Analysis of co-occurring and mutually exclusive amino acid changes and detection of convergent and divergent evolution events in SARS-CoV-2.

ABSTRACT: The inflation of SARS-CoV-2 lineages with a high number of accumulated mutations (such as the recent case of Omicron) has risen concerns about the evolutionary capacity of this virus. Here, we propose a computational study to examine non-synonymous mutations gathered within genomes of SARS-CoV-2 from the beginning of the pandemic until February 2022. We provide both qualitative and quantitative descriptions of such corpus, focusing on statistically significant co-occurring and mutually exclusive mutations within single genomes. Then, we examine in depth the distributions of mutations over defined lineages and compare those of frequently co-occurring mutation pairs. Based on this comparison, we study mutations' convergence/divergence on the phylogenetic tree. As a result, we identify 1,818

SUBMITTER: Al Khalaf R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9352683 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature