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Within-host diversity improves phylogenetic and transmission reconstruction of SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks

Ortiz, Arturo Torres; Kendall, Michelle; Storey, Nathaniel; Hatcher, James; Dunn, Helen; Roy, Sunando; Williams, Rachel; ... Grandjean, Louis; + view all (2023) Within-host diversity improves phylogenetic and transmission reconstruction of SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks. eLife , Article e84384. 10.7554/eLife.84384. (In press). Green open access

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Abstract

Accurate inference of who infected whom in an infectious disease outbreak is critical for the delivery of effective infection prevention and control. The increased resolution of pathogen whole-genome sequencing has significantly improved our ability to infer transmission events. Despite this, transmission inference often remains limited by the lack of genomic variation between the source case and infected contacts. Although within-host genetic diversity is common among a wide variety of pathogens, conventional whole-genome sequencing phylogenetic approaches exclusively use consensus sequences, which consider only the most prevalent nucleotide at each position and therefore fail to capture low-frequency variation within samples. We hypothesized that including within-sample variation in a phylogenetic model would help to identify who infected whom in instances in which this was previously impossible. Using whole-genome sequences from SARS-CoV-2 multi-institutional outbreaks as an example, we show how within-sample diversity is partially maintained among repeated serial samples from the same host, it can transmitted between those cases with known epidemiological links, and how this improves phylogenetic inference and our understanding of who infected whom. Our technique is applicable to other infectious diseases and has immediate clinical utility in infection prevention and control.

Type: Article
Title: Within-host diversity improves phylogenetic and transmission reconstruction of SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks
Location: England
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.7554/eLife.84384
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.84384
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright © 2023, Torres Ortiz et al. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences > Div of Infection and Immunity
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health > Genetics and Genomic Medicine Dept
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health > Infection, Immunity and Inflammation Dept
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10181004
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