Keith Gagnon, PhD, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry at SIU, said the lab has uncovered a U.S.-specific coronavirus variant that accounts for about half of the cases in the nation. The findings are detailed in “Emergence and Evolution of a Prevalent New SARS-CoV-2 Variant in the United States,” which was submitted Jan. 11 to BioRxiv, a preprint server.
The lab traced the earliest appearance of the U.S. variant to Texas in May. Since then, the variant, referred to as 20C-US, has acquired two new mutations in the spike protein that demonstrates ongoing evolution, Dr. Gagnon told The Southern Illinoisan.
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