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Quantifying SARS-CoV-2 evolution at multiple scales, with implications for viral spread

Katia Koelle, Emory University
Tuesday October 12, 12-1pm
Zoom Link: 

Abstract: The high mutation rates of RNA viruses enable them to rapidly evolve and some of them to rapidly adapt to new or changing host populations. Despite having a lower mutation rate than many other RNA viruses, SARS-CoV-2 has clearly evolved over the last 1.5 years in the human population. In this talk, I will present some of my group’s work focused on understanding SARS-CoV-2 evolution between hosts and at the population level and how we can use its evolution to gain insight into patterns of epidemiological spread. More specifically, I will focus on how we have used deep-sequencing data to infer narrow SARS-CoV-2 transmission bottlenecks, and the implications of these narrow bottlenecks for tracking viral transmission at small scales. I will also discuss how these narrow bottlenecks enable us to develop and apply ‘phylodynamic’ inference methods to infer key epidemiological parameters such as R₀ from sequence data.

Bio: Katia Koelle is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology at Emory University. Her research focuses on the development of mathematical models to better understand patterns of viral evolution and disease dynamics between and within human hosts. She is further interested in the development and application of statistical approaches to characterize disease spread from viral sequence data. She works primarily on the ‘phylodynamics’ of RNA viruses, most notably influenza, dengue, norovirus, and most recently SARS-CoV-2.