Researchers from the Spanish Institute of Health Carlos III have achieved the first draft of the complete sequence of the virus that causes monkeypox (Monkey Pox) circulating in Spain from the samples of 23 patients.
It has been achieved by a team from the Arbovirus Laboratory and the Genomics and Bioinformatics Units of this Institute -dependent on the Ministry of Science and Innovation- and the achievement will allow more advanced analysis to obtain data on their behavior and better understand its origin, circulation and diffusion.
(Also read: Monkeypox: why is it less lethal than covid-19?)
Complete sequencing has confirmed that the monkeypox virus in the outbreak that is taking place in Spain belongs to a phytogenetic group from West Africa, which is the least virulent between those known and the one that has been identified so far in most of the countries outside Africa involved in this outbreak.
As reported this Thursday by the Carlos III Health Institute, it is one of the most complete sequences that have been obtained to date, and has also allowed reaching 100 percent coverage of the 190,000 base pairs of the genome of this virus. .
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The sequencing carried out through the ISCIII Arbovirus Laboratory, in collaboration with the Genomics and Bioinformatics units, has had the references published in recent days by other countries (Belgium, Germany, Portugal and the USA), and has been based on a new generation genomic technology.
To this technology has been added a complementary analysis of the samples through a technique known as “assembly de novo”, the Institute specified.
The raw sequences were finished last Monday night and the computational analysis has been completed in the last 36 hours.
The results indicate that the sequenced samples seem to belong to the same outbreak detected in other European countries, since the genomes obtained barely differ from those already sequenced in other countries; specifically, the analysis carried out at the ISCIII concludes that there are very few differences with respect to the sequencing carried out in Germany.
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The sequencing confirms that the monkeypox virus from the outbreak that is taking place in Spain belongs to the “clade” -variant- of West Africa.
The “clades”, informed the Institute, are phylogenetic groups that define the biological evolution of an organism, that explain how it acts and behaves, and in them the genetic differences of the circulating viruses can be observed.
After obtaining the complete sequence of the virus, several teams of ISCIII researchers are now carrying out phylogenetic analyzes to find out the relationship between the Spanish samples and those from other countries.
The information they obtain will be compared to that already known and deposited in international databases to assess the degree of identity and, where appropriate, the location of the differences that may exist between the Spanish sequence and the other international data.
All this information, highlighted the Institute, will make it possible to carry out traceability studies of the outbreak, as well as potentially identify its origin.
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