Result: Among those, three alterations are of particular concern as they are located in the NTD or
RBD epitope regions, respectively, and are suspected to result in immune escape (
L18F,
L452R and
N501Y) and/or higher infectivity and transmissibility (
L452R and
N501Y).
Result: In total, A.27 harbors 17 lineage-defining mutations (Figure 3A and Figure 4A), seven of which result in non-synonymous nucleotide substitutions in the
spike protein:
L18F,
L452R,
N501Y,
A653V,
H655Y,
D796Y,
G1219V.