Large-scale analysis of SARS-CoV-2 spike-glycoprotein mutants demonstrates the need for continuous screening of virus isolates

AbstractDue to the widespread of the COVID-19 pandemic, the SARS-CoV-2 genome is evolving in diverse human populations. Several studies already reported different strains and an increase in the mutation rate. Particularly, mutations in SARS-CoV-2 spike-glycoprotein are of great interest as it mediates infection in human and recently approved mRNA vaccines are designed to induce immune responses against it.We analyzed 146,917 SARS-CoV-2 genome assemblies and 2,393 NGS datasets from GISAID, NCBI Virus and NCBI SRA archives focusing on non-synonymous mutations in the spike protein.Only around 13.8% of the samples contained the wild-type spike protein with no variation from the reference. Among…