in Antarctica, the pandemic has reached every continent. And a
mutant virus has emerged in the United Kingdom, which threatens to shut down the world yet again — a world just beginning to recover from lockdowns and movement restrictions.
The mutation of viruses
The genetic material or genome of SARS-CoV-2 is a ribonucleic acid (RNA) made up of over 30,000 units (called nucleotides). Among the families of RNA viruses, the coronaviruses have the largest genome. Most other RNA viruses have on average about 10,000 nucleotides. When genomes replicate — any genomes, whether DNA or RNA, from the smallest viruses to humans — there are random errors (or mutations). While higher organisms have the machinery to correct these errors, viruses and especially the RNA ones, don’t.