PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Bradley Pickering
AU  - Oliver Lung
AU  - Finlay Maguire
AU  - Peter Kruczkiewicz
AU  - Jonathan D. Kotwa
AU  - Tore Buchanan
AU  - Marianne Gagnier
AU  - Jennifer L. Guthrie
AU  - Claire M. Jardine
AU  - Alex Marchand-Austin
AU  - Ariane Massé
AU  - Heather McClinchey
AU  - Kuganya Nirmalarajah
AU  - Patryk Aftanas
AU  - Juliette Blais-Savoie
AU  - Hsien-Yao Chee
AU  - Emily Chien
AU  - Winfield Yim
AU  - Melissa Goolia
AU  - Matthew Suderman
AU  - Mathieu Pinette
AU  - Greg Smith
AU  - Daniel Sullivan
AU  - Jossip Rudar
AU  - Elizabeth Adey
AU  - Michelle Nebroski
AU  - Marceline Côté
AU  - Geneviève Laroche
AU  - Allison J. McGeer
AU  - Larissa Nituch
AU  - Samira Mubareka
AU  - Jeff Bowman
TI  - Highly divergent white-tailed deer SARS-CoV-2 with potential deer-to-human transmission
AID  - 10.1101/2022.02.22.481551
DP  - 2022 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2022.02.22.481551
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/02/25/2022.02.22.481551.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/02/25/2022.02.22.481551.full
AB  - Wildlife reservoirs of SARS-CoV-2 can lead to viral adaptation and spillback from wildlife to humans (Oude Munnink et al., 2021). In North America, there is evidence of spillover of SARS-CoV-2 from humans to white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), but no evidence of transmission from deer to humans (Hale et al., 2021; Kotwa et al., 2022; Kuchipudi et al., 2021). Through a multidisciplinary research collaboration for SARS-CoV-2 surveillance in Canadian wildlife, we identified a new and highly divergent lineage of SARS-CoV-2. This lineage has 76 consensus mutations including 37 previously associated with non-human animal hosts, 23 of which were not previously reported in deer. There were also mutational signatures of host adaptation under neutral selection. Phylogenetic analysis revealed an epidemiologically linked human case from the same geographic region and sampling period. Together, our findings represent the first evidence of a highly divergent lineage of SARS-CoV-2 in white-tailed deer and of deer-to-human transmission.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.