Corona variants: Tackle the bioinformatics bottleneck!

In the light of fast-spreading coronavirus variants, genomic surveillance has become of great importance to fight the pandemic. 

In a commentary in “Nature”, a group of phylogenetic researchers explains what we can and what we can not infer about the mutation processes of SARS CoV 2 using computational tools. They discuss the role of phylogenetics in this process and claim that better support to develop and deploy bioinformatic tools is crucial to keep track of variant development and to improve pandemic management in the future. Therefore, they call on politicians, scientists and funders to put in place the resources, incentives and mandates to strengthen collaborations between academic researcher and public-health bodies.

One of the authors of this comment is Alexandros Stamatakis, leader of the “Computational Molecular Evolution” group at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS) and full Professor for High Performance Computing in the Life Sciences at the Institute for Theoretical Informatics of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).  He has worked in the field of evolutionary bioinformatics for 20 years and has developed, for instance, the widely used RAxML software for reconstructing phylogenies.

The comment has been published in “Nature” on 1 March 2021.

“Want to track pandemic variants faster? Fix the bioinformatics bottleneck”.
Emma B. Hodcroft, Nicola De Maio, Rob Lanfear, Duncan R. MacCannell, Bui Quang Minh, Heiko A. Schmidt, Alexandros Stamatakis, Nick Goldman & Christophe Dessimoz. Nature, Vol 591, 1 March 2021. doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00525-x