Sleepless Nights For Evolutionary Biologists: A Greek Tragedy in The Making

By MIKE MAGEE In my Jesuit high school, we were offered only one science course – chemistry. I took it in my Senior year and did pretty well. In contrast, I took four years of Latin, and three years of Greek, as part of the school’s Greek Honors tract. Little did I know that Covid would create a pathologic convergence of sorts six decades later. Let’s review the Covid mutants: Alpha – A variant first detected in Kent, UK with 50% more transmissibility than the original and has spread widely. Beta – Originating in South Africa and the first to show a mutation that partially provided evasion of the human immune system, but may have also made it less infectious. Gamma – First detected in Brazil with rapid spread throughout South America. Delta – First seen in India with 50% more transmissibility than the Alpha variant, and now the dominant variant in America and around the world. Our ability to track and identify mutating viruses in real time is now extraordinary. Over 2 million Covid genomes have been cataloged and published. But describing the “anatomy” of the virus is miles away from understanding the functional significance of their codes, or the various biochemical instructions they may instruct. These deeper questions are in the realm of evolutionary biologists who are currently experiencing sleepless nights. Their recurrent nightmare? “What comes after Delta?” What they know ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: COVID-19 Health Policy evolutionary biology Mike Magee Source Type: blogs