CARBONDALE (WSIL) -- The list of COVID-19 mutations continues to grow after researchers at SIU discovered a new variant of the virus.
The associate professor of biochemistry Keith Gagnon says during the holiday break his team was looking for the U.K. variant and found a new one.
SIU says an article detailing the discovery,  was submitted on Monday, Jan. 11, to BioRxiv, a preprint server that SIU says is aimed at quickly disseminating research while it undergoes peer review.Â
Gagnon says this variant has been in the U.S. for months and has been largely uncharacterized.
He says the virus is constantly changing as it transfers through the population, but the team's new research could determine how the virus works and help health departments respond to the pandemic.
He says they are also observing the variant's response to the vaccine.
"The variant is constantly evolving and changing and has recently acquired some mutations in its spike protein and one of those might be of concern for whether or not the vaccine would work but at this point, we don't think it would make a major difference, but it needs to be monitored and this is again an ongoing process," he said.
He also told News 3 this variant seems to have gained dominance in the U.S.
for the past few months and estimates one out of every two genomes in America is this variant.
Multiple variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, have been identified around the world, including in the Netherlands, Australia and South Africa.Â
There's still a lot of unknowns at this time with this discovery but he says they'll continue to monitor this research.
