3 ms·
> Coronaviruses are easy to vaccinate against. They mutate very slowly. Wait can you expand on that? I thought RNA viruses mutate very quickly?
by aledalgrande 7y ago
> Coronaviruses are easy to vaccinate against. They mutate very slowly.
Wait can you expand on that? I thought RNA viruses mutate very quickly?
- totony 7y agoFrom what I understand, covid is a relatively small rna strand vs e.g. the flu which makes significant mutation way more rare
- rotexo 7y agoSARS-CoV-2 genome size is ~30 kb [1], influenza A genome size is ~14 kb [2]. A protein encoded in the SARS-CoV-2 genome is predicted to have exonuclease proofreading activity, which would result in a lower mutation rate [3]. [1] https://mra.asm.org/content/9/11/e00169-20 https://mra.asm.org/content/9/11/e00169-20 [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus#Structure_and_genetics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus#Structure_... [3] https://translational-medicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12967-020-02344-6 https://translational-medicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10...