Abstract
The novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has become a pandemic and is threatening human health globally. Here, we report nine newly evolved SARS-CoV-2 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) alleles those underwent a rapid increase (seven cases) or decrease (two cases) in their frequency for 30-80% in the initial four months, which are further confirmed by intrahost single nucleotide variation analysis using raw sequence data including 8,217 samples. The nine SNPs are mostly (8/9) located in the coding region and are mainly (6/9) nonsynonymous substitutions. The nine SNPs show a complete linkage in SNP pairs and belong to three different linkage groups, named LG_1 to LG_3. Analyses in population genetics show signatures of adaptive selection toward the mutants in LG_1, but no signal of selection for LG_2. Population genetic analysis results on LG_3 show geological differentiation. Analyses on geographic COVID-19 cases and published clinical data provide evidence that the mutants in LG_1 and LG_3 benefit virus replication and those in LG_1 have a positive correlation with the disease severity in COVID-19-infected patients. The mutants in LG_2 show a bias toward mildness of the disease based on available public clinical data. Our findings may be instructive for epidemiological surveys and disease control of COVID-19 in the future.
Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; SNP; iSNV; mutants.
【저자키워드】 COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, iSNV, SNP, mutants., 【초록키워드】 pandemic, adaptive, Population genetics, severity, disease severity, Variation, iSNV, polymorphism, genetics, Population, Novel coronavirus, Health, Single nucleotide polymorphism, disease control, virus replication, epidemiological survey, mutants, mutant, disease, single nucleotide, patients, Evidence, nucleotide, Frequency, Analysis, epidemiological surveys, linkage groups, Clinical data, COVID-19 case, positive correlation, sequence, coding region, rapid increase, allele, genetic analysis, Population genetic analysis, Complete, benefit, decrease, Seven, initial, nonsynonymous substitutions, the disease, nine, groups, 【제목키워드】 Single nucleotide polymorphism, Rapid, strain, Revealed,