An Entropy-based study on Mutational Trajectory of
SARS-CoV-2 in India

Daniele Santoni¹, Nimisha Ghosh², Indrajit Saha^3,*,

¹Institute for System Analysis and Computer Science "Antonio Ruberti", National Research Council of Italy, Rome, Italy
²Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Mechanics, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland
³Department of Computer Science and Engineering, National Institute of Technical Teachers' Training and Research, Kolkata, India
*Correspondence should be addressed: indrajit@nitttrkol.ac.in

ABSTRACT

The pandemic of COVID-19 has been haunting us for almost the past two years. Although, the vaccination drive is in full swing throughout the world, different mutations of the SARS-CoV-2 virus are making it very difficult to put an end to the pandemic. The second wave in India, one of the worst sufferer of this pandemic, can be attributed to the Delta variant B.1.617.2. With a looming third wave, it is very important to analyse and understand the mutational trajectory of SARS-CoV-2 through the study of four structural proteins, viz. Spike, Envelope, Membrane and Nucleocapsid. In this regard, 9731, 10253, 10179 and 10219 Spike, Envelope, Membrane and Nucleocapsid protein sequences respectively are analysed using entropy-based approach in order to find the mutational trajectory. Furthermore, Hellinger distance is also used to show the difference of the mutation events between the consecutive months for each of the SARS-CoV-2 structural proteins. The results show that the mutation rates and the mutation events of the structural proteins though changing in the initial months, start stabilising later on. As a consequence, it can be inferred that the evolution of the new mutative configurations will eventually reduce.