{"doi":"10.1101/2020.10.27.357558","title":"SARS-CoV-2 spike D614G variant confers enhanced replication and transmissibility","abstract":"Abstract During the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in humans a D614G substitution in the spike (S) protein emerged and became the predominant circulating variant (S-614G) of the COVID-19 pandemic 1 . However, whether the increasing prevalence of the S-614G variant represents a fitness advantage that improves replication and/or transmission in humans or is merely due to founder effects remains elusive. Here, we generated isogenic SARS-CoV-2 variants and demonstrate that the S-614G variant has (i) enhanced binding to human ACE2, (ii) increased replication in primary human bronchial and nasal airway epithelial cultures as well as in a novel human ACE2 knock-in mouse model, and (iii) markedly increased replication and transmissibility in hamster and ferret models of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Collectively, our data show that while the S-614G substitution results in subtle increases in binding and replication in vitro , it provides a real competitive advantage in vivo , particularly during the transmission bottle neck, providing an explanation for the global predominance of S-614G variant among the SARS-CoV-2 viruses currently circulating.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2020,"id":118569,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":59,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.945,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":550950,"name":"Tran Thi Nhu Thao","orcid":"0000-0003-3906-4629","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":550951,"name":"Donata Hoffmann","orcid":"0000-0003-4552-031X","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":520633,"name":"Adriano Taddeo","orcid":"0000-0003-3281-1548","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":241075,"name":"Nadine Ebert","orcid":"0000-0001-7603-1864","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":550952,"name":"Fabien Labroussaa","orcid":"0000-0002-8712-3024","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":541144,"name":"Anne Pohlmann","orcid":"0000-0002-5318-665X","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":550953,"name":"Jacqueline King","orcid":"0000-0003-1857-7660","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":551557,"name":"Jasmine Portmann","orcid":null,"position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":550954,"name":"Nico Joël Halwe","orcid":"0000-0002-7983-2808","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":550955,"name":"Lorenz Ulrich","orcid":"0000-0001-5004-806X","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":550956,"name":"Bettina Salome Trüeb","orcid":"0000-0001-7256-9245","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":241074,"name":"Jenna N. 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