karnataka, Maharashtra, Telangana, and Chhattisgarh together contribute to about 50% of the samples that showed the presence of the N440K spread in India. “Our data suggests that the proportion of N440K variant has been increasing gradually and suggesting its improved replicative fitness or increased infectivity,” the paper says.

    “Our studies unambiguously demonstrate that the N440K variant prototype has capacity to generate significantly higher titers of infectious virus in shorter duration and suggest that this feature could promote its faster spread among certain populations.”

    The paper was published on bioRxiv (pronounced “bio-archive”) which is an open-access preprint repository of research papers.



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    ( Originally published on Jun 05, 2021 )
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