The SA Branch of the Statistical Society would like to invite you to the November meeting of the 2020 program - and what a topical talk this is given the week we've had in South Australia!

Our speaker this month is Dr Laurence Wilson from CSIRO who will be presenting on 'Investigating the spread and divergence of genetic variations within the SARS-CoV-2 genome'.

Date: Thursday 26th November

Time: 6pm - 7pm ACDT

More details and Zoom link available at https://statsoc.org.au/event-4044465

Abstract:

The emergence and spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been accompanied by a significant increase in the genetic diversity of the virus, with multiple phylogenetic clusters emerging. This highlights the need for sophisticated methods of monitoring variation amongst the genomes. We have been working to develop platforms and methodologies to help address this need. 

In the early stages of the pandemic, we developed an alignment-free method for ‘fingerprinting’ the emerging viral genomes to identify what strains would be best for establishing animal models. Unlike phylogenetic trees, which focus on individual shared mutations, this new approach assesses genome‐wide co‐developing functionalities and hence offers a more fluid view of the ‘cloud of variances’ that RNA viruses are prone to accumulate.

More recently, we have been focused on investigating whether the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been undergoing active recombination. Examining existing phylogenetic trees, we find that many strains are poorly explained by just one parent. To examine whether these can be better explained be recombination events we developed an algorithm to find possible recombination events. Using this approach, we identified recombination events amongst circulating strains, characterizing their distribution in terms of both time and geography. Based on our analysis, we believe that there is evidence SARS-CoV-2 is undergoing recombination and that this is contributing to the genetic diversity being observed.