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Single Droplet Digital Polymerase Chain Reaction for Comprehensive and Simultaneous Detection of Mutations in Hotspot Regions
Published on: September 25, 2018
Comparative analysis of mutational hotspots in the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 isolates from different geographic
Sanghoo Lee1, Mi-Kyeong Lee2, Hyeongkyun Na1
1Center for Companion Biomarker, Seoul Clinical Laboratories (SCL) Healthcare Inc., Republic of Korea.
Abstract:
The spike (S) protein mutations of SARS-CoV-2 are of major concern in terms of viral transmission and pathogenesis. Hence, we developed a PCR-based method to rapidly detect the 6 mutational hotspots (H49Y, G476S, V483A, H519Q, A520S, and D614G) in the S protein and applied this method to analyze the hotspots in the viral isolates from different geographical origins. Here, we identified that there was only the D614G mutation in the viral isolates. As of September 30, 2020, the analysis of 113,381 sequences available from the public repositories revealed that the SARS-CoV-2 variant carrying G614 has become the most prevalent form globally. Our results support recent epidemiological and genomic data demonstrating that the viral infectivity and transmission are enhanced by the S protein D614G mutation.
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