Scientists are studying the new coronavirus

An outbreak of the disease, according to scientists, is still in the early stages of development, it originated approximately in the middle of December.

The deadly coronavirus, the Chinese first penetrated into human populations 17 December last year or in next days. To such conclusion the evolutionary biologists of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, comparing the small differences in the genome of different samples of 2019 coronavirus-nCoV. Their results were published in an article published in the electronic scientific library bioRxiv, reports TASS.

“The genomes of viruses were very similar to each other, and they differed not so much that suggests that this outbreak is only beginning. Our calculations show that it started in about 32 days before was collected the last sample 2019-nCoV, what happened on January 18,” write the researchers.

Mei Wang (Wang Mei) and Zhang Chi (Chi Zhang), biologists from the Advanced center for life Sciences and paleoecology KAN in Beijing (China), came to this conclusion by comparing between more than two dozen of the decrypted genomes of 2019 coronavirus-nCoV extracted from samples of biomaterials collected in the provinces of Hubei, Guangdong and Zhejiang between 24 December 2019 and January 18, 2020.

Scientists estimate the number of small mutations in the genome of the coronavirus, which emerged in the course of its spread throughout China, and used statistical methods used in the study of evolutionary processes, to calculate the time of occurrence of 2019-nCoV and disclose the dynamics of its spread.

The calculations of scientists showed that the virus almost no time to change during this time, despite the large geographical spread. This suggests that the outbreak of the disease is still in the early stages of development and that it originated around the middle of December.

In addition, the Chinese evolutionists confirmed the statements of other research groups on a fairly high adoption rate 2019-nCoV before the start of the fight against this outbreak of coronavirus.

Analysis of successive samples of the virus genome, as biologists hope, will help to clarify this argument and to understand how it has changed in the last days after the imposition of quarantine in Wuhan and other cities, where there were outbreaks. This, in turn, is crucial for determining further action to combat 2019-nCoV.

According to official figures, the death toll in China from pneumonia caused by a new type of coronavirus, as of the morning of 27 January, reached 80 people. Virus detected in 2794 people.

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