Mutations within the spike protein

RNA viruses mutate with unbelievible speed. With a genome size of ca. 30 000 bases and a mutation rate of 10^-5 hardly any offspring evades a mutation. But only a fraction is manifested on the protein level, many mutations lead to malfunction and thus are deleterious to the offspring, but a small percentage shows (multiplication-) advantages.
In many countries virus isolates are sequenced (the whole genetic information is evaluated). These sequences are collected in a databank (http://cov-glue.cvr.gla.ac.uk/#/replacement) and allow to correlate mutations to the spread of infections. So in february 2021 they listed 38 500 mutations in proteins of the whole cov2. I picked out mutations in the spike protein (in descending numbers of occurence) and stopped with an incidence of 200. The most abundent mutation: D614G occured 325384 times in all samples. All mutations are deviations from the original Wuhan strain. Today you find all over the world different strains.

Mutations found in the (replacement of one amino acid by another one) are depicted here (only the positions; any resulting conformational changes cannot be shown) .

this demonstration.

Literature:
structural data: 7ksg.pdb from P A Koenig et al, Science 2021, DOI 10.1126/SCIENCE.ABE6230