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Volume 29, Number 5—May 2023
Online Report

US National Institutes of Health Prioritization of SARS-CoV-2 Variants

Sam Turner, Arghavan Alisoltani, Debbie Bratt, Liel Cohen-Lavi, Bethany L. Dearlove, Christian Drosten, Will M. Fischer, Ron A.M. Fouchier, Ana Silvia Gonzalez-Reiche, Lukasz Jaroszewski, Zain Khalil, Eric LeGresley, Marc Johnson, Terry C. Jones, Barbara Mühlemann, David O’Connor, Mayya Sedova, Maulik Shukla, James Theiler, Zachary S. Wallace, Hyejin Yoon, Yun Zhang, Harm van Bakel, Marciela M. Degrace, Elodie Ghedin, Adam Godzik, Tomer Hertz, Bette Korber, Jacob Lemieux, Anna M. Niewiadomska, Diane J. Post, Morgane Rolland, Richard Scheuermann, and Derek J. SmithComments to Author 
Author affiliations: University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK (S. Turner, E. LeGresley, T.C. Jones, B. Mühlemann, D.J. Smith); University of California Riverside School of Medicine, Riverside, California, USA (A. Alisoltani, L. Jaroszewski, M. Sedova, A. Godzik); National Institutes of Health, Rockville, Maryland, USA (D. Bratt, M.M. Degrace, E. Ghedin, D.J. Post); Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be’er-Sheva, Israel. (L. Cohen-Lavi, T. Hertz); Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA (B.L. Dearlove, M. Rolland); Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine, Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, USA (B.L. Dearlove, M. Rolland); Charité–Universitätsmedizin and German Center for Infection Research, Berlin, Germany (C. Drosten, T.C. Jones, B. Mühlemann); Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA (W.M. Fischer, J. Theiler, H. Yoon, B. Korber); Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, the Netherlands (R.A.M. Fouchier); Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, USA (A.S. Gonzalez-Reiche, A.Z. Khalil, H. van Bakel); University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA (M. Johnson); University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA (D. O’Connor); Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, Illinois, USA (M. Shukla); University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA (M. Shukla); J. Craig Venter Institute, La Jolla, California, USA (Z.S. Wallace, Y. Zhang, A.M. Niewiadomska, R. Scheuermann); University of California, San Diego, California, USA (Z.S. Wallace, R. Scheuermann); Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Boston, Massachusetts, USA (J. Lemieux); La Jolla Institute for Immunology, La Jolla (R. Scheuermann); Global Virus Network, Baltimore, Maryland, USA (R. Scheuermann)

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Table 1

Generating consensus rankings for US National Institutes of Health prioritization of SARS-CoV-2 variants

Lineage data Description
Lineage name
 A Pango lineage designation, potentially with specific additional mutations (e.g., BA.5 + R346T).
Substitutions
 Substitutions in spike relative to the Wuhan-1 reference genome. Lineages are defined by using the spike sequence because spike mutations are likely to be most relevant for the phenotypic properties the consortium is interested in, such as antibody escape.
GISAID/GenBank accession no.
 Example GISAID or GenBank ID that matches the nominated lineage. This provides an example of an intact gene for experimental groups, and acts as a bioinformatic check that the sequence exists.
No. sequences
 The number of sequences in GISAID (5) matching the lineage.
Epidemiologic information
 The number of sequences in each of the countries in which the lineage is most frequently detected.
Reason Additional information, including structural insights or further epidemiologic information.

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References
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Page updated: April 20, 2023
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