VOC-alarm: mutation-based prediction of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern.

ABSTRACT:

Summary

Mutation is the key for a variant of concern (VOC) to overcome selective pressures, but this process is still unclear. Understanding the association of the mutational process with VOCs is an unmet need. Motivation: Here, we developed VOC-alarm, a method to predict VOCs and their caused COVID surges, using mutations of about 5.7 million SARS-CoV-2 complete sequences. We found that VOCs rely on lineage-level entropy value of mutation numbers to compete with other variants, suggestive of the importance of population-level mutations in the virus evolution. Thus, we hypothesized that VOCs are a result of a mutational process across the globe. Results: Analyzing the mutations from January 2020 to December 2021, we simulated the mutational process by estimating the pace of evoluti

SUBMITTER: Zhao H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9272809 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature