TABLE 4.

Functional characteristics of some important mutations.

Mutations	Functional characteristics
H69-	Leads to conformational changes in Spike protein (Meng et al., 2021; McCarthy et al., 2021)
V70-	Leads to conformational changes in Spike protein (Meng et al., 2021; McCarthy et al., 2021)
Y144-	Reduces affinity of antibody binding (McCarthy et al., 2021)
L452R	Increases the binding ability of the ACE2 receptor and can also reduce the attaching capability of vaccine-simulated antibodies with Spike protein (Garcia-Beltran et al., 2021)
T478K	Facilitates antibody escape (Planas et al., 2021)
E484Q	Associated with reduced sera neutralization (Greaney et al., 2021)
N501Y	Highest binding affinity with human receptor cell hACE2 and resistant to neutralization (Luan et al., 2021)
P681H	Near furin cleavage site, may affect transmissibility of the virus (Boehm et al., 2021)
P681R	Near furin cleavage site, may affect transmissibility of the virus (Boehm et al., 2021)