Preventing future zoonosis: SARS-CoV-2 mutations enhance human-animal cross-transmission.

ABSTRACT: The COVID-19 pandemic has driven substantial evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, yielding subvariants that exhibit enhanced infectiousness in humans. However, this adaptive advantage may not universally extend to zoonotic transmission. In this work, we hypothesize that viral adaptations favoring animal hosts do not necessarily correlate with increased human infectivity. In addition, we consider the potential for gain-of-function mutations that could facilitate the virus's rapid evolution in humans following adaptation in animal hosts. Specifically, we identify the SARS-CoV-2 receptor-binding domain (RBD) mutations that enhance human-animal cross-transmission. To this end, we construct a multitask deep learning model, MT-TopLap trained on multiple deep mutational scanning datasets, to accura

SUBMITTER: Wee J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11560627 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature