Variation at Spike position 142 in SARS-CoV-2 Delta genomes is a technical artifact caused by dropout of a sequencing amplicon

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Abstract

Public SARS-CoV-2 genomes from the Delta lineage show complex and confusing patterns of mutations at Spike codon 142, and at another nearby position, Spike codon 95. It has been hypothesised that these represent recurrent mutations with interesting evolutionary dynamics, and that these mutations may affect viral load. Here we show that these patterns, and the relationship with viral load, are artifacts of sequencing difficulties in this region of the Delta genome caused be a deletion in the binding site for the 72_RIGHT primer of the ARTIC V3 schema. Spike G142D should be considered a lineage-defining mutation of Delta.

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2021.10.14.21264847: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Ethicsnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.


    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.


    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.

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


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