Now it turns out that some B.1.1.7 coronaviruses in the UK also have the E484K mutation.
To look for new mutations, British researchers examined the 214,159 genomes of coronavirus that the UK sequenced on January 26th. In its report, Public Health England said it had found 11 samples of variant B.1.1.7 that were also present with the E484K mutation.
Since that analysis, more of these viruses have come to light. NextStrain, a website where scientists collect and analyze coronavirus genomes, now identifies 16 B.1.1.7 variants that carry the E484K mutation.
These B.1.1.7 coronaviruses got the mutation thanks to random copying errors as they multiplied within humans. The coronavirus evolution tree suggests that 15 of the variants descended from a common ancestor that received the E484K mutation. The sixteenth variant now seems to have won the same mutation.
Kristian Andersen, a virologist at Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., Commented on Monday’s report, saying it was still impossible to say whether the E484K mutation would make these coronaviruses not only more contagious but also more resistant to vaccines. “It is far too early to speculate on whether that will be the case. So we have to wait for dates,” he said.
Just because the E484K mutation helps the B.1351 variant, which was originally found in South Africa, doesn’t mean dodging antibodies does not mean that other variants do the same. That’s because mutations don’t have a fixed effect. The effect of a single new mutation on a virus depends on the other mutations that the variant already carries.
In a report published online on Tuesday, Rajiv Gupta, a virologist at the University of Cambridge, and his colleagues reported on an experiment they had conducted to answer precisely that question. They combined the E484K mutation with other key mutations of variant B.1.1.7 originally found in the UK. The addition of the E484K mutation made it difficult for antibodies to block the viruses. The researchers wrote that they “observed a significant loss of neutralizing activity”.
Dr. However, Gupta and colleagues used antibodies from people who had only received the first of two doses of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine. It remains to be seen whether variant B.1.1.7 with the new mutation E484K can evade antibodies after a full vaccination.
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