Hybrid of Delta and Omicron
“There is no such thing as Deltakron” – experts disagree about the authenticity of the Corona variant
Scientists from Cyprus want to have discovered a new Corona variant, a hybrid form of Delta and Omicron, with “Deltakron”.
© Frank Hoermann / SVEN SIMON / Picture Alliance
Some firmly believe that they have provided evidence of a new Corona variant. The others doubt the authenticity of the hybrid form Deltakron. You suspect contamination during the analysis. An overview.
It is a story that is reminiscent of “Groundhog Day”. Scientists want to have found a new variant of the corona virus again – this time in a laboratory in Cyprus. Accordingly, it should be a combination of the Sars-CoV-2 variants Delta and Omikron, hence the (current) name Deltakron. The news made the rounds quickly at the weekend, but the first doubts about the find also arose almost as quickly in the scientific world. Deltakron, some experts suspect, is not a real variant, but a result of contamination in the laboratory.
In fact, the data situation is so far thin. It is known that the Cypriot scientists around Leontios Kostrikis, professor of life sciences and head of the laboratory for biotechnology and molecular virology at the University of Cyprus, claim to have discovered a new variant by means of sequencing.
“There are currently Omicron and Delta co-infections, and we have found this strain, which is a combination of both,” said Kostrikis in an interview with Sigma TV, which was picked up by several other media outlets. We are talking about 25 known cases so far. The research team forwarded the relevant data to the international science database “Gisaid” last Friday.
Expert: “There is no such thing as Deltakron”
That viruses mutate is not new. But with regard to Deltakron, a number of experts around the world are reacting particularly skeptically. “There is no such thing as Deltakron,” wrote Krutika Kuppalli of the World Health Organization (WHO) in a Twitter post. And: “Omikron and Delta did not form a super variant.” It is probably a sequencing artifact, i.e. contamination in the laboratory. The expert is not alone with this assumption. Tom Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College UK, agrees in a Twitter thread. The Cypriot Deltakron sequences appear to be “clearly contamination,” according to Peacock. And explains this, among other things, with the fact that these cannot be summarized in a phylogenetic tree.
Assessments that Kostrikis did not leave uncommented. In an email to Bloomberg on Sunday, he defended his view. The cases mentioned did not indicate a single recombination event. In addition, the samples were processed in several sequencing processes in more than one country. And: at least one sequence that comes from Israel and is deposited with Gisead shows genetic characteristics of Deltakron. “These results refute the undocumented claims that Deltakron is due to a technical error,” Bloomberg quoted the scientist as saying.
Hybrid variants are possible
“It is not yet clear whether this is a real sequencing error or the result of contamination,” says Martin Michaelis, professor of molecular medicine at the University of Kent, in relation to the “Mirror”. “If different viruses from different SARS-CoV-2 variants are analyzed on the same equipment, you can get sequences that look like they come from a new virus, but are really just a mixture of different viruses,” he explains . Further investigations are necessary.
But: It is entirely possible that such hybrid viruses will develop. “Coronaviruses, including Sars-CoV-2, basically have the ability to recombine their genetic material when two viruses infect the same cell,” explains Michaelis. The greater the simultaneous distribution of different variants, the greater the probability that such a recombinant will arise. Although this possibility exists, no major outbreaks with such variants have so far been observed, according to Richard Neher, an expert on virus variants from the University of Basel on “RND”. “These genomes from Cyprus,” he also estimates, “are probably not recombinants.”
Sources: Cyprus Mail, Bloomberg 1, Bloomberg 2, Mirror, RND