The Coronavirus is a Master of Mixing its Genome, Worrying Scientists
Research highlight featuring Nels Elde, PhD
The novel coronavirus has a propensity to mix large chunks of its genome when it makes copies of itself. Unlike small mutations, recombination resembles a major copy-and-paste error in which the second half of a sentence is completely overwritten with a slightly different version.

Recombination might allow two different coronaviruses from the same taxonomic group to swap some of their genes. To examine that risk more closely, Dr. Nels Elde and his colleagues compared the genetic sequences of many different coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2.

The findings, which were posted online but have not yet been published in a scientific journal, offered fresh evidence that related coronaviruses are quite promiscuous in terms of recombining with each other. View the full article, published in The New York Times.
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