Microevolution of Outbreak-Associated Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus, South Korea, 2015

Abstract

During the 2015 Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus outbreak in South Korea, we sequenced full viral genomes of strains isolated from 4 patients early and late during infection. Patients represented at least 4 generations of transmission. We found no evidence of changes in the evolutionary rate and no reason to suspect adaptive changes in viral proteins.

Keywords

• Middle East respiratory syndrome
• MERS-CoV
• coronavirus
• phylogenetic analysis
• genome sequencing
• viruses