NATIONWIDE -- It may be the latest tool in combating the global coronavirus.
According to published findings, a team of Western biologists and computer scientists, using machine learning, has cracked the genomic signature for 29 different COVID-19 DNA sequences.
What does that mean? Researchers will now be able to classify a deadly virus such as COVID-19 in mere minutes, which will help significantly for strategic planning and mobilizing a medical response during a pandemic.
In addition, the research supports the theory that the current novel coronavirus originally came from bats.
The machine-learning method is said to achieve 100 percent accurate classification of COVID-19 sequences.
Most importantly, researchers believe the tool will be able to quickly classify any newly discovered virus sequence, COVID-19 and otherwise, and become an important component in the development of a vaccine.