Concepts in Structural Biology & Bioinformatics

Algeria witnesses a visible surge in the rise of COVID-19 cases and hence a quite worrying spread of the SARS-CoV-2 viruses. It's obvious that a set of objective causes are behind the rise including low awareness level of the danger the virus constitutes, lack of respect to the preventive measures such as social distancing, mask wearing and negligence .. etc.

In addition to the human factor, there seem to be other causes beyond the human activity related to the nature of mutations acquired by the SARS-CoV-2 virus evolving on the Algerian scene.

A large number of Algerian local genome sequences from the many COVID-19 infected regions would help in constructing detailed mutability map and better assessment for potential cures discovery and even identification of genomic regions to be vector-based PCR amplified for local vaccine(s) production.

However, the situation is that Institute Pasteur Algeria has made available only 3 genomic sequences of SARS-CoV-2 genome isolated from Blida province patients; Two (2) from Boufarik and one (1) from the city of Blida which are available via the 'Viruses' database (https://www.bioinformaticstools.org/viruses/) and which have been written about in the post entitled " Algerian Complete Genome sequences of SARS-CoV-2 strains detected in Blida province " available via the link: https://bioinformaticstools.org/jsbb/blog-single.php?ar=June_2020LOLAlgerian_Complete_Genome_sequences_of_SARS-CoV-2_strains_detected_in_Blida

Multiple Sequence Alignment study, by the SB&B[*] group, of these 3 genome sequences (local versions of SARS-CoV-2) together with the reference genome of Wuhan - China, revealed 12 mutations in local strains among which 7 are shared between the sequences (denoted with a little green star in the image attached below).