The pandemic of COVID-19 has been haunting us for almost the past two years. Although, the vaccination drive is in full swing throughout the world, different mutations of the SARS-CoV-2 virus are making it very difficult to put an end to the pandemic. The second wave in India, one of the worst sufferers of this pandemic, can be mainly attributed to the Delta variant i.e. B.1.617.2. Thus, it is very important to analyse and understand the mutational trajectory of SARS-CoV-2 through the study of the 26 virus proteins. In this regard, more than 17,000 protein sequences of Indian SARS-CoV-2 genomes are analysed using entropy-based approach in order to find the monthly mutational trajectory. Furthermore, Hellinger distance is also used to show the difference of the mutation events between the consecutive months for each of the 26 SARS-CoV-2 protein. The results show that the mutation rates and the mutation events of the viral proteins though changing in the initial months, start stabilizing later on for mainly the four structural proteins while the non-structural proteins mostly exhibit a more constant trend. As a consequence, it can be inferred that the evolution of the new mutative configurations will eventually reduce.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.meegid.2021.105154 | DOI Listing |
Virus Evol
December 2024
Department of Microbiology and Immunology, McGill University, 3775 University Street Montreal, QC H3A 2B4, Canada.
Infectious disease transmission to different host species makes eradication very challenging and expands the diversity of evolutionary trajectories taken by the pathogen. Since the beginning of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, SARS-CoV-2 has been transmitted from humans to many different animal species, in which viral variants of concern could potentially evolve. Previously, using available whole genome consensus sequences of SARS-CoV-2 from four commonly sampled animals (mink, deer, cat, and dog), we inferred similar numbers of transmission events from humans to each animal species.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlthough somatic mutations are fundamentally important to human biology, disease, and aging, many outstanding questions remain about their rates, spectrum, and determinants in apparently healthy tissues. Here, we performed high-coverage exome sequencing on 265 samples from 14 GTEx donors sampled for a median of 17.5 tissues per donor (spanning 46 total tissues).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSyst Biol
January 2025
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.
As lineages become separated in time, they are expected to accumulate mutational (or developmental-genetic) differences that influence the macroevolutionary trajectories of those lineages even under similar environmental conditions. Here, we compare the dynamics of phenotypic evolution in radiations of scincid lizards from Australia and Madagascar that are separated by more than 100 million years of independent evolution and show rampant phenotypic parallelism. We collected linear measurements of the skull, limbs, and limb girdles from micro-CT scans of 94 Australian and 29 Malagasy species.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBrain Commun
January 2025
Department of Neurology, Memory and Aging Center, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA.
The largest risk factor for dementia is age. Heterochronic blood exchange studies have uncovered age-related blood factors that demonstrate 'pro-aging' or 'pro-youthful' effects on the mouse brain. The clinical relevance and combined effects of these factors for humans is unclear.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Neurol
January 2025
LUMC Department of Neurology, Albinusdreef 2, 2333 ZA, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Background And Objectives: The total functioning capacity (TFC) assessment has been integral to Huntington's disease (HD) research and clinical trials, measuring disease stage and progression. This study investigates the natural progression of function in HD, focusing on changes in TFC scores related to age and CAG-repeat length, and evaluates TFC's strengths and weaknesses in longitudinal studies.
Methods: Using Enroll-HD platform's clinical dataset version 5, including Registry-3, we analysed data from 21,079 participants, with 16,083 having an expanded CAG repeat.
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