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Mutation discovery raises fears over Sars vaccine
China's top genomics institute discovered that the Sars virus was mutating rapidly when it independently sequenced its genetic blueprint, raising new fears about developing a vaccine to combat it.
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"A few nucleotide differences among individual genomes were detected, as the virus is expected to mutate very fast and easily," said the Beijing Genomics Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in a statement on the internet.
The institute says the mutations will need to be studied further to find an accurate diagnostic test and effective treatment for the fast-spreading and sometimes lethal viral infection.
Chinese health and propaganda authorities, which have tightly controlled all information about Sars, initially refused to allow the institute to make a public announcement of its findings when it completed the sequencing on April 16.
The institute, one of China's most respected research bodies, circumvented the restriction by posting its findings without fanfare on an academic website.
Similar institutes in Canada and the US that have also sequenced samples of the Sars virus in the last fortnight had won praise from their governments.
But the tide turned against the health and political establishment in China with the dismissal of senior officials on Sunday over their handling of the crisis, and in favour of experts such as the scientists at the institute.
The institute has now received official backing from Hu Jintao, China's president, who visited researchers at the weekend to compliment them on their work.
The institute collaborated with the Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences in Beijing to decipher the code of two viruses collected from samples in China.
One was isolated from a lung autopsy in Guangzhou, southern China, near to where the virus is believed to have originated. The second was from a mixture of autopsy tissues from the liver and lymph nodes of a Sars victim in Beijing, according to the web posting.
The sequencing allowed the development of a much-needed diagnostic test which can detect the presence of the Sars virus within one hour, the Chinese media reported on Monday.
The test detects the presence of an antibody produced by the body in response to infection with the virus.
The Beijing Genomics Institute is best known for recently sequencing the DNA of the rice genome and is also involved in the international human genome project.
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentS...y&c=StoryFT&cid=1048313915870&p=1012571727085
China's top genomics institute discovered that the Sars virus was mutating rapidly when it independently sequenced its genetic blueprint, raising new fears about developing a vaccine to combat it.
Advertisement
"A few nucleotide differences among individual genomes were detected, as the virus is expected to mutate very fast and easily," said the Beijing Genomics Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in a statement on the internet.
The institute says the mutations will need to be studied further to find an accurate diagnostic test and effective treatment for the fast-spreading and sometimes lethal viral infection.
Chinese health and propaganda authorities, which have tightly controlled all information about Sars, initially refused to allow the institute to make a public announcement of its findings when it completed the sequencing on April 16.
The institute, one of China's most respected research bodies, circumvented the restriction by posting its findings without fanfare on an academic website.
Similar institutes in Canada and the US that have also sequenced samples of the Sars virus in the last fortnight had won praise from their governments.
But the tide turned against the health and political establishment in China with the dismissal of senior officials on Sunday over their handling of the crisis, and in favour of experts such as the scientists at the institute.
The institute has now received official backing from Hu Jintao, China's president, who visited researchers at the weekend to compliment them on their work.
The institute collaborated with the Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences in Beijing to decipher the code of two viruses collected from samples in China.
One was isolated from a lung autopsy in Guangzhou, southern China, near to where the virus is believed to have originated. The second was from a mixture of autopsy tissues from the liver and lymph nodes of a Sars victim in Beijing, according to the web posting.
The sequencing allowed the development of a much-needed diagnostic test which can detect the presence of the Sars virus within one hour, the Chinese media reported on Monday.
The test detects the presence of an antibody produced by the body in response to infection with the virus.
The Beijing Genomics Institute is best known for recently sequencing the DNA of the rice genome and is also involved in the international human genome project.
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentS...y&c=StoryFT&cid=1048313915870&p=1012571727085
Not real good.
