The importance of naturally attenuated SARS‐CoV ‐2 in the fight against COVID ‐19

Jean Armengaud (1, 2, 3) , Agnès Delaunay-Moisan (4) , Jean‐yves Thuret (5) , Eelco van Anken , Diego Acosta-Alvear (6, 7) , Tomás Aragón (8) , Carolina Arias (7) , Marc Blondel (9, 10) , Ineke Braakman (11) , Jean‐françois Collet (12) , René Courcol (13) , Antoine Danchin (14) , Jean‐françois Deleuze (15, 16) , Jean‐philippe Lavigne (17, 18) , Sophie Lucas (12, 19) , Thomas Michiels (12) , Edward Moore , Jonathon Nixon-Abell (20, 21) , Ramon Rossello-Mora (22) , Zheng‐li Shi , Antonio Siccardi , Roberto Sitia (23) , Daniel Tillett , Kenneth Timmis , Michel Toledano , Peter van der Sluijs , Elisa Vicenzi

1 MTS - Médicaments et Technologies pour la Santé
2 SPI - Service de Pharmacologie et Immunoanalyse
3 LI2D - Laboratoire Innovations technologiques pour la Détection et le Diagnostic
4 SOC - Stress Oxydatif et Cancer
5 I2BC - Institut de Biologie Intégrative de la Cellule
6 University of the Pacific [San Francisco]
7 UC Santa Barbara - University of California [Santa Barbara]
8 UPNA - Universidad Pública de Navarra [Espagne] = Public University of Navarra
9 GGB - Génétique, génomique fonctionnelle et biotechnologies (UMR 1078)
10 Hôpital Augustin Morvan
11 Cellular Protein Chemistry, Bijvoet Centre for Biomolecular Research, Utrecht University
12 UCL - Université Catholique de Louvain = Catholic University of Louvain
13 CHRU Lille - Centre Hospitalier Régional Universitaire [CHU Lille]
14 School of Biomedical Sciences
15 CNRGH - Centre National de Recherche en Génomique Humaine
16 Université Paris-Saclay
17 CHU Nîmes - Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Nîmes
18 UM - Université de Montpellier
19 WELBIO - Walloon Excellence in Life sciences and BIOtechnology [Liège]
20 HHMI Janelia - Janelia Research Campus [Ashburn]
21 CIMR - Cambridge Institute for Medical Research
22 Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies
23 UniSR - Universita Vita Salute San Raffaele = Vita-Salute San Raffaele University [Milan, Italie]

The current SARS‐CoV‐2 pandemic is wreaking havoc throughout the world and has rapidly become a global health emergency. A central question concerning COVID‐19 is why some individuals become sick and others not. Many have pointed already at variation in risk factors between individuals. However, the variable outcome of SARS‐CoV‐2 infections may, at least in part, be due also to differences between the viral subspecies with which individuals are infected. A more pertinent question is how we are to overcome the current pandemic. A vaccine against SARS‐CoV‐2 would offer significant relief, although vaccine developers have warned that design, testing and production of vaccines may take a year if not longer. Vaccines are based on a handful of different designs (i), but the earliest vaccines were based on the live, attenuated virus. As has been the case for other viruses during earlier pandemics, SARS‐CoV‐2 will mutate and may naturally attenuate over time (ii). What makes the current pandemic unique is that, thanks to state‐of‐the‐art nucleic acid sequencing technologies, we can follow in detail how SARS‐CoV‐2 evolves while it spreads. We argue that knowledge of naturally emerging attenuated SARS‐CoV‐2 variants across the globe should be of key interest in our fight against the pandemic.

Domaines: Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]

Jean Armengaud, Agnès Delaunay-Moisan, Jean‐yves Thuret, Eelco van Anken, Diego Acosta-Alvear, et al.. The importance of naturally attenuated SARS‐CoV ‐2 in the fight against COVID ‐19. Environmental Microbiology, 2020, 22 (6), pp.1997-2000. ⟨10.1111/1462-2920.15039⟩. ⟨hal-04460462⟩