The COVID-19 virus has mutated! How did this happen and what does it mean for humans? Contrary to the mental image that many people have, viruses are not alive. Rather, they are tiny packages of either DNA or RNA genes that cannot live or reproduce on their own. To avoid extinction, viruses infect animal hosts and then turn the host cells into virus generators. During this process of replication within host cells, genetic codes of the virus are copied to create multiple “mini-me” copies. Coronaviruses, and most viruses that cause new diseases in humans, have single-stranded RNA genes that are notoriously prone to errors during replication. These errors led to mutations in the “mini-me” copy of the parent virus. While some mutated virus offspring cannot survive, others may actually have greater fitness for their environment.
In late 2019, the SARS-CoV-2 virus became known to all of us. The high mutation rate of this RNA virus enabled the virus to cross-host species and quickly move from the non-human population to humans, spread rapidly across geographical barriers, and conclusively remind us that pandemics are not a thing of the past. While we have been scurrying to create and distribute a vaccine, the virus has continued to adapt to surrounding conditions, thus preserving its ability to survive in our human environments.