ArticleNature communications2020
No evidence for increased transmissibility from recurrent mutations in SARS-CoV-2.
Article in Nature communications, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 206 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
206 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 315 citations in OpenAlex.
- Prevalence of Chemosensory Dysfunction in COVID-19 Patients: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis Reveals Significant Ethnic Differences.ACS chemical neuroscience · 2020Pooled it
- Hyper-exponential growth in an epidemic model: some explicit solutions and their significance.Journal of mathematical biology · 2026Article
- Halved but Potent: Exploring the Inhibitory Property of Curcumin Derivatives Against Evolving SARS-CoV-2 Strains.The protein journal · 2026Article
- C > U mutations generate immunogenic peptides in SARS-CoV-2.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Heterogeneous Evolution Among SARS-CoV-2 Genes and Variants of Concern.Journal of medical virology · 2025Article
- Mycophenolic acid treatment drives the emergence of novel SARS-CoV-2 variants.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Measuring homoplasy I: comprehensive measures of maximum and minimum cost under parsimony across discrete cost matrix character types.Cladistics : the international journal of the Willi Hennig Society · 2025Article
- Article
- SARS-CoV-2 infection of domestic animals and their role in evolution and emergence of variants of concern.New microbes and new infections · 2024Review
- The impact of host microRNAs on the development of conserved mutations of SARS-CoV-2.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- COVID-19 mutations: An overview.World journal of methodology · 2024Review
- Evolutionary Invasion Analysis of Modern Epidemics Highlights the Context-Dependence of Virulence Evolution.Bulletin of mathematical biology · 2024Article
- Progressive Evolutionary Dynamics of Gene-Specific ω Led to the Emergence of Novel SARS-CoV-2 Strains Having Super-Infectivity and Virulence with Vaccine Neutralization.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Article
- Analysis of the Spread and Evolution of COVID-19 Mutations in Ecuador Using Open Data.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Properties and Mechanisms of Deletions, Insertions, and Substitutions in the Evolutionary History of SARS-CoV-2.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
- SARS-CoV-2 and innate immunity: the good, the bad, and the "goldilocks".Cellular & molecular immunology · 2024Review
- An elusive debate on the evidence for RNA editing in SARS-CoV-2.RNA biology · 2024Article
- Emergence of Omicron FN.1 a descendent of BQ.1.1 in Botswana.Virus evolution · 2024Article
- Phylogenetic signatures reveal multilevel selection and fitness costs in SARS-CoV-2.Wellcome open research · 2024Article
- Online Phylogenetics with matOptimize Produces Equivalent Trees and is Dramatically More Efficient for Large SARS-CoV-2 Phylogenies than de novo and Maximum-Likelihood Implementations.Systematic biology · 2023Article
146 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
COVID-19 is caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which jumped into the human population in late 2019 from a currently uncharacterised animal reservoir. Due to this recent association with humans, SARS-CoV-2 may not yet be fully adapted to its human host. This has led to speculations that SARS-CoV-2 may be evolving towards higher transmissibility. The most plausible mutations under putative natural selection are those which have emerged repeatedly and independently (homoplasies). Here, we formally test whether any homoplasies observed in SARS-CoV-2 to date are significantly associated with increased viral transmission. To do so, we develop a phylogenetic index to quantify the relative number of descendants in sister clades with and without a specific allele. We apply this index to a curated set of recurrent mutations identified within a dataset of 46,723 SARS-CoV-2 genomes isolated from patients worldwide. We do not identify a single recurrent mutation in this set convincingly associated with increased viral transmission. Instead, recurrent mutations currently in circulation appear to be evolutionary neutral and primarily induced by the human immune system via RNA editing, rather than being signatures of adaptation. At this stage we find no evidence for significantly more transmissible lineages of SARS-CoV-2 due to recurrent mutations.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.