71% of cases in Houston in the early phase of this first wave of infections. A follow-up study by the same team now reveals that by summer, during the second wave, this variant accounted for 99.9% of all COVID-19 infections in the area.The new research, which a team from the Houston Methodist Hospital in Texas led, now appears in the journal mBio.The mutation, which has spread worldwide, results in the substitution of one amino acid for another at a particular position in the virus’s spike protein.
Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. They are assembled in a particular sequence depending on the genetic blueprint of the virus.The mutation replaced an amino acid called aspartate with another called glycine in the spikes, which.