Abstract
SARS-CoV-2, the seventh coronavirus known to infect humans, can cause severe life-threatening respiratory pathologies. To better understand SARS-CoV-2 evolution, genome-wide analyses have been made, including the general characterization of its codons usage profile. Here we present a bioinformatic analysis of the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 codon usage over time using complete genomes collected since December 2019. Our results show that SARS-CoV-2 codon usage pattern is antagonistic to, and it is getting farther away from that of the human host. Further, a selection of deoptimized codons over time, which was accompanied by a decrease in both the codon adaptation index and the effective number of codons, was observed. All together, these findings suggest that SARS-CoV-2 could be evolving, at least from the perspective of the synonymous codon usage, to become less pathogenic.
Keywords: Betacoronavirus; COVID-19; Codon usage bias; SARS-CoV-2.
【저자키워드】 COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, Betacoronavirus, Codon usage bias, 【초록키워드】 SARS-CoV-2, coronavirus, Genome, Betacoronavirus, humans, Evolution of SARS-CoV-2, codon usage, SARS-CoV-2 evolution, Analysis, Perspective, life-threatening, human host, codon, pathogenic, bioinformatic analysis, Codons, infect, codon adaptation index, Complete, effective, decrease, synonymous, respiratory pathologies, collected, less, accompanied, antagonistic, 【제목키워드】 Evolution, SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 pandemic, codon usage, synonymous,