SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Mutation Is Faster than the Chase: Multiple Mutations on Spike/ACE2 Interaction Residues

Sinae Kim; Tam T Nguyen; Afeisha S Taitt; Hyunjhung Jhun; Ho-Young Park; Sung-Han Kim; Yong-Gil Kim; Eun Young Song; Youngmin Lee; Hokee Yum; Kyeong-Cheol Shin; Yang Kyu Choi; Chang-Seon Song; Su Cheong Yeom; Byoungguk Kim; Mihai Netea; Soohyun Kim

doi:10.4110/in.2021.21.e38

SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Mutation Is Faster than the Chase: Multiple Mutations on Spike/ACE2 Interaction Residues

Immune Netw. 2021 Dec 23;21(6):e38. doi: 10.4110/in.2021.21.e38. eCollection 2021 Dec.

Authors

Sinae Kim^{1

2}, Tam T Nguyen^{1

2}, Afeisha S Taitt¹, Hyunjhung Jhun³, Ho-Young Park⁴, Sung-Han Kim⁵, Yong-Gil Kim⁶, Eun Young Song⁷, Youngmin Lee⁸, Hokee Yum⁹, Kyeong-Cheol Shin¹⁰, Yang Kyu Choi², Chang-Seon Song², Su Cheong Yeom¹¹, Byoungguk Kim¹², Mihai Netea¹³, Soohyun Kim^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Laboratory of Cytokine Immunology, Department of Biomedical Science and Technology, Konkuk University, Seoul 05029, Korea.
² College of Veterinary Medicine, Konkuk University, Seoul 05029, Korea.
³ Technical Assistance Center, Korea Food Research Institute, Wanju 55365, Korea.
⁴ Research Group of Functional Food Materials, Korea Food Research Institute, Wanju 55365, Korea.
⁵ Department of Infectious Diseases, Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Seoul 05505, Korea.
⁶ Division of Rheumatology, Department of Internal Medicine, Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Seoul 05505, Korea.
⁷ Department of Laboratory Medicine, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul National University, Collage of Medicine, Seoul 03080, Korea.
⁸ Department of Medicine, Pusan Paik Hospital, Inje University College of Medicine, Busan 47392, Korea.
⁹ Pulmonary Science and Critical Care Medicine, Seoul Paik Hospital, Inje University College of Medicine, Seoul 04551, Korea.
¹⁰ Center for Respiratory Disease, College of Medicine, Yeungnam University, Daegu 42415, Korea.
¹¹ Graduate School of International Agricultural Technology, Seoul National University, Pyeongchang 25354, Korea.
¹² Division of Vaccine Clinical Research Center for Vaccine Research, National Institute of Infectious Diseases, Cheongju 28160, Korea.
¹³ Department of Internal Medicine and Center for Infectious Diseases, Radboud University, Nijmegen 6500HB, Netherlands.

Abstract

Recently, a new severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) (B.1.1.529) Omicron variant originated from South Africa in the middle of November 2021. SARS-CoV-2 is also called coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) since SARS-CoV-2 is the causative agent of COVID-19. Several studies already suggested that the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant would be the fastest transmissible variant compared to the previous 10 SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern, interest, and alert. Few clinical studies reported the high transmissibility of the Omicron variant but there is insufficient time to perform actual experiments to prove it, since the spread is so fast. We analyzed the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant, which revealed a very high rate of mutation at amino acid residues that interact with angiostatin-converting enzyme 2. The mutation rate of COVID-19 is faster than what we prepared vaccine program, antibody therapy, lockdown, and quarantine against COVID-19 so far. Thus, it is necessary to find better strategies to overcome the current crisis of COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords: COVID-19 Omicron; Mutation; Receptor binding motif (RBM); SARS-CoV-2; Spike (S) gene.

Publication types

Review