Ep. 136: The SARS-COV-2 Virus: Mutations & Evolution

The SARS-COV-2 virus started infecting humans in Wuhan in late 2019. How has the virus mutated and evolved so far? With 1-2 mutations occurring per month, researchers are now seeing a clade or a sub-type of the virus: A2a, becoming more common in COVID-19 infections across the world.

Partha Majumder, NIdhan Biswas and their colleagues at the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics have done seminal work on analyzing the mutations and evolution of the SARS-COV-2 virus so far.

Partha Majumder, one of India's foremost researchers in statistical genomics and human genome variation, joins Pavan Srinath on Episode 136 of The Pragati Podcast to explain how to study viral evolution and understand the latest research on how SARS-COV-2 has mutated and evolved till date.

The Pragati Podcast is a weekly talk show on public affairs, economics, and international relations, hosted by Pavan Srinath.

Dr. Partha Pratim Majumder is the Founder and a Distinguished Professor at the National Institute for Biomedical Genomics (NIBMG) at Kalyani, West Bengal, and is currently the President of the Indian Academy of Sciences.

His latest research on SARS-COV-2:
1. Biswas, N and Majumder, PP. Analysis of RNA Sequences of 3636 SARS-CoV-2 Collected from 55 Countries Reveals Selective Sweep of One Virus Type. Indian Journal of Medical Research. (In Press, April 28, 2020)

Bhattacharya, C. et al. Global Spread of SARS-CoV-2 Subtype with Spike Protein Mutation D614G is Shaped by Human Genomic Variations that Regulate Expression of TMPRSS2 and MX1 Genes. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.04.075911v1 (Preprint, May 05, 2020)

Partha's NIBMG profile: https://www.nibmg.ac.in/?q=content/ppm1-research
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.co.in/citations?user=DUSA2ywAAAAJ&hl=en

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