Rapid evolution of SARS-CoV-2 challenges human defenses
This article has been Reviewed by the following groups
Listed in
- Evaluated articles (ScreenIT)
Abstract
The race between pathogens and their hosts is a major evolutionary driver, where both reshuffle their genomes to overcome and reorganize the defenses for infection, respectively. Evolutionary theory helps formulate predictions on the future evolutionary dynamics of SARS-CoV-2, which can be monitored through unprecedented real-time tracking of SARS-CoV-2 population genomics at the global scale. Here we quantify the accelerating evolution of SARS-CoV-2 by tracking the SARS-CoV-2 mutation globally, with a focus on the Receptor Binding Domain (RBD) of the spike protein determining infection success. We estimate that the > 820 million people that had been infected by October 5, 2021, produced up to 10 21 copies of the virus, with 12 new effective RBD variants appearing, on average, daily. Doubling of the number of RBD variants every 89 days, followed by selection of the most infective variants challenges our defenses and calls for a shift to anticipatory, rather than reactive tactics involving collaborative global sequencing and vaccination.
Article activity feed
-
-
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.03.27.437300: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank …
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.03.27.437300: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
-
