News release from the university of Ghana shows that scientist from the Nogouchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research and the West African Center Cell Biology for Infectious Pathogens have uncovered the genomes of the SARS-coV-2.
The virus is responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic. Genome sequencing allows for the collection of the most comprehensive information about an organism’s genetic makeup using advanced next generation sequencing methods. This method allows them to track and compare viral mutations to understand the origin of imported strains to discover if any Novel strains are emerging locally.
Samples analyzed were taken from two travelers who arrived in Ghana from the UK, one from Norway, one from Hungary, one from India and one traveler who arrived from the United States through United Arab Emirates. Nine samples were taken from individuals who had no travel history believed to have acquired it locally.
The data received then informs us that there is some difference between the samples from the various countries, all 15 genomes generally resembled with 92% of similarity, the strain that was isolated in the Wuhan Province of China where the outbreak began according to Prof. Gordon Awandre, director of WACCBIP.
This makes it clear that we are all dealing with the same pathogen and that it has not changed it genetic construction significantly though it is natural for pathogens to evolve as they come in contact with different environmental challenges. It was therefore necessary to keep track and monitor these changes and determine how they impact on the efficacy of potential drugs or vaccines that are bring developed, he added.
The establishment of this sequencing capability at the University of Ghana is a significant milestone in Ghana’s response to the pandemic as it will strengthen the surveillance for tracking mutations of the virus and aid in the tracking of community infections in persons with no known contact with confirmed cases said Prof. Abraham Annang, director of NMIMR.
“The information from the sequence data has been shared with scientists around the world through an open access platform known as Global initiative on sharing all influenza data(GISAID) data base where other sequences from various countries are stored (https://www.gisaid.org/).”
The university is proud to note that this was achieved entirely by local scientists using established capacity including our Next Generation Sequencing Core and ‘Zaputo’, our High-Performance system which is jointly, managed by NMIMR and WACCBIP with support from University of Ghana Computing systems, said Prof Ebenezer Oduro Owusu, Vice Chancellor of the University.
“We would like to express our gratitude to the Government of Ghana and all the funding agencies that have provided grants to support the operations of our two flagship centers of excellence for biomedical research” He ended.
By: NK AHENKORAH