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; Fernando Antoneli; Renata C. Ferreira; Isabel M. V. G. Carvalho; Luiz M. R. Janini

doi:10.20944/preprints202008.0659.v1

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.

Journal reference: Viruses 2021, 13, 2108
DOI: 10.3390/v13112108

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.

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

Abstract

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Subject

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