Epidemiological associations with genomic variation in SARS-CoV-2.

ABSTRACT: SARS-CoV-2 (CoV) is the etiological agent of the COVID-19 pandemic and evolves to evade both host immune systems and intervention strategies. We divided the CoV genome into 29 constituent regions and applied novel analytical approaches to identify associations between CoV genomic features and epidemiological metadata. Our results show that nonstructural protein 3 (nsp3) and Spike protein (S) have the highest variation and greatest correlation with the viral whole-genome variation. S protein variation is correlated with nsp3, nsp6, and 3'-to-5' exonuclease variation. Country of origin and time since the start of the pandemic were the most influential metadata associated with genomic variation, while host sex and age were the least influential. We define a novel statistic-coherence-and show

SUBMITTER: Rahnavard A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8626494 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature