United States: The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted why it is important to prepare against pandemics, which can totally disturb the world. Recently, 70 virus lineages have been identified in a study that offers a clue regarding ‘Disease X’ – which could result in the next global pandemic.
The diseases that can be caused by RNA viruses include the common cold, COVID-19, and measles. According to experts, these viruses could result in a number of global pandemics. It is to be noted that the viruses carry their genetic information in their RNA, which is a structure similar to DNA.
The experts have anticipated that understanding the history of such viruses could help scientists in identifying the strains that could possibly cause Disease X. To make the exact conclusion, the researchers at the University of Edinburg, Liverpool University, and Peking University in China studied the lineage of 743 distinct RNA virus species and check how they evolved. These also included the species which can infect humans, according to reports by htworld.co.uk.
The robust scrutinization has revealed that out of the total 70 virus lineages pose the biggest risk to the species.
Potential threats!
The team has also compared the development of zoonotic viruses, which couAld spread from animals to humans, but don’t spread between people, with the viruses which are human-transmissible. The study has been published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.
The researchers have concluded that the viruses that spread within the human population evolve swiftly compared to strictly zoonotic viruses.
A researcher stated, “For the past 25 years, we have been trying to better understand which kinds of pathogens are most likely to emerge in human populations,” adding, “One of the very early findings was that 70% of all emerging infectious diseases are caused by viruses. The second thing that emerged quickly from that is that they are likely to emerge from a non-human, animal source,” as reported by htworld.co.uk.
Accordingly, the expert has also mentioned, “Most human viruses have pandemic potential whenever they have emerged from an animal source directly.”
In addition to this, the researcher also highlighted that the team also narrowed the search for the next possible pandemic due to Disease X. “One of the concerns about the viruses that we’re interested in, which is mostly RNA viruses, is that these kinds of viruses are known to mutate very quickly,” the expert was quoted saying.
Htworld.co.uk further more quoted, “The whole nature of influenza is that the virus never stays the same. It keeps changing its antigenicity, so we have to use new vaccines that are protected against it. So, there has always been this concern that viruses evolve very quickly. The 70 lineages that we have identified in the paper show that only 70 times have these viruses managed to make the jump into humans, and that gives us a clue. The viruses that are most likely to be able to make the jump are the ones that are closely related to the viruses that have already done it. That is where the next pandemic is most likely to come from.”
Preparations against the forthcoming pandemics
The researchers have claimed that the surveying the all animal viruses for pandemic risk is a big task, therefore it is appropriate to analyse the viruses which already transmit between humans, as per the reports by htworld.co.uk.
Using advanced and well-established computer programs, the team constructed virus family trees based on genome sequence data. This approach helps them understand how the viruses are related and estimate when the ability to spread in humans first appeared within a specific family tree.
The experts mentioned, “We have used machine learning in our work, and the way that machine learning and AI are being used now is to see if you can pick out patterns in the genome sequences that tell you how a virus is going to be.”
Adding, “We know that what makes a virus able to jump between humans and non-humans is the receptor it uses.”