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. 2022 Mar 9;13:854567. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2022.854567

Table 1.

Summary of the emerging SARS-CoV-2 ORF3a mutant variants.

Viral variants Pango*
lineage
First detection and location ORF3a mutations** Possible mutational effect and reference
Virus of Interest (VOI) ***
Lambda C.37 Peru, Dec-2020 None n/a
Mu B.1.621 Colombia, Jan-2021 Q57H, del256/257 V256/N257 are at a highly conserved region of the C-terminal
Epsilon B.1.427 California, USA, July 2020 Q57H It may render stronger binding affinity to S protein than wild-type ORF3a (Wu et al., 2021); also associates with disease severity (Nagy et al., 2021).
Virus of Concern (VOC) ***
Alpha B.1.1.7 United Kingdom, Sep-2020 None n/a
Beta B.1.351 South Africa, May-2020 Q57H, S171L S171 within β3; see note on Q57H
Gamma P.1 Brazil, Nov-2020 S253P, D155Y D155 at junction of β1 and β2 sheets; S253 within a well-conserved C-terminal end
Delta B.1.617.2 India, Oct-2020 S26L At the extracellular N-terminal
Omicron BA.1/B.1.1.529 South Africa Nov-2021 None n/a (Desingu et al., 2022; Saxena et al., 2022)
BA.2/B.1.1.529.2 South Africa Nov-2021 T223I T223I is at junction of β7 and β8 sheets (Desingu et al., 2022; Mahase, 2022)
BA.3/B.1.1.529.3 South Africa, Nov-2021 T223I T223I is at junction of β7 and β8 sheets (Desingu et al., 2022)

n/a, not applicable.

*

A phylogenetic name of a distinctive viral variant (Rambaut et al., 2020).

**

Data are from Stanford University Coronavirus Antiviral and Resistance Database (Tzou et al., 2020).

***

VOI and VOC are defined by WHO.