There are now about 30 genomes sequenced for monkeypox virus, which is currently causing the first major outbreak of the disease outside Africa. They also make the sudden spread of a long-rare pathogen mystifying. On the other hand, genetic data show that the virus is closely related to the West African strain that was previously recorded in many countries outside the continent. On the other hand, the genome contains a very large number of mutations – Nobody knows what that means.
In total, there are 47 places in the genome The current virus differs from the monkeypox virus that emerged in Singapore, Israel, Nigeria and the United Kingdom after 2017 and whose genome was sequenced in 2018. The genome of poxviruses is very stable, for example, the original human pox virus changes only in one or two places in the the year. A similar rate is assumed for monkeypox. This means monkeypox has developed about five to ten times faster than normal.
Experts have found this unusual set of mutations in all viruses in the outbreak that have been sequenced so far. So it is likely that all infections will return to one case, A working group led by João Paulo Gomes of the Portuguese National Institute of Health writes in a preliminary publication on genome data. However, the data does not reveal whether these mutations make the virus fitter and thus cause a global outbreak.
Mysterious smallpox genome
It is reasonable to believe that – similar to the new variants of Sars-CoV-2 – this is a new type of monkeypox that spreads faster and easier. However, it is difficult to assess whether this is the case based on the mutations themselves. At around 200,000 base pairs, the monkeypox genome is much larger and more complex than the genome of SARS-CoV-2 or influenza, for example.
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