The authors of the new work studied how the new type of coronavirus spread among not only people, but also
The authors concluded that the rate of evolutionvirus increased dramatically after it entered the mink population. As a result, SARS-CoV-2 acquired several unique mutations that allowed it to better adapt to infecting another mammalian species.
Based on this information, the authors tried to estimate how quickly the ancestor of SARS-CoV-2 could go from spreading among bats or other wild animals to humans.
To get an accurate time period, the authorsanalyzed how quickly mutations accumulated in the genome of those coronavirus samples that were isolated from minks and farm workers. The researchers calculated the time that must have passed between the emergence of the first strains of SARS-CoV-2 capable of infecting humans and the appearance of the virus in Wuhan.
Next, they compared how different the earlyvariations of the COVID-19 pathogen and its putative ancestor, the bat virus RaTG13. As a result, they concluded that the virus appeared in China six months before the first mass outbreak.
SARS-CoV-2 has already experienced adaptivenatural selection in the human population. This suggests that the ancestor of the COVID-19 pathogen had been circulating among people for at least six months before the first infections were recorded in Wuhan.
Research text
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