Researchers from Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), an Australian federal government agency, have revealed a new approach to analyzing the genetic codes of the new coronavirus, a.k.a. SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19.
The new approach will help scientists to understand how the strains of the new virus evolve and help identify new clusters of the coronavirus.
The researchers explained that analyzing and evaluating global data on the genetic sequences of the new coronavirus could help fast track their understanding of this complicated disease.
Using the bioinformatics algorithm, the team developed a novel visualization platform to pinpoint differences among the thousands of genome sequences of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
CSIRO CEO Dr. Larry Marshall said identifying the genetic code of the virus was vital. “The more we know about this virus, the better armed we’ll be to fight it.”
“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,” he added.
Dr. Denis Bauer, CSIRO’s Bioinformatics Team Leader, said, “As the virus evolves, this blueprint becomes increasingly important, effectively because it holds instructions about the behavior of the virus and what kind of disease it can cause.”
“Globally, there is now a huge amount of individual virus sequences,” said Dr. Bauer. “Assessing the evolutionary distance between these data points and visualizing it helps researchers find out about the different strains of the virus—including where they came from and how they continue to evolve.”
Prof. S.S. Vasan, CSIRO’s Dangerous Pathogens Team Leader, who is currently leading the SARS-CoV-2 virus work and vaccine evaluation studies, said the “first 181 published genetic sequences from the current COVID-19 outbreak were analyzed to understand how changes in the virus could affect its behavior 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 visualized,” added Prof. Vasan.
He continued, “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.”
“To enable this, we are calling on the international research community to share de-identified details of case severity and outcome, and other relevant meta-data such as co-morbidities and smoking status, alongside the genomic sequences of the virus.”
Dr. David Hansen, CEO of CSIRO’s Australian e-Health Research Centre, said that this work shows the importance of “cross-collaboration between the established and emerging disciplines of bioinformatics, genomics, vaccinology, and virology.”
“Following the scientific process of peer-reviewed open publication such as this one is a vitally critical component of the CSIRO’s response,” said Dr. Hansen.
Dr. Bauer said, “The advantage of the data visualization platform is that it highlights evolving genetic mutations of the virus as it continues to change and adapt to new environments. The more informed we are about the genetic differences and their likely consequences on the progression of the disease, the better we can tackle the disease with diagnostics and treatments.”
