The DOI matches its Crossref record; 70 of the 70 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Evolutionary origins of the SARS-CoV-2 sarbecovirus lineage responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic
Open accessPublished version of a preprint
Abstract
There are outstanding evolutionary questions on the recent emergence of human coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 including the role of reservoir species, the role of recombination and its time of divergence from animal viruses. We find that the sarbecoviruses-the viral subgenus containing SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2-undergo frequent recombination and exhibit spatially structured genetic diversity on a regional scale in China. SARS-CoV-2 itself is not a recombinant of any sarbecoviruses detected to date, and its receptor-binding motif, important for specificity to human ACE2 receptors, appears to be an ancestral trait shared with bat viruses and not one acquired recently via recombination. To employ phylogenetic dating methods, recombinant regions of a 68-genome sarbecovirus alignment were removed with three independent methods. Bayesian evolutionary rate and divergence date estimates were shown to be consistent for these three approaches and for two different prior specifications of evolutionary rates based on HCoV-OC43 and MERS-CoV. Divergence dates between SARS-CoV-2 and the bat sarbecovirus reservoir were estimated as 1948 (95% highest posterior density (HPD): 1879-1999), 1969 (95% HPD: 1930-2000) and 1982 (95% HPD: 1948-2009), indicating that the lineage giving rise to SARS-CoV-2 has been circulating unnoticed in bats for decades.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“Although the proximal origins are unknown, SARS-CoV-2 is thought to derive from a bat SARS-CoV-related coronavirus with a furin cleavage site that enhances the capacity of the virus to infect human cells.48, 49”
From The Lancet Commission on lessons for the future from the COVID-19 pandemic (2022) · cites this paper as [48]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
RAxML version 8: a tool for phylogenetic analysis and post-analysis of large phylogenies
Stamatakis, A. (2014) · Bioinformatics · doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btu033 · Cited by 32,291 · cited 2×
“2.8 (Stamatakis, 2014, 2006), GTR+Γ model, 100 bootstrap replicates – was inferred for each BFR longer than 500nt.”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialIQ-TREE: A Fast and Effective Stochastic Algorithm for Estimating Maximum-Likelihood Phylogenies
Nguyen, L.-T., Schmidt, H. A., von Haeseler, A., & Minh, B. Q. (2015) · Molecular Biology and Evolution · doi:10.1093/molbev/msu300 · Cited by 26,046 · cited 1×
“The latter was reconstructed using IQTREE (Nguyen et al., 2014 ) under a General-Time Reversible (GTR) model with a discrete gamma distribution to model among-site rate variation.”
MethodA pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin
Zhou, P., Yang, X.-L., Wang, X.-G., Hu, B., Zhang, L., Zhang, W., Si, H.-R., Zhu, Y., Li, B., Huang, C.-L., et al. (2020) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2012-7 · Cited by 21,969 · cited 11×
“…thought to be instrumental to SARS-CoV-2’s ability to infect humans – a polybasic cleavage site insertion in the Spike protein – has been seen in another close bat relative of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (Zhou et al., 2020a); however, the sequence is different and it is likely an independent event.”
BackgroundInfluentialEarly transmission dynamics in Wuhan, China, of novel coronavirus-infected pneumonia
Li, Q., Guan, X., Wu, P., Wang, X., Zhou, L., Tong, Y., Ren, R., Leung, K. S. M., Lau, E. H. Y., Wong, J. Y., et al. (2020) · New England Journal of Medicine · doi:10.1056/nejmoa2001316 · Cited by 16,575 · cited 8×
“In December 2019, a cluster of pneumonia cases epidemiologically linked to an open-air wet market in city of Wuhan (Hubei Province), China (Li et al., 2020a; Zhou et al., 2020b) led local health officials to issue an epidemiological alert to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention…”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialSelf-citationRAxML-VI-HPC: maximum likelihood-based phylogenetic analyses with thousands of taxa and mixed models
Stamatakis, A. (2006) · Bioinformatics · doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btl446 · Cited by 15,582 · cited 2×
“2.8 (Stamatakis, 2014, 2006), GTR+Γ model, 100 bootstrap replicates – was inferred for each BFR longer than 500nt.”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialLu, R., Zhao, X., Li, J., Niu, P., Yang, B., Wu, H., Wang, W., Song, H., Huang, B., Zhu, N., et al. (2020) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(20)30251-8 · Cited by 11,907 · cited 4×
“Across a large region of its genome, corresponding approximately to ORF1b , it did not cluster with any of the known bat coronaviruses indicating that recombination likely played a role in the evolutionary history of these viruses (Lu et al., 2020; Wu et al.”
BackgroundInfluentialA new coronavirus associated with human respiratory disease in China
Wu, F., Zhao, S., Yu, B., Chen, Y.-M., Wang, W., Song, Z.-G., Hu, Y., Tao, Z.-W., Tian, J.-H., Pei, Y.-Y., et al. (2020) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2008-3 · Cited by 11,688 · cited 4×
“When the first genome sequence of SARS-CoV-2, Wuhan-Hu-1, was released on January 10 2020 on Virological.org by a consortium led by Yong-Zhen Zhang (Wu et al., 2020a) it enabled the immediate analyses of its ancestry.”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialGorbalenya, A. E., Baker, S. C., Baric, R. S., de Groot, R. J., Drosten, C., Gulyaeva, A. A., Haagmans, B. L., Lauber, C., Leontovich, A. M., Neuman, B. W., et al. (2020) · Nature Microbiology · doi:10.1038/s41564-020-0695-z · Cited by 8,745 · cited 3×
“Next, we (1) collected all breakpoints into a single set, (2) complemented this set to generate a set of non-breakpoints, (3) grouped non-breakpoints into contiguous BFRs and (4) sorted these regions by length.”
