By Peter Simmonds
Source biorxiv
ABSTRACT
The evolution of SARS-CoV2 in the pandemic and post-pandemic periods has been characterised by rapid adaptive changes that confer immune escape and enhanced human-to-human transmissibility. Sequence change is additionally marked by an excess number of C->U transitions suggested as being due to host-mediated genome editing. To investigate how therse influence the evolutionary trajectory of SARS-CoV-2, 2000 high quality, coding complete genome sequences of SARS-CoV-2 variants collected pre-September, 2020, and from each subsequently appearing alpha, delta, BA.1, BA.2, BA.5, XBB, EG, HK and JN.1 lineages were downloaded from NCBI Virus in April, 2024. C->U transitions were the most common substitution during diversification of SARS-CoV-2 lineages over the 4-year observation period.
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