RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Genome-Wide Covariation in SARS-CoV-2 JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 2021.03.08.434363 DO 10.1101/2021.03.08.434363 A1 Evan Cresswell-Clay, NIDDK A1 Vipul Periwal YR 2021 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/03/08/2021.03.08.434363.abstract AB The SARS-CoV-2 virus causing the global pandemic is a coronavirus with a genome of about 30Kbase length [Song et al., 2019]. The design of vaccines and choice of therapies depends on the structure and mutational stability of encoded proteins in the open reading frames(ORFs) of this genome. In this study, we computed, using Expectation Reflection, the genome-wide covariation of the SARS-CoV-2 genome based on an alignment of ≈ 130000 SARS-CoV-2 complete genome sequences obtained from GISAID[Shu & McCauley, 2017]. We used this covariation to compute the Direct Information between pairs of positions across the whole genome, investigating potentially important relationships within the genome, both within each encoded protein and between encoded proteins. We then computed the covariation within each clade of the virus. The covariation detected recapitulates all clade determinants and each clade exhibits distinct covarying pairs.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.