SARS-CoV-2 variant evolution in the United States: High accumulation of viral mutations over time likely through serial Founder Events and mutational bursts.

ABSTRACT: Since the first case of COVID-19 in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, SARS-CoV-2 has spread worldwide and within a year and a half has caused 3.56 million deaths globally. With dramatically increasing infection numbers, and the arrival of new variants with increased infectivity, tracking the evolution of its genome is crucial for effectively controlling the pandemic and informing vaccine platform development. Our study explores evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in a representative cohort of sequences covering the entire genome in the United States, through all of 2020 and early 2021. Strikingly, we detected many accumulating Single Nucleotide Variations (SNVs) encoding amino acid changes in the SARS-CoV-2 genome, with a pattern indicative of RNA editing enzymes as major mutators of SARS-CoV-2 genomes.

SUBMITTER: Tasakis RN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8301627 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature