Revealing the genotypic variants and proteomic mutations in Turkish SARS-CoV-2 driving evolution and virulence

Abstract

Turkey is a transcontinental nation with much of its territory in western Asia and southeast Europe, and it is the 6th most affected country by SARS-CoV-2 globally, so far, many mutations have occurred within this short period of time. The present study mainly focused on identifying genotypic variants and proteomic mutations, along with the folding rate and virulence action of Turkey SARS-CoV-2 isolates. The phylogenomic study reveals that the first origination of SARS-CoV-2 isolates (2020) in Turkey has more chance of an occurrence of mutation rate during evolution/new origination. 53 genotypic- and 45 proteomic variants among 83 isolates were found. The genotypic and proteomic variants from 2022 isolates have six times higher mutation rates than 2020 isolates. The highest number of mutations occurred in the 2022 isolate (ERAGEM-OM-1104/2022), with 60 mutations in the G53 variant, followed by 44 mutations in the G49 variant (ERAGEM-DEL-1103/2021) and 42 mutations in the G50 variant (Ank_DLT/2021). Also, we identified 38 novel mutations among 45 proteomic variants. The predicted virulence mechanism of some ORFs such as Nsp1, Nsp3, Nsp4, Nsp5, Nsp8, 2′O-ribose, Spike, Orf3a, Envelope, Orf7b, Orf8, and Nucleocapsid shows high virulence and transmission rate. Hence, our findings would help the researchers to develop new anti-virals against new variants from Turkey’s SARS-CoV-2 isolates.