Vijayalakshmidevi
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2) is a highly pathogenic virus that has caused the global COVID‑19 pandemic. Finding the evolutionary changes of the COVID-19 virus is crucial in the current pandemic situation through the right intervention strategies. To study the genetic or protein changes in the virus through many perspectives using regular clinical trials methods can be more tedious as the viral mutant variants keep increasing.
Since the first cases were detected, the COVID-19 virus has spread to every country in the world and has been linked to the deaths of more than 404,000 people of over 7 million confirmed cases (WHO,2020). Studies to check the evolution and spread of the virus need to be corroborated with patients’ clinical data and travel history for substantiated confirmations. Since COVID 19 pandemic begins, there is a high need to find vaccines or antiviral drugs against the mutant forms of COVID 19. To study the mutation or protein secondary changes in huge trials will delay the process. SARS-CoV-2 is an RNA virus having a length of 29,903 nucleotides. There are about 6324 viral genome sequences found and mutational studies in these genomes need to be addressed to trace the evolution and worldwide spread of the virus. The changes in viral protein secondary structure help to detect mutations that have the potential to change the virus characteristics. The mutation D614G in protein S is unlikely to change either protein secondary structure or relative solvent accessibility was identified in computational studies. Studies show that coding genes such as E, M, ORF6, ORF7a, ORF7b, and ORF10 are most stable, potentially suitable to be targeted for vaccine and drug development. Biological investigations of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 are important to understand the virus and help to propose the right drugs or vaccines to their mutant variants.