Emerging genetic diversity of SARS-CoV-2 RNA dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) alters its B-cell epitopes

  1. Sushant Kumar
  2. Gajendra Kumar Azad

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Abstract

The RNA dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) plays crucial role in virus life cycle by replicating the viral RNA genome. The SARS-CoV-2 is an RNA virus that rapidly spread worldwide and during this process acquired mutations. This study was carried out to identify mutations in RdRp as the SARS-CoV-2 spread in India. We compared the 668 RdRp sequences reported from India with the first reported RdRp sequence from Wuhan, China. Our data revealed that RdRp have acquired sixty mutations among Indian isolates. Our protein modelling study also revealed that several mutants including D833Y, A699S, Y149C and C464F can potentially alter stability and flexibility of RdRp. We also predicted the potential B cell epitopes contributed by RdRp and identified thirty-six linear continuous and twenty-five discontinuous epitopes. Among sixty RdRp mutants identified in this study, 40% of them localises in the B cell epitopes region. Altogether, this study highlights the need to identify and characterize the variations in RdRp to understand the impact of these mutations on SARS-CoV-2.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.05.04.442686: (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.

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    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
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    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.05.04.442686 on bioRxiv