Phylogenetic Analysis of the Novel Coronavirus Reveals Important Variants in Indian Strains

Aditi Joshi; Sushmita Paul

The pandemic of COVID-19 is taking a troll in health and finance sector of all most 2 every country. The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2) 3 originated from Wuhan a city in China is mutating while getting transmitted [3] . 4 Development of a potential drug or vaccine is a major challenge. The virus has RNA as 5 a genetic material and it gets mutated frequently. It is very important to understand 6 the evolutionary feature in the virus. Understanding the nature of mutation may help in 7 developing potential drug. Also, it may give direction to understand the next cycle of 8 mutation in the viral genome. Therefore, it is very important to understand the nature 9 of variation in different strains of the novel virus. 10 In this regard, few studies are conducted to understand the nature of variation in 11 this novel virus. Carmine and Federico [4] made an attempt to understand the 12 heterogeneity in 54 strains of this viral genome. Rahila et al. [16] studied impact of the 13 mutations in the spike glycoprotein function and stability in the novel virus.