This coronavirus mutation has taken over the world. Scientists are trying to understand why.

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The mutation’s success might also be a “founder effect,” she said. Arriving in a place like Northern Italy — where the vast majority of sequenced infections are caused by the G variant — it found easy purchase in an older and largely unprepared population, which then unwittingly spread it far and wide.

“I think that slowly we’re beginning to come to a consensus,” said Judd Hultquist, a virologist at Northwestern University.

Solving the mystery of the D614G mutation won’t make much of a difference in the short term, Andersen said. “We were unable to deal with D,” he said. “If G transmits even better, we’re going to be unable to deal with that one.”

But it’s still essential to understand how the genome influences the behavior of the virus, scientists say. Identifying emerging mutations allows researchers to track their spread. Knowing what genes affect how the virus transmits enables public health officials to tailor their efforts to contain it. Once therapeutics and vaccines are distributed on a large scale, having a baseline understanding of the genome will help pinpoint when drug resistance starts to evolve.