microbiology Microbiology () is the branches of science, scientific study of microorganisms, those being of unicellular organism, unicellular (single-celled), multicellular organism, multicellular (consisting of complex cells), or non-cellular life, acellula ...

and

virology Virology is the Scientific method, scientific study of biological viruses. It is a subfield of microbiology that focuses on their detection, structure, classification and evolution, their methods of infection and exploitation of host (biology), ...

, the term variant or genetic variant is used to describe a subtype of a microorganism that is genetically distinct from a main strain, but not sufficiently different to be termed a distinct strain. A similar distinction is made in botany between different cultivated varieties of a

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

of plant, termed

cultivar A cultivar is a kind of Horticulture, cultivated plant that people have selected for desired phenotypic trait, traits and which retains those traits when Plant propagation, propagated. Methods used to propagate cultivars include division, root a ...

Viruses

SARS-CoV-2

It was said in 2013 that "there is no universally accepted definition for the terms 'strain', 'variant', and 'isolate' in the virology community, and most virologists simply copy the usage of terms from others". The lack of precise definition continued in 2020; in the context of the

Variant of Concern 202012/01 The Alpha variant (B.1.1.7) was a SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern. It was estimated to be 40–80% more transmissible than the wild-type SARS-CoV-2 (with most estimates occupying the middle to higher end of this range). Scientists more wide ...

version of the

SARS-CoV-2 Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2) is a strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19, the respiratory illness responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. The virus previously had the Novel coronavirus, provisional nam ...

virus, the website of the US

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the National public health institutes, national public health agency of the United States. It is a Federal agencies of the United States, United States federal agency under the United S ...

(CDC) states, "For the time being in the context of this variant, the erms "variant", "strain", and "lineage"are generally being used interchangeably by the scientific community".

References

External links

Variant (biology)
– Biology Online Microbiology terms Virology Microbial population biology Genetics Infraspecific virus taxa Infraspecific bacteria taxa {{microbiology-stub