In-silico analysis of Covid-19 genome sequences of Indian origin: impact of mutations in identification of SARS-Co-V2.

Covid-19 disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 is still being transmitted in developed and developing countries irrespective
of healthcare setups. India with 1.3 billion people in the world is severely affected by Covid-19 with 11.3
million cases and 157 000 deaths so far. We have assessed the mismatches in WHO recommended rRT-PCR assays
primer and probe binding regions against SARS-CoV-2 Indian genome sequences through in-silico bioinformatics
analysis approach. Primers and probe sequences belonging to CN-CDC-ORF1ab from China and HKU-ORF1b from
Hong Kong targeting ORF1ab gene while NIH-TH-N from Thailand, HKU-N from Hong Kong and US-CDCN-2
from USA targeting N genes displayed accurate matches (>98.3%) with the 2019 novel corona virus sequences
from India. On the other hand, none of the genomic sequences displayed exact match with the primer/
probe sequences belonging to Charit´e-ORF1b from Germany targeting ORF1ab gene.