Evolutionary origins of the SARS-CoV-2 sarbecovirus lineage responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic
Maciej F Boni, Philippe Lemey, Xiaowei Jiang, Tommy Tsan-Yuk Lam, Blair Perry, Todd Castoe, Andrew Rambaut, David L Robertson
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.30.015008
Abstract
There are outstanding evolutionary questions on the recent emergence of coronavirus SARS-CoV-2/hCoV-19 in Hubei province that caused the COVID-19 pandemic, including (1) the relationship of the new virus to the SARS-related coronaviruses, (2) the role of bats as a reservoir species, (3) the potential role of other mammals in the emergence event, and (4) the role of recombination in viral emergence. Here, we address these questions and find that the sarbecoviruses -- the viral subgenus responsible for the emergence of SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 -- exhibit frequent recombination, but the SARS-CoV-2 lineage itself is not a recombinant of any viruses detected to date. In order to employ phylogenetic methods to date the divergence events between SARS-CoV-2 and the bat sarbecovirus reservoir, recombinant regions of a 68-genome sarbecovirus alignment were removed with three independent methods.
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