COVID-19 Patient Zero: Data Analysis Identifies the “Mother” of All SARS-CoV-2 Genomes

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

COVID-19 Patient Zero: Data Analysis Identifies the "Mother" of All SARS-CoV-2 Genomes:

In the field of molecular epidemiology, the worldwide scientific community has been sleuthing to solve the riddle of the early history of SARS-CoV-2.

Since the first SARS-CoV-2 virus infection was detected in December 2019, tens of thousands of its genomes have been sequenced worldwide, revealing that the coronavirus is mutating, albeit slowly, at a rate of 25 mutations per genome per year.

But despite major efforts, no one to date has identified the first case of human transmission, or "patient zero" in the COVID-19 pandemic. Finding such a case is necessary to better understand how the virus may have jumped from its animal host first to infect humans as well as the history of how the SARS-CoV-2 viral genome has mutated over time and spread globally.

"The SARS-CoV-2 virus is carrying an RNA genome that has already infected more than 35 million people across the world," said Sudhir Kumar, director of the Institute for Genomics and Evolutionary Medicine, Temple University. "We need to find this common ancestor, which we call the progenitor genome."

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