Researchers from CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, have unveiled a new approach to analysing the genetic codes – or the blueprint – of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19.

The findings will help researchers better understand how strains of the virus evolve and help identify new clusters of the virus. By analysing global data on the published genome sequences of this novel coronavirus, it will help fast track the understanding of this complex disease. The researchers have developed a novel visualisation platform, underpinned by bioinformatics algorithms originally used to analyse the human genome, to pinpoint differences among the thousands of genetic sequences of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

CSIRO researchers are studying SARS-CoV-2, which has a single-stranded RNA genome, to understand how the virus evolves. CSIRO Chief Executive Dr Larry Marshall said knowing the genetic code was vital. “The more we know about this virus, the better armed we’ll be to fight it,” Dr Marshall said. “This highly complex analysis of the genome sequence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has already helped to determine which strains of the virus are suitable for testing vaccines underway at the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness in Geelong – the only high biocontainment facility of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere.”

CSIRO’s Bioinformatics Team Leader Dr Denis Bauer said as the virus evolved, the blueprint becomes increasingly important, effectively because it holds instructions about the behaviour of the virus and what kind of disease it can cause. “Globally there is now a huge amount of individual virus sequences,” Dr Bauer, who is also Honorary Associate Professor at Macquarie University, Australia said. “Assessing the evolutionary distance between these data points and visualising it helps researchers find out about the different strains of the virus – including where they came from and how they continue to evolve.”

CSIRO’s Dangerous Pathogens Team Leader Professor SS Vasan, who is leading the SARS-CoV-2 virus work and vaccine evaluation studies and is the corresponding author of the paper, said the first 181 published genome sequences from the current COVID-19 outbreak were analysed to understand how changes in the virus could affect its behaviour and impact. “This RNA virus is expected to evolve into a number of distinct clusters that share mutations, which is what we have confirmed and visualised,” Professor Vasan said. “At this time, we do not expect it will affect the development and evaluation of COVID-19 vaccines, therapies and diagnostics, but it is important information to monitor as preclinical and clinical studies progress.”

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