Scientists have discovered a mutation in SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, that plays a key role in its ability to infect the central nervous system. The findings may help scientists understand its neurological symptoms and the mystery of "long COVID," and they could one day even lead to specific treatments to protect and clear the virus from the brain. The new collaborative study between scientists at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois-Chicago uncovered a series of mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (the outer part of the virus that helps it penetrate cells) that enhanced the virus' ability to infect the brains of mice.
Looking at the genomes of viruses found in the brain compared to the lung, we found that viruses with a specific deletion in spike were much better at infecting the brains of these animals. This was completely unexpected, but very exciting." Judd Hultquist, co-corresponding author, assistant professor of medicine (infectious diseases) and microbiology-immunology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine The study will be published Aug.
23 in Nature Microbiology. Changes in spike help the virus infect different cells in the body In this study, researchers infected mice with SARS-CoV-2 and sequenced the genomes of viruses that replicated in the brain versus the lung. In the lung, the spike protein looked very similar to the virus used to infect the mice.
In the brain, however, most viruses had a deletion or muta.