Preprint Technical Note Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

Noisy Genome Data and Faulty Clade Statistics Undermine Conclusions on SARS-CoV-2 Evolution and Strain Typing in the Brazilian Epidemy: A Technical Note

Marcelo R. S. Briones
* ORCID logo ,
Fernando Antoneli
,
Renata C. Ferreira
,
Isabel M. V. G. Carvalho
,
Luiz M. R. Janini
Version 1 : Received: 27 August 2020 / Approved: 30 August 2020 / Online: 30 August 2020 (11:22:12 CEST)

A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.

Campos, J.H.C.; Maricato, J.T.; Braconi, C.T.; Antoneli, F.; Janini, L.M.R.; Briones, M.R.S. Direct RNA Sequencing Reveals SARS-CoV-2 m6A Sites and Possible Differential DRACH Motif Methylation among Variants. Viruses 2021, 13, 2108. Campos, J.H.C.; Maricato, J.T.; Braconi, C.T.; Antoneli, F.; Janini, L.M.R.; Briones, M.R.S. Direct RNA Sequencing Reveals SARS-CoV-2 m6A Sites and Possible Differential DRACH Motif Methylation among Variants. Viruses 2021, 13, 2108.

Abstract

We show that low quality of all 427 Brazilian SARS-CoV-2 genomes recently published in Science (1) challenges their phylogenetic inference and may lead to incorrect typing of viral strains in clades with no statistical support. Absence of basecalling quality in genome assemblies and proper phylogeny parameter estimates preclude the assessment of signal-to-noise ratio in the data, downstream analysis and conclusions.

Keywords

SARS-CoV-2; COVID-19; Viral Evolution

Subject

Biology and Life Sciences, Virology

Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Comments (1)

Comment 1
Received: 3 September 2020
Commenter:
Daniel Ferreira de Lima Neto

The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Comment: The claims herein are of the utmost seriousness, the authors have scrutinized the data from the original article and came up with important contributions to the science put forward. Attention must be given to the findings.
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