Viral population genomics reveals host and infectivity impact on SARS-CoV-2 adaptive landscape

ABSTRACT

Public health surveillance, drug treatment development, and optimization of immunological interventions all depend on understanding pathogen adaptation, which differ for specific pathogens. SARS-CoV-2 is an exceptionally successful human pathogen, yet complete understanding of the forces driving its evolution is lacking. Here, we leveraged almost four million SARS-CoV-2 sequences originating mostly from non-vaccinated naive patients to investigate the impact of functional constraints and natural immune pressures on the sequence diversity of the SARS-CoV-2 genome. Overall, we showed that the SARS-CoV-2 genome is under strong and intensifying levels of purifying selection with a minority of sites under diversifying pressure. With a particular focus on the spike protein, we showed that sites under selection were critical for protein stability and virus fitness related to increased infectivity and/or reduced neutralization by convalescent sera. We investigated the genetic diversity of SARS-CoV-2 B and T cell epitopes and determined that the currently known T cell epitope sequences were highly conserved. Outside of the spike protein, we observed that mutations under selection in variants of concern can be associated to beneficial outcomes for the virus. Altogether, the results yielded a comprehensive map of all sites under selection across the entirety of SARS-CoV-2 genome, highlighting targets for future studies to better understand the virus spread, evolution and success.