A Noncoding A-to-U Kozak Site Change Related to the High Transmissibility of Alpha, Delta, and Omicron VOCs.

ABSTRACT: Three prevalent SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOCs) emerged and caused epidemic waves. It is essential to uncover advantageous mutations that cause the high transmissibility of VOCs. However, viral mutations are tightly linked, so traditional population genetic methods, including machine learning-based methods, cannot reliably detect mutations conferring a fitness advantage. In this study, we developed an approach based on the sequential occurrence order of mutations and the accelerated furcation rate in the pandemic-scale phylogenomic tree. We analyzed 3,777,753 high-quality SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequences and the epidemiology metadata using the Coronavirus GenBrowser. We found that two noncoding mutations at the same position (g.a28271-/u) may be crucial to the high transmissibility of Al

SUBMITTER: Yang J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10287536 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature