Generation of restriction endonucleases barcode map to trace SARS-CoV-2 origin and evolution
Federico Colombo, Elisa Corsiero, Myles J. Lewis, Costantino Pitzalis
Received date: 9th November 2020
Since the first report of SARS-CoV-2 in China in 2019, there has been a huge debate about the origin. In this work, using a different method we aimed to strengthen the observation that no evidence of genetic manipulation has been found by i) detecting classical restriction site (RS) sequence in human SARS-CoV-2 genomes and ii) comparing them with other recombinant SARS-CoV-like virus created for experimental purposes. Finally, we propose a novel approach consisting in the generation of a restriction endonucleases site map of SARS-CoV-2 and other related coronavirus genomes to be used as a fingerprint to trace the virus evolution.
This is an abstract of a preprint hosted on a preprint server, which is currently undergoing peer review at Scientific Reports. The findings have yet to be thoroughly evaluated, nor has a decision on ultimate publication been made. Therefore, the results reported should not be considered conclusive, and these findings should not be used to inform clinical practice, or public health policy, or be promoted as verified information.
