Greetings Everyone,

I came across an update regarding COVID-19 and had to share my findings. The following information comes from The Verge.

As the coronavirus spreads across the globe, it mutates in tiny ways. Scientists may be able to use those mutations to track how it’s spreading from person to person. Synthetic Biologist at Ginkgo Bioworks Patrick Boyle advised the following:

“If we identify a new outbreak cluster in one state, and there’s a question of whether it’s related to a previous cluster or not, the small mutational changes can help you figure out if they’re connected.”

COVID-19 is made up of 29,000 nucleotides. As it spreads, it makes copies of itself within each human host. And sometimes it can make mistakes, switching one or two nucleotides out for another.

Ginkgo Bioworks has the technology to take a sample of COVID-19 and read the full sequence of those nucleotides. So they will be repurposing its systems to analyze as many samples of the virus as possible. Their goal is to build out the maps that show how the virus is spreading, and they hope to publish full genetic sequences of 10,000 virus samples a day.

This is great news. If this works, scientists could expedite the making of a vaccine.

To check out the full article, click here. If you have any additional information, feel free to comment below.

Until Next Time…