A method for detecting transmission-enhancing mutations in viral genomes

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic of 2020 was characterized by outbreaks of viral strains exhibiting increased rates of between-host transmission, so-called variants of concern . These outbreaks highlighted the need for better tools for identifying the genetic basis for transmission-rate variation. Here, we develop a Bayesian method based on a stochastic birth-death-mutation-sampling model for estimating which nucleotide mutations increase rates of transmission using viral genome sequences. We use simulation to show that the approach accurately discriminates between mutations that increase the transmission rate and those that do not. We apply the method to global SARS-CoV-2 sequences from 2020 to show that the method identifies transmission-enhancing mutations (TEMs) that are consistent with subsequent findings and that the predicted dynamics of the spread of identified TEMs based on genomic estimates of R0 match those observed in early 2021.