Origin-independent analysis links SARS-CoV-2 local genomes with COVID-19 incidence and mortality.

ABSTRACT: There is an urgent public health need to better understand Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)-CoV-2/COVID-19, particularly how sequences of the viruses could lead to diverse incidence and mortality of COVID-19 in different countries. However, because of its unknown ancestors and hosts, elucidating the genetic variations of the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, has been difficult. Without needing to know ancestors, we identified an uneven distribution of local genome similarities among the viruses categorized by geographic regions, and it was strongly correlated with incidence and mortality. To ensure unbiased and origin-independent analyses, we used a pairwise comparison of local genome sequences of virus genomes by Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST). We found a strong statistica

SUBMITTER: Yang W 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7543285 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature