Researchers at the Instituto de Saúde Carlos III (ISCIII) obtained the first draft of the complete sequence of the monkeypox virus, obtained from the genomic analysis of samples from 23 patients. This massive sequencing work confirms that it is the variety of Western Africa the cause of this outbreak.
Furthermore, the sequencing achieved 100% coverage of the 190,000 base pairs of the genome of this virus, which opens the possibility of more advanced phylogenetic studies that will allow to obtain additional information about its behavior and a better understanding of its origin, circulation and diffusion. This is one of the most complete sequences obtained to date.
The sequencing performed using the ISCIII Arbovirus Laboratory, together with the Genomics and Bioinformatics Units, had the references published in recent days by other countries (Belgium, Germany, Portugal and the USA), and was based on a new generation genomic technology mapped against the reference genome, to which a supplementary analysis of the samples was added using a technique known as de novo assembly. At raw footage they were finalized on Monday night and the computational analysis was done within the last 36 hours.
The results indicate that the sequenced samples seem to belong to the same outbreak detected in other European countries, since the genomes obtained hardly differ from those already sequenced in other countries; Specifically, the analysis performed at ISCIII concludes that there are fewer than 5 SNPs -genetic sequences called single nucleotide alterations- of difference in relation to the sequencing performed in Germany.
The sequencing confirms that the monkeypox virus in the outbreak that is taking place in Spain belongs to the West African clade, which is the least virulent among those known and the one that has been identified so far in most countries outside Africa implicated in this outbreak. . Clades are phylogenetic groups that define the biological evolution of an organism, explaining how it acts and behaves, and in them the genetic differences of circulating viruses can be observed.
After obtaining the complete sequence of the virus, several teams of ISCIII researchers are carrying out phylogenetic analyzes to discover the relationship between the Spanish samples and those from other countries.
The information obtained will be compared with that already known and deposited in international databases to assess the degree of identity and, where applicable, the location of differences that may exist between the Spanish sequence and other international data. All this will allow studies of outbreak traceabilityas well as potentially identify its origin.