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

ABSTRACT

The ability to predict emerging variants of SARS-CoV-2 would be of enormous value, as it would enable proactive design of vaccines in advance of such emergence. We estimated diversity of each site on a multiple sequence alignment (MSA) of the Spike (S) proteins from close relatives of SARS-CoV-2 that infected bat and pangolin before the pandemic. Then we compared the locations of high diversity sites in this MSA and those of mutations found in multiple emerging lineages of human-infecting SARS-CoV-2. This comparison revealed a significant correspondence, which suggests that a limited number of sites in this protein are repeatedly substituted in different lineages of this group of viruses. It follows, therefore, that the sites of future emerging mutations in SARS-CoV-2 can be predicted by analyzing their relatives (outgroups) that have infected non-human hosts. We discuss a possible evolutionary basis for these substitutions and provide a list of frequently substituted sites that potentially include future emerging variants in SARS-CoV-2.