“A variant of coronavirus circulating in Italy since early August 2020 is “very similar to the infamous English variant [B.1.1.7]”.
An ” Italian variant ” discovered in Brescia, “which precedes the variant that emerged only at the end of September in the United Kingdom and then spread to Europe, including Italy, and could also be a precursor”.
This was announced to Adnkronos Salute by Arnaldo Caruso , president of the Italian Society of Virology (Siv-Isv), full professor of Microbiology and Clinical Microbiology at the University of Brescia, director of the Asst Spedali Civili microbiology laboratory.
The variant identified, he explains, “has several points mutation in the Spike protein , the ‘hook’ that the virus uses to attack the receptor present on target cells in our body. Like the English one, the Italian variant also has a mutation in a nerve center of the Spike / cell receptor interaction, more precisely in position 501 ″.
But unlike the GB mutant, “the Italian variant also has a second mutation in position 493, which makes its Spike protein slightly different from that of the pandemic virus we all know today”.
