Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) –– Scientists at the Center for Advanced Technologies under the Ministry of Innovative Development sequenced the gene for several strains of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus detected in infected people in Uzbekistan. This was reported by the press service of the ministry.

Genotype analysis (genotyping) is an important tool for detecting mutations in the main part of the SARS-CoV-2 genome, says Alisher Abdullayev, deputy director of the Center for Advanced Technologies.

- It is known that coronavirus has genes encoding its own structural proteins. These structural proteins are potential targets for future vaccines. Therefore, it is very important to detect any changes in the nucleotide sequences of viral RNA genes leading to a change in structural proteins before vaccine development begins. In addition, genotyping data can be used to predict the effectiveness of a global vaccine in some countries where a strain with a certain type of important mutation is more common.

Therefore, we decided to analyze these structural genes. At the first stage, we deciphered the nucleotide sequence of one of the important structural genes - the N gene encoding the phosphocoprotein of the nucleocapsid (envelope) of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. We have identified mutations at the positions of nucleotide positions 28881G> A, 28882G> A and 28883G> C, two of which lead to a change in the amino acid sequence of structural protein N (at position 203 arginine to lysine and 204 glycine to arginine, respectively).

“A preliminary analysis showed that the gene sequence is different from the original - the reference genome of the coronavirus strain identified in Wuhan. A comparative analysis of the information showed that strains of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus with this type of mutation are more common in Europe,” noted the Deputy Director of the Center for Advanced Technologies Alisher Abdullaev.

The data of the decrypted nucleotide sequences are placed in an international database - the National Center for Biotechnological Information (NCBI), where information on various organisms from around the world is stored in the public domain for the scientific community.

Given the availability of funding in the future, scientists at the Center for Advanced Technologies plan to analyze more biological material collected from infected people to obtain statistically significant information on the prevalence of coronavirus strains in Uzbekistan, their virulence and pathogenicity.