Faculty of Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, 119234 Moscow, Russia.
Faculty of Biology, Shenzhen MSU-BIT University, Shenzhen 518172, China.
Viruses. 2022 Jul 22;14(8):1603. doi: 10.3390/v14081603.
The evolution and the emergence of new mutations of viruses affect their transmissibility and/or pathogenicity features, depending on different evolutionary scenarios of virus adaptation to the host. A typical trade-off scenario of SARS-CoV-2 evolution has been proposed, which leads to the appearance of an Omicron strain with lowered lethality, yet enhanced transmissibility. This direction of evolution might be partly explained by virus adaptation to therapeutic agents and enhanced escape from vaccine-induced and natural immunity formed by other SARS-CoV-2 strains. Omicron's high mutation rate in the Spike protein, as well as its previously described high genome mutation rate (Kandeel et al., 2021), revealed a gap between it and other SARS-CoV-2 strains, indicating the absence of a transitional evolutionary form to the Omicron strain. Therefore, Omicron has emerged as a new serotype divergent from the evolutionary lineage of other SARS-CoV-2 strains. Omicron is a rapidly evolving variant of high concern, whose new subvariants continue to manifest. Its further understanding and the further monitoring of key mutations that provide virus immune escape and/or high affinity towards the receptor could be useful for vaccine and therapeutic development in order to control the evolutionary direction of the COVID-19 pandemic.
病毒新突变的出现和进化会影响其传播性和/或致病性，这取决于病毒适应宿主的不同进化场景。有人提出了一种 SARS-CoV-2 进化的典型权衡场景，这导致了一种致死率降低但传播力增强的奥密克戎毒株的出现。这种进化方向部分可以解释为病毒对治疗药物的适应以及对其他 SARS-CoV-2 毒株诱导的疫苗和自然免疫的逃避能力增强。奥密克戎在刺突蛋白上的高突变率，以及之前描述的高基因组突变率（Kandeel 等人，2021），显示出它与其他 SARS-CoV-2 株之间存在差距，表明它没有向奥密克戎株的过渡进化形式。因此，奥密克戎作为一种与其他 SARS-CoV-2 株进化谱系不同的新血清型出现。奥密克戎是一种令人高度关注的快速进化变体，其新的亚变体不断出现。进一步了解和监测为病毒提供免疫逃逸和/或对受体高亲和力的关键突变，对于疫苗和治疗方法的开发以控制 COVID-19 大流行的进化方向可能是有用的。
