Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), more commonly known as COVID-19, is a virus that has spread at a rapid rate beginning in 2019 causing a pandemic. Currently, we remain in this pandemic, and as this virus progresses it is creating mutations of itself, called variants. With these variants, it has become increasingly difficult to control COVID-19 and keep track of new variants that continue to infect people everywhere. In Orange County, California, COVID-19 and its variants have enabled county wide shut downs and thousands of infections and deaths. To investigate its devastating effect, five positive COVID-19 nasal samples were collected between February 2021 to July 2021, and the RNA was extracted. After extraction, a Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) was done to amplify 1,727 base pairs of the S- Gene within the COVID-19 genome and was sent to sequencing. These sequences were then aligned using the Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) and compared to the original COVID-19 S-Gene genome to analyze possible variations. Within the five samples, 30 different mutations were detected and a phylogenetic tree was generated. Awareness of the genetic variation of SARS-CoV-2 provides potential future development for more effective targeted research.
Detection of Genomic Variations of SARS-CoV-2 on the S-Gene in the Orange County, CA Population.