Kristian G. AndersenGeverifieerd account

Ie roughly every other virus sequenced reveals a slightly different genome. This is due to constant barrage of mutations that occur in an RNA virus due to error-prone replication. Along a transmission chain, we expect a new mutation every ~2 weeks. 4/13

However, because there are so many parallel transmission chains sparked from the initial outbreak in Wuhan the different mutations that we've observed are all slight variations to this original Wuhan virus. 5/13

This brings us to the other overloaded definition of strain: a functionally distinct virus genotype. 7/13

What's very tricky is that we can't know without doing experiments if one genetic variant behaves differently than another, especially when there's only a small handful of genetic changes between them. 8/13

Mutations can occur that change the proteins made by the virus and other mutations can occur that change the genome but not the proteins. This is due to the degeneracy of the genetic code (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_code#Degeneracy …). 9/13