Researchers Study Virus Evolution Trends Relevant for COVID-19 and Other Pandemics

One year after the first COVID-19 case was reported, researchers and medical professionals continue to learn more about the virus that causes it. Through a $188,253 National Science Foundation grant, Rutgers University‒Camden researcher Andrey Grigoriev is studying the RNA genome of the coronavirus behind COVID-19 – and trying to anticipate how to combat its mutations in the future. “Viruses undergo frequent mutations, and the worldwide effort of sequencing the RNA of thousands of coronavirus isolates allows us to analyze them using computational methods,” says Grigoriev, a Rutgers‒Camden professor of biology. “We search for the regions in the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus genome that mutate rarely and try to understand what the reasons for such stability of these regions are.” To read the full story.