The evolutionary history of SARS-CoV-2

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has infected over 1.4 million people globally and 400 thousand in the US (As of 04/08/2020, JHU). Billions of people self-isolate at home to fight against this invisible enemy through scientific research and other practical actions. However, the origin and evolutionary history of the disease-causing virus, SARS-CoV-2, is still unclear. Here we voluntarily assembled an interdisciplinary team of more than 10 scientists in the US and across the globe, with expertise in phylogenomics, population genetics, quantitative genetics, microbiology, and software engineering, to try to tackle this scientific question with cutting-edge methodologies and high-performance computing platforms. We propose to leverage the publicly available genome assemblies of SARS-CoV-2 (N>3,800), the virus causing the worldwide pandemic, as well as the related patient metadata, to investigate the evolutionary and divergence pattern of this virus. By employing the state-of-the-art methods and models in phylogenomics and population genomics, we hope to unveil and eventually visualize the evolutionary history of SARS-CoV-2 on a public website. Our ultimate goal is to improve the scientific understanding of the virus to better fight against COVID-19.