3 ms·
That's a lot more mutations than we would expect to see from a naturally emerging strain, yeah?
by ouid 5y ago
That's a lot more mutations than we would expect to see from a naturally emerging strain, yeah?
- jacquesm 5y agoNo. 10,000,000 times 50,000,000,000 (rough stab at # of virions per infection, range 1 to 100 B), is 500,000,000,000,000,000 opportunities for mutations so far. You can take it to the bank that the number of mutations is far, far higher than the number that makes it to the press because the strains that end up dominating have already undergone a lot of competitive pressure by the time we notice them, so there will be a lot more strains that we will simply never know about. Fun fact: the total mass of all virions produced by infected hosts to date is likely less than 10 kg.
- Kliment 5y agoOne thing to be aware of with RNA viruses - they mutate all the time and almost all mutations are nonviable (unable to infect cells or unable to replicate) and die off immediately. The fact there are so few variants (and there hasn't been a new dominant variant since October 2020 ) illustrates how fragile its mechanisms are.
- jacquesm 5y agoThe number of viable versions must number in the thousands though, they are just less viable than the previous generation and that's why they'll die out almost immediately, for a new strain to become the dominant one it has to work 'better' than the old one.