Missouriwatcher
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ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPTAn evolutionary portrait of the progenitor SARS-CoV-2 and its dominant offshoots in COVID-19 pandemic
Sudhir Kumar, Qiqing Tao, Steven Weaver, Maxwell Sanderford, Marcos A Caraballo-Ortiz, Sudip Sharma, Sergei L K Pond, Sayaka Miura
Molecular Biology and Evolution, msab118, https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msab118
Published: 04 May 2021
...We report the likely most recent common ancestor of SARS-CoV-2, reconstructed through a novel application and advancement of computational methods initially developed to infer the mutational history of tumor cells in a patient. This progenitor genome differs from genomes of the first coronaviruses sampled in China by three variants, implying that none of the earliest patients represent the index case or gave rise to all the human infections. However, multiple coronavirus infections in China and the USA harbored the progenitor genetic fingerprint in January 2020 and later, suggesting that the progenitor was spreading worldwide months before and after the first reported cases of COVID-19 in China...
https://academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-article/doi/10.1093/molbev/msab118/6257226
Sudhir Kumar, Qiqing Tao, Steven Weaver, Maxwell Sanderford, Marcos A Caraballo-Ortiz, Sudip Sharma, Sergei L K Pond, Sayaka Miura
Molecular Biology and Evolution, msab118, https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msab118
Published: 04 May 2021
...We report the likely most recent common ancestor of SARS-CoV-2, reconstructed through a novel application and advancement of computational methods initially developed to infer the mutational history of tumor cells in a patient. This progenitor genome differs from genomes of the first coronaviruses sampled in China by three variants, implying that none of the earliest patients represent the index case or gave rise to all the human infections. However, multiple coronavirus infections in China and the USA harbored the progenitor genetic fingerprint in January 2020 and later, suggesting that the progenitor was spreading worldwide months before and after the first reported cases of COVID-19 in China...
https://academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-article/doi/10.1093/molbev/msab118/6257226