A new machine learning tool developed by CSIRO could detect harmful variants more quickly by looking at the whole genome of the virus.
CSIRO researchers have developed a machine learning tool to identify dangerous COVID-19 variants more quickly, by looking at the genome of the entire virus.
However, CSIRO scientist Dr Denis Bauer said research suggests looking at genetic mutations in the whole viral genome would give health authorities a better idea of how a particular viral strain would interact with the human body. The spike protein of the COVID-19 virus is important, because it is what all the vaccines against it use as their target.
Crucially, all the samples included data on the eventual patient outcomes, and VariantSpark looked for mutations that correlated with different outcomes, both good and bad.“The ability to look at the genome and identify quickly any mutations of interest is ideal for dealing with a virus like Covid,” Bauer said.
The team needed samples that contained both the genomic information as well as information about eventual patient outcomes. “The samples go to the pathology provider and they sequence it and put it in the database, but the patient then goes into the healthcare system and the loop is not usually closed about how that patient fared.”
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