Emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants follow a historical pattern recorded in outgroups infecting non-human hosts

Abstract

In order to improve our ability to predict emerging variants of SARS-CoV-2, Katoh and Standley analysed the molecular evolution of the Spike protein. They found a significant correspondence in the location of mutations between recently emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants and their relatives that infected bat and pangolin before the pandemic, which could suggest that the sites of future mutations could be predicted by analyzing their relatives that have infected non-human hosts.