ThomassRichards Authors Theo Sanderson
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1/ Today has brought a lot of news about 'variants', as we discover community transmission of B.1.351 (SA variant) in the UK.
But some of the people who study these genomes have increasingly started focusing on a different concept: 'constellations', which may be more useful.
2/ We're actually all using 'variant' wrong anyway – we're using it to refer to a 'lineage'. A lineage is a set of viruses descended from a common ancestor. All B.1.1.7 (UK variant) viruses descend from an infection that probably occurred in August or September.
3/ But what makes this lineage practically important is that it carries a set of mutations which make it more transmissible.
I.e. we don't really care about the ancestry in itself.
4/ For example, one of the mutations that we think is important to B.1.1.7's faster transmission is called N501Y.
5/ It turns out that a lot of the lineages identified as important recently, in Brazil, South Africa, and the UK, have mutations such as N501Y in common (figure adapted from https://t.co/lpJeW0GGnU)
But some of the people who study these genomes have increasingly started focusing on a different concept: 'constellations', which may be more useful.
2/ We're actually all using 'variant' wrong anyway – we're using it to refer to a 'lineage'. A lineage is a set of viruses descended from a common ancestor. All B.1.1.7 (UK variant) viruses descend from an infection that probably occurred in August or September.
3/ But what makes this lineage practically important is that it carries a set of mutations which make it more transmissible.
I.e. we don't really care about the ancestry in itself.
4/ For example, one of the mutations that we think is important to B.1.1.7's faster transmission is called N501Y.
5/ It turns out that a lot of the lineages identified as important recently, in Brazil, South Africa, and the UK, have mutations such as N501Y in common (figure adapted from https://t.co/lpJeW0GGnU)