RE: The Chuckle Brothers23 Mar 2022 15:21
Interesting article.
I had not realised that UV would cause the virus to mutate!
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7571309/
" Although the effectiveness of UV irradiation on the infectivity of viruses and the nucleic acid of the virion is well documented, an increased environmental UV dose is likely to lead to an increased rate of viral mutation.31 The virus can replicate even in the presence of induced mutations, but the effect on the viral genes could be different.32 The lethal effect of the UV-induced nucleic acid (DNA or RNA) damage depends on the location of changes within the viral genome.33 In addition, many mutations will not have any discernible effect on the virus, as they are repaired by the host nucleic acid repair mechanism. The majority of the mutations diminish the infectivity of the viruses since most viral genes have a specific role to perform. However, some mutations may lead to the evolution of more pathogenic viruses. For instance, a novel receptor-binding protein can be synthesized within the virus structure that enables the virus to infect a different cell type in host. It is also likely that some UV-resistant strains of viruses will emerge, perhaps as a result of evolving a thicker capsid structure to protect the nucleic acid from UVC damage.33"