Indian scientists working to trace origin of Coronavirus

As the country is struggling to contain the coronavirus spread, many Indian scientists are working hard to establish the family tree and origin of the deadly virus.

New Delhi:At a time when entire world is fighting against COVID-19 pandemic, Indian scientists from Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) and Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) have been working closely to establish the family tree and origin of this infectious disease.

"In the next 3-4 weeks researchers would be able to get at least 200-300 isolates and this information would help in making some further conclusion about behaviour of the virus," said Dr Rakesh Mishra, Director, CCMB in a statement issued from Ministry of Science and Technology.

Three to four people from each institutes are continuously working on the whole genome sequencing. National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune has also been asked to provide virus that has been isolated from different places.

Genome sequencing is the method used to determine the complete DNA sequence of a specific organism's genome.

"This will help the scientists to cover the whole country to get a bigger and clearer picture. Based on the findings they scientist can identify from where the virus had come and which strain has more similarity, the varied mutations and which strain is weak and what strain is string," said Dr Mishra.

Dr. Mishra suggested that there should be mass screening of people to identify the number of positive cases.

"At the moment we are accumulating as many sequencing as we can and once, we have few hundred sequencing with us then we will be able to make many inferences from many biological aspects of this virus," said Dr Mishra.