ARKANSAS: UAMS Researchers Find Changes in Monkeypox Genome That May Explain Its Recent Rapid Spread
The rapid spread of monkeypox is unlike the virus’ past outbreaks and may be a result of genetic mutations identified by University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences researchers. Led by Dr. David Ussery, a professor in the College of Medicine Department of Biomedical Informatics and director of the Arkansas Center for Genomic and Epidemiology Medicine at UAMS, the UAMS team published its findings this month in the Journal of Applied Microbiology. The work was supported in part by an NIH IDeA CTPR grant and Arkansas NSF EPSCoR Track-1 DART.
The team compared the genomes of the 2022 virus to monkeypox genomes from a 2017 outbreak in Nigeria, plus sequenced genomes from localized outbreaks in 1965 and 1970. None of the previous monkeypox variants spread beyond their place of origin in Africa.
The UAMS team’s bioninformatics analysis using advanced genomic sequencing methods revealed 25 mutations, 14 of which appear to change protein function and bear further research, said Ussery.