BackgroundMethodThe proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2
Andersen, K. G., Rambaut, A., Lipkin, W. I., Holmes, E. C., & Garry, R. F. (2020) · Nature Medicine · doi:10.1038/s41591-020-0820-9 · Cited by 5,081 · cited 3×
“Influenza viruses reassort (Webster et al., 1992) but they do not undergo homologous recombination within RNA segments (Boni et al., 2008, 2010), meaning that ‘origins’ questions for influenza outbreaks can always be reduced to origins questions for each of influenza’s eight RNA segments.”
BackgroundMethodSelf-citationEvolution and ecology of influenza A viruses
Webster, R. G., Bean, W. J., Gorman, O. T., Chambers, T. M., & Kawaoka, Y. (1992) · Microbiological Reviews · doi:10.1128/mr.56.1.152-179.1992 · Cited by 4,739
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Coronavirus biology and replication: implications for SARS-CoV-2
V’kovski, P., Kratzel, A., Steiner, S., Stalder, H., & Thiel, V. (2020) · Nature Reviews Microbiology · doi:10.1038/s41579-020-00468-6 · Cited by 3,371
Mechanisms of SARS-CoV-2 entry into cells
Jackson, C. B., Farzan, M., Chen, B., & Choe, H. (2022) · Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology · doi:10.1038/s41580-021-00418-x · Cited by 3,022
Starr, T. N., Greaney, A. J., Hilton, S. K., Ellis, D., Crawford, K. H. D., Dingens, A. S., Navarro, M. J., Bowen, J. E., Tortorici, M. A., Walls, A. C., et al. (2020) · Cell · doi:10.1016/j.cell.2020.08.012 · Cited by 1,956
“There is a dizzying diversity of RBD genotypes and phenotypes among sarbecoviruses within bat reservoirs (Boni et al., 2020; Demogines et al., 2012; Frank et al., 2020; Hu et al., 2017; Latinne et al., 2020; Letko et al., 2020; MacLean et al., 2020).”
Rapid epidemic expansion of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant in southern Africa
Viana, R. P. E. S., Moyo, S. M., Amoako, D. G., Tegally, H., Scheepers, C., Althaus, C. L., Anyaneji, U. J., Bester, P. A., Boni, M. F., Chand, M., et al. (2022) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-022-04411-y · Cited by 1,678
Self-citationMarkov, P. V., Ghafari, M., Beer, M., Lythgoe, K., Simmonds, P., Stilianakis, N. I., & Katzourakis, A. (2023) · Nature Reviews Microbiology · doi:10.1038/s41579-023-00878-2 · Cited by 1,179
Metadata
- Authors
- Boni, M. F., Lemey, P., Jiang, X., Lam, T. T.-Y., Perry, B. W., Castoe, T. A., Rambaut, A., & Robertson, D. L.
- Affiliations
- Pennsylvania State University (US)
- KU Leuven (BE)
- Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (CN)
- University of Hong Kong (HK)
- The University of Texas at Arlington (US)
- University of Edinburgh (GB)
- MRC University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Boni, Maciej F.
- Lemey, Philippe
- Rambaut, Andrew
- Robertson, David L.
- ORCID
- Venue
- Nature Microbiology
- Published
- 2020-07-28
- Volume
- 5
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 1408-1417
- ISSN
- 2058-5276 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3046218112
- Cited by
- 1,014
- References
- 69
- Citations by year
- 2026: 23 · 2025: 46 · 2024: 79 · 2023: 118 · 2022: 240 · 2021: 327 · 2020: 178
- FWCI
- 28.54
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Nature Microbiology (publishedVersion)
- bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- ENLIGHTEN (Jurnal Bimbingan dan Konseling Islam) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Lirias (KU Leuven) (submittedVersion)
- Edinburgh Research Explorer (University of Edinburgh) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (G0D5117N, G0B9317N)
- Wellcome Trust (206298/Z/17/Z)
- RCUK | Medical Research Council (MC_UU_1201412)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Infectious Diseases › SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 Research
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Animal Science and Zoology › Animal Virus Infections Studies
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Evolution and Genetic Dynamics
- Keywords
- SARS-CoV-2, sarbecoviruses, COVID-19 pandemic, viral recombination, bat reservoirs, pangolins, divergence time estimation, receptor-binding motif, ACE2 receptor, phylogenetic dating, viral emergence, genetic diversity, SARS-CoV
- MeSH terms
- Betacoronavirus, Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme 2, COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, Animals, Bayes Theorem, China, Chiroptera, Humans, Peptidyl-Dipeptidase A, Phylogeny, Pneumonia, Viral, Recombination, Genetic, Genetic Variation, Genome, Viral, Coronavirus Infections, Evolution, Molecular, Pandemics
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
