Link to bioRxiv paper: http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2020.11.01.363739v1?rss=1 Authors: Lou, J., Zhao, S., Cao, L., Chen, Z., Chan, R. W., Chong, M. K., Zee, B. C., Chan, P. K., Wang, M. H. Abstract: Background: During the pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the genetic mutations occurred in severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) cumulatively or sporadically. In this study, we employed a computational approach to identify and trace the emerging patterns of the SARS-CoV-2 mutations, and quantify accumulative genetic distance across different periods and proteins. Methods: Full-length human SARS-CoV-2 strains in United Kingdom were collected. We investigated the temporal variation in the evolutionary genetic distance defined by the Hamming distance since the start of COVID-19 pandemic. Findings: Our results showed that the SARS-CoV-2 was in the process of continuous evolution, mainly involved in spike protein (S protein), the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) region of open reading frame 1 (ORF1) and nucleocapsid protein (N protein). By contrast, mutations in other proteins were sporadic and genetic distance to the initial sequenced strain did not show an increasing trend. Copy rights belong to original authors. Visit the link for more info