ELFT HÍRADÓ

[Kormányos Andor <andor.kormanyos AT ttk.elte.hu>]

ELTE TTK Fizikai Intézet / ELTE Institute of Physics


ORTVAY KOLLOKVIUM / ORTVAY COLLOQUIUM

(https://physics.elte.hu/ortvayseminar)


Thursday, 6th October  2022, 15:00h.


Pócza Jenő Classroom,  Physics Building 1.71

Pázmány Péter sétány 1/A, 1117 Budapest.


István Csabai

Eötvös Loránd University,  Dept. of Physics of Complex Systems


Mining genomic big data for the origin of COVID

The COVID-19 pandemic has been going on for almost three years now and 
although many hypotheses have been put forward, its origin remain obscure.  
We investigated whether the huge public sequencing data archives' samples 
collected earlier than the earliest known cases of the pandemic might contain 
traces of SARS-CoV-2. In the talk I will report the bioinformatic analysis of 
a metagenome sample set collected from soil on King George Island, Antarctica 
 between 2018-12-24 and 2019-01-13. Most probably as a result of 
contamination it contains sequence fragments matching the SARS-CoV-2 
reference genome with altogether more than half million nucleotides, covering 
the complete genome on average 17x.
The sequence contains a unique combination of mutations, unseen in other 
samples and phylogeny analysis places the sample close to the earliest known 
lineages. We could also find likely genetic footprint of the hosts. With 
reasonable confidence we could identify genetic material from mitochondria of 
Homo sapiens, green monkey and Chinese hamster. These most likely originate 
from cell lines like Vero E6 and CHO, which are frequent laboratory culture 
media for studying viruses including SARS-CoV-2 and its closest relatives.
Depending on the currently unknown collection date of the alleged 
contaminating samples the recovered data can add important piece of 
information to the puzzle of the origin of the pandemic.


The seminar can also be followed via Microsoft Teams:

https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3aebf01b0bbbee4addbc2d9612ea005607%40thread.tacv2/1664530625748?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22b366dbcd-4fc3-4451-82d2-e239564302c3%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22560bcc66-85b7-4700-9055-41903a3659ca%22%7d


Best regards,
Andor Kormányos
coordinator