Skip to main content
Premium Trial:

Request an Annual Quote

Team Sees Tight Transmission Bottlenecks for SARS-CoV-2 Variant Lineages

University of Michigan researchers reporting in Nature Communications consider the transmission bottlenecks that affect the spread of new SARS-CoV-2 mutations, comparing the transmissibility and transmission bottlenecks associated with variant-of-concern (VOC) SARS-CoV-2 lineages such as Alpha, Delta, or Omicron with non-VOC lineages. With deep-sequencing on SARS-CoV-2 isolates from 168 SARS-CoV-2-infected individuals from 65 households in Michigan, the team tallied single nucleotide variants within viral populations and across transmission pairs, uncovering tight transmission bottlenecks for both VOC and non-VOC SARS-CoV-2 lineages. "We found that bottleneck size did not vary significantly between transmission pairs infected with pre-VOC lineages and those infected with highly transmissible Alpha, Delta, or Omicron (BA.1) lineages," the authors report. "This tight bottleneck estimate was driven by the limited diversity in the donor host at the time of transmission."

The Scan

ChatGPT Does As Well As Humans Answering Genetics Questions, Study Finds

Researchers in the European Journal of Human Genetics had ChatGPT answer genetics-related questions, finding it was about 68 percent accurate, but sometimes gave different answers to the same question.

Sequencing Analysis Examines Gene Regulatory Networks of Honeybee Soldier, Forager Brains

Researchers in Nature Ecology & Evolution find structural network differences between soldiers and foragers, suggesting bees can take on either role.

Analysis of Ashkenazi Jewish Cohort Uncovers New Genetic Loci Linked to Alzheimer's Disease

The study in Alzheimer's & Dementia highlighted known genes, but also novel ones with biological ties to Alzheimer's disease.

Tara Pacific Expedition Project Team Finds High Diversity Within Coral Reef Microbiome

In papers appearing in Nature Communications and elsewhere, the team reports on findings from the two-year excursion examining coral reefs.