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Updated: Nov 13, 2025

Determining the Likelihood of Variant Pathogenicity Using Amino Acid-level Signal-to-Noise Analysis of Genetic Variation
Published on: January 16, 2019
Pattern of genomic variation in SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) suggests restricted nonrandom changes: Analysis using Shewhart
Saurav Mandal1, Tanmoy Roychowdhury, Alok Bhattacharya
1School of Computational and Integrative Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.
Abstract:
SARS-CoV-2 is a member of the Coronavirus family which recently originated from the Wuhan province of China and spread very rapidly through the world infecting more than 4 million people. In the past, other Coronaviruses have also been found to cause human infection, but not as widespread as COVID-19. Since Coronavirus sequences constantly change due to mutation and recombination, it is important to understand the pattern of changes and likely path the virus can take in the future. In this study, we have used the Shewhart control chart to identify and analyze hypervariable (hotspots) and hypovariable (coldspots) regions of the virus. Our analysis shows that SARS-CoV-2 has changed in a few regions of the genome. Analysis of SARS-CoV-1 and MERS sequences suggests that over time, mutations start accumulating in different regions and most likely SARS-CoV-2 may also follow a similar path. The results suggest a possible emergence of modified viruses over some time.
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