Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022:2452:3-18.
doi: 10.1007/978-1-0716-2111-0_1.

Evolution and Epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 Virus

Yu-Nong Gong  1   2 , Kuo-Ming Lee  1   3 , Shin-Ru Shih  4   5   6   7
Affiliations

Evolution and Epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 Virus

Yu-Nong Gong et al. Methods Mol Biol. 2022.

Abstract

A novel coronavirus (CoV) that emerged in Wuhan, Hubei province in China, in December 2019, has rapidly spread worldwide. Named as the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), this virus has been responsible for infecting about 153 million people and causing 3 million deaths by May 2021. There is obvious interest in gaining novel insights into the epidemiologic evolution of this virus; however, inappropriate application and interpretation of genomic and phylogenetic analyses has led to dangerous outcomes and misunderstandings. This chapter focuses on not only introducing this virus, its genomic characteristics and molecular mechanisms but also describing the application and interpretation of phylogenetic tree analyses, in order to provide useful information to better understand the evolution and epidemiology of this virus. In addition, recombinant region and genetic ancestry of SARS-CoV-2 remain unknown. It is urgently required to collect samples and obtain related viral genetic data from animal sources for identifying the intermediate host of SARS-CoV-2 that is responsible for its cross-species transmission.

Keywords: Coronavirus; Epidemiology; Evolution; Phylogenetic tree; Recombination; SARS-CoV-2.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Zhu N, Zhang D, Wang W, Li X, Yang B, Song J, Zhao X, Huang B, Shi W, Lu R, Niu P, Zhan F, Ma X, Wang D, Xu W, Wu G, Gao GF, Tan W, China Novel Coronavirus Investigating and Research Team (2020) A novel coronavirus from patients with pneumonia in China, 2019. N Engl J Med 382(8):727–733. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2001017 - DOI - PubMed - PMC
    1. Coronaviridae Study Group of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (2020) The species severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus: classifying 2019-nCoV and naming it SARS-CoV-2. Nat Microbiol 5(4):536–544. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-020-0695-z - DOI
    1. Dong E, Du H, Gardner L (2020) An interactive web-based dashboard to track COVID-19 in real time. Lancet Infect Dis 20(5):533–534. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30120-1 - DOI - PubMed - PMC
    1. Shu Y, McCauley J (2017) GISAID: global initiative on sharing all influenza data - from vision to reality. Euro Surveill 22(13):30494. https://doi.org/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2017.22.13.30494 - DOI - PubMed - PMC
    1. Lefkowitz EJ, Dempsey DM, Hendrickson RC, Orton RJ, Siddell SG, Smith DB (2018) Virus taxonomy: the database of the international committee on taxonomy of viruses (ICTV). Nucleic Acids Res 46(D1):D708–D717. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkx932 - DOI - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources