Investigating the likely association between genetic ancestry and COVID-19 manifestation (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ranajit Das ◽  
Sudeep D Ghate

UNSTRUCTURED The novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV/SARS-CoV-2 infection has shown discernible variability across the globe. While in some countries people are recovering relatively quicker, in others, recovery times have been comparatively longer and numbers of those succumbing to it high. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the likely association between an individual’s ancestry and the extent of COVID-19 manifestation employing Europeans as the case study. We employed 10,215 ancient and modern genomes across the globe assessing 597,573 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Pearson’s correlation coefficient (r) between various ancestry proportions of European genomes and COVID-19 death/recovery ratio was calculated and its significance was statistically evaluated. We found significant positive correlation (p=0.03) between European Mesolithic hunter gatherers (WHG) ancestral fractions and COVID-19 death/recovery ratio and a marginally significant negative correlation (p=0.06) between Neolithic Iranian ancestry fractions and COVID-19 death/recovery ratio. We further identified 404 immune response related single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) by comparing publicly available 753 genomes from various European countries against 838 genomes from various Eastern Asian countries in a genome wide association study (GWAS). Prominently, we identified that SNPs associated with Interferon stimulated antiviral response, Interferon-stimulated gene 15 mediated antiviral mechanism and 2′-5′ oligoadenylate synthase mediated antiviral response show large differences in allele frequencies between Europeans and East Asians. Overall, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study evaluating the likely association between genetic ancestry and COVID-19 manifestation. While our current findings improve our overall understanding of the COVID-19, we note that the development of effective therapeutics will benefit immensely from more detailed analyses of individual genomic sequence data from COVID-19 patients of varied ancestries.

Author(s):  
Ranajit Das ◽  
Sudeep D. Ghate

AbstractThe novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV/SARS-CoV-2 infection has shown discernible variability across the globe. While in some countries people are recovering relatively quicker, in others, recovery times have been comparatively longer and numbers of those succumbing to it high. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the likely association between an individual’s ancestry and the extent of COVID-19 manifestation employing Europeans as the case study. We employed 10,215 ancient and modern genomes across the globe assessing 597,573 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Pearson’s correlation coefficient (r) between various ancestry proportions of European genomes and COVID-19 death/recovery ratio was calculated and its significance was statistically evaluated. We found significant positive correlation (p=0.03) between European Mesolithic hunter gatherers (WHG) ancestral fractions and COVID-19 death/recovery ratio and a marginally significant negative correlation (p=0.06) between Neolithic Iranian ancestry fractions and COVID-19 death/recovery ratio. We further identified 404 immune response related single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) by comparing publicly available 753 genomes from various European countries against 838 genomes from various Eastern Asian countries in a genome wide association study (GWAS). Prominently, we identified that SNPs associated with Interferon stimulated antiviral response, Interferon-stimulated gene 15 mediated antiviral mechanism and 2′-5′ oligoadenylate synthase mediated antiviral response show large differences in allele frequencies between Europeans and East Asians. Overall, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study evaluating the likely association between genetic ancestry and COVID-19 manifestation. While our current findings improve our overall understanding of the COVID-19, we note that the development of effective therapeutics will benefit immensely from more detailed analyses of individual genomic sequence data from COVID-19 patients of varied ancestries.


2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (8) ◽  
pp. 2369-2385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laure Olazcuaga ◽  
Anne Loiseau ◽  
Hugues Parrinello ◽  
Mathilde Paris ◽  
Antoine Fraimout ◽  
...  

Abstract Evidence is accumulating that evolutionary changes are not only common during biological invasions but may also contribute directly to invasion success. The genomic basis of such changes is still largely unexplored. Yet, understanding the genomic response to invasion may help to predict the conditions under which invasiveness can be enhanced or suppressed. Here, we characterized the genome response of the spotted wing drosophila Drosophila suzukii during the worldwide invasion of this pest insect species, by conducting a genome-wide association study to identify genes involved in adaptive processes during invasion. Genomic data from 22 population samples were analyzed to detect genetic variants associated with the status (invasive versus native) of the sampled populations based on a newly developed statistic, we called C2, that contrasts allele frequencies corrected for population structure. We evaluated this new statistical framework using simulated data sets and implemented it in an upgraded version of the program BayPass. We identified a relatively small set of single-nucleotide polymorphisms that show a highly significant association with the invasive status of D. suzukii populations. In particular, two genes, RhoGEF64C and cpo, contained single-nucleotide polymorphisms significantly associated with the invasive status in the two separate main invasion routes of D. suzukii. Our methodological approaches can be applied to any other invasive species, and more generally to any evolutionary model for species characterized by nonequilibrium demographic conditions for which binary covariables of interest can be defined at the population level.


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