U of A researchers study virus mutations

EDMONTON COVID-19 mutations in the province are being tracked by researchers at the University of Alberta in an effort to figure out potential treatments.

The U of A researchers, with help from colleagues at the University of Calgary, are leading the project to sequence virus genomes from COVID-19 patients in Alberta, in hopes of learning more about how the virus spreads and how it can be stopped.

“The word ‘mutate’ does sound scary to the layman, but this is a common thing that happens in almost all microbes,” assistant professor Matthew Croxen, from the U of A’s Division of Diagnostics and Applied Microbiology, said in a statement.

Croxen and U of A professor Linda Chui, with $237,500 from Genome Alberta, are undertaking the effort along with researchers from the U of C’s Centre for Health Genomics and Informatics (CHGI).

The researchers will by next month sequence the COVID-19 viral genomes for roughly 2,000 of the more than 7,000 cases that have been diagnosed in Alberta, looking for mutations that occur as the virus spreads from person to person. Mutations, a naturally occurring part of viral replication, do not necessarily make the virus more virulent.

“The question we ask ourselves is how are the virus sequences different from each other?” said Chui, comparing the genetic sequences to fingerprints.

“Are they related to the ones we found with the first travel cases in

Alberta, with the community-acquired cases, some severe cases, and those where people had very general symptoms and recovered with no problems at all?”

The anonymous data will be shared publicly through the federal Cancogen initiative, which aims to sequence up to 150,000 viral genomes across Canada.

By examining the genome data, researchers will be able to track infections with a common genetic ancestor and see how the disease has spread around the world. They also hope to learn which parts of the virus are best to target for diagnostics, treatments or vaccines.

Both U of A researchers work with Alberta’s Public Health Laboratory, Croxen as program lead for public health genomics and bioinformatics and Chui as program lead for molecular typing.

The researchers expect their data to uncover the origins of the first Alberta COVID-19 case and subsequent cases.

“It’s important to start doing this sequencing right now because ... we really want to see where the new cases are going to come from,” said Gijs van Rooijen, chief scientific officer of Genome Alberta.