Monkeypox is a DNA virus while SARS-COV-2 is an RNA virus; this means that the monkeypox genome is much longer (200,000 base pairs vs 30,000 base pairs). The current outbreak has 50 SNPs different from a virus sequenced a few years ago (https://virological.org/t/discussion-of-on-going-mpxv-genome-sequencing/802). Coincidentally, Omicron also has 50 SNPs different from the reference virus. So same amount of change in absolute numbers, but a much smaller amount in terms of the percentage of the genome.
Vastly less so, yes. At most it is like a new variant.
Could you quantify that?
Monkeypox is a DNA virus while SARS-COV-2 is an RNA virus; this means that the monkeypox genome is much longer (200,000 base pairs vs 30,000 base pairs). The current outbreak has 50 SNPs different from a virus sequenced a few years ago (https://virological.org/t/discussion-of-on-going-mpxv-genome-sequencing/802). Coincidentally, Omicron also has 50 SNPs different from the reference virus. So same amount of change in absolute numbers, but a much smaller amount in terms of the percentage of the genome.
Here’s the phylogenetic tree, if you’re interested:
https://nextstrain.org/monkeypox
this is exactly what I was hoping for, thank you.