Over the years, flu vaccine development taught us that targeting conserved domains may be a better solution than targeting the highly variable/strain-specific regions. But why is this relevant in the fight against COVID-19

SARS-CoV-2 is the 3rd strain of coronavirus from a zoonotic origin to develop a sustained human-to-human transmission. A lot of significant differences are found in the major surface protein between this strain and others.

Recent studies showed that our organism’s humoral response to this surface protein that mediates viral entry (spike glycoprotein S) is specific to the new strain and fails to cross-react with other strains of coronavirus.

This shows that the highly variable region of the spike may serve as a poor target for broad-spectrum protection against coronavirus. Also vaccine development is a lengthy process, a SARS-CoV-2 strain-specific vaccine may arrive too late to help us fight the current pandemic.

Therefore to fight against pandemic strains of fast-mutating viruses we should focus on the conserved regions of virus proteins as this may help us achieve broader and more long-lasting protection agnst different strains of the same pathogen.

@yaajnaseni @SparesofWar @rsreeni

Wanted to put across in a simple language. Hope its useful

Conserved domain= a region which has same amino acid or DNA sequence
Varying= Opposite of conserved :) ie region with different amino acid/dna sequence