Impact of intra-host diversity and inter-host transmission

The pandemic SARS-CoV-2 virus continues to pose a tremendous challenge to global health and economies. It continuously evolves within the human population, but how exactly viral mutations emerge and transmit across individuals is poorly understood. We hypothesize that time, antiviral immune responses and transmission bottlenecks affect the evolutionary dynamics of SARS-CoV-2. We will employ our established SARS-CoV-2 genome deep- sequencing pipeline to investigate the emergence and establishment of viral mutations in the context of intra-host diversity and inter-host transmission bottlenecks by. Our in-depth computational and biomathematical analyses are supported by expertise in virology, genetics, epidemiology, clinical infectiology and evolution biology within our interdisciplinary collaboration network. This will enable us to unveil the dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 mutations in infected humans and interrogate potential driving forces of viral evolution. In turn, this knowledge may support the future pandemic management and the development of novel preventive and therapeutic measures