Genetic diversity of SARS-CoV-2

Abstract

    The rapidly spreading disease caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2  (SARS-CoV-2) is endangering people’s health, lives and the entire global economy. By the beginning of 2021, the strategies of COVID-19 vaccination and method of treatment with drugs supplement have been implemented and researched in many countries. The genetic modifications of SARS-CoV-2 that give them resistance to drugs and vaccines for the virus survival and infection ability have also been studied. At the same time, new dangerous SARS-CoV-2 strains are continuously being announced by WHO such as Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Eta, Iota, Kappa, Lambda, Mu and many unnamed strains. Therefore, genetic diversity analysis is essential to provide an overview of the spread of SARS-CoV-2 variables, providing benefit information for epidemiology researches and other genetic studies. The results of this study suggest that the Alpha variant could be the source of the global pandemic. We also identified four groups of dangerous variants: The Gamma variant shares sequence similarity with the Eta variant, the Beta variant is highly similar to the Iota and Mu variants, the Delta variant is related to the Kappa variant, and the Alpha variant is closely related to the Zeta and Lambda variants.