), respiratory diseases, guangzhou medical university state key laboratory of 23, said in a news release, the laboratory jin-cun zhao professor team and in shenzhen life science research institute and other units cooperation, found COVID – 19 patients individual different time point and different physiological parts (respiratory tract, enteron) virus variants evolution characteristics, as will be the evolution of the coronavirus and the emergence of the mutant strains has provided important theoretical guidance.

The study was published online February 23, 2021 in the journal Genome Medicine.

Novel coronavirus has strong pathogenicity and rapid human transmission. It is of great significance to elucidate the mutation characteristics of novel coronavirus for epidemic prevention and control, pathogen detection and vaccine development.

The study collected COVID – 19 patients with continuous time point and different types of samples, including: nasopharyngeal swab, sputum, feces, urine and gastric mucosa, etc., using the transcriptome sequencing and probe hybridization capture method will be coronavirus genome, the depth of the comparative analysis between different individuals and individuals within the virus evolutionary change features of different organizations.

It was found that the proportion of virus-related sequences detected by deep sequencing of clinical samples was correlated with the fluorescence quantitative CT value, and the virus-related sequences detected by respiratory tract (nose, pharynx, sputum) and intestinal tract (feces, anal swab) were much higher than those detected by urine and gastric mucosa samples.
In addition, it was found that the co-existence of multiple viruses of different branches in intestinal samples from patients with Covid-19 may be caused by co-infection of multiple subtypes, repeated mutations or quasispecies changes.

In addition, we found that the diversity of novel coronavirus in the intestinal samples was higher than that in the respiratory samples, and the variation of novel coronavirus in the intestinal samples was more stable, the variation diversity was richer, and the individual few base mutations were more sustainable.

“Whether gut samples are more likely to produce mutant strains” is an important direction for future research, and ultimately more research is needed to determine whether that is true, “said the team’s lead researcher.

It is reported that the State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Diseases of Guangzhou Medical University mainly focuses on clinical and basic research of respiratory diseases, such as sudden major respiratory infectious diseases and lung injury, bronchial asthma and chronic cough, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer and so on.
The founding director is Zhong Nanshan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.