Mutant Ebola May Have Caused Explosive Outbreak

[Eugene]

Source: NPR

Mutant Ebola May Have Caused Explosive Outbreak

November 3, 20166:01 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
MICHAELEEN DOUCLEFF

One mutation. A simple tweak in the Ebola gene — a C got turned into a T. That's all it took to make Ebola more infectious during the West Africa epidemic, scientists report Thursday.

Two studies, published in the journal Cell, found that a single mutation arose early in the epidemic. It allows Ebola to infect human cells more easily than the original version of the virus — way more easily.

"The largest difference we saw was about a fourfold increase in the number of cells infected," says Jeremy Luban, a virologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, who led one of the studies. "When you're talking about a virus that could kill you, this is a pretty scary number."

When Ebola appeared in West Africa late in 2013, it spread faster and further than any previous Ebola outbreak. One reason was because it hit densely populated cities. And countries in West Africa didn't have the tools to stop the epidemic.

But early on, computational biologists at Harvard University also noticed the virus was changing. It's genes were mutating.

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Read more: http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/11/03/500428232/mutant-ebola-may-have-caused-explosive-outbreak

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Related: Ebola Virus Glycoprotein with Increased Infectivity Dominated the 2013–2016 Epidemic (Cell)

[Warpy]

1. 7 billion of us on the planet are too many

so the planet is fighting back. Expect to see the pace of emerging diseases increase and those we know about get more deadly.