Town Crier “Briefs from the Region” (1) – 6/2/21
Scientists at Montana State University have been closely studying a coronavirus variant they believe arrived in the early months of the pandemic and quickly died out. While some variants around the world are more contagious and deadly, the one that arrived in Bozeman seems to undermine the pathogen’s ability to overcome the human immune system, according to an article by the MSU News Service. Artem Nemudryi, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology in MSU’s College of Agriculture, says it’s important to study what virus strains do as they move through a population, and interesting that they don’t always get stronger. “As any virus replicates, it’s common for biochemical errors to result in mutations of one or two nucleotides, the building blocks of the virus’s genetic code,” the article explains. “Most of these errors result in genetic defects that limit the virus’ ability to replicate and cause the altered versions of the virus to naturally disappear unnoticed.”
