The Genome Sequence Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 Variants of Concern

The coronavirus pandemic has been at the forefront of the news, with many variants emerging with varied infectivity and transmissibility. These variants are the result of mutations in the virus. The evolutionary relationships of various SARS-CoV-2 variants were analyzed with a major focus on the Omicron variant. There were 61 sequence representatives obtained from GISAID and GenBank databases and were aligned and the phylogenetic trees were represented using MEGAX software. Evolutionary substitution models were utilized in conjunction with clustering approaches such as UPGMA, Neighbor-Joining (NJ), Minimum Evolution, and Maximum Composite Likelihood. The sequences of the omicron variant showed a close phylogenetic relationship with the Alpha variant UK (MZ376737.1), whereas the others showed significant distance from the Omicron variant.