Impact of B.1.1.7 variant mutations on antibody recognition of linear SARS-CoV-2 epitopes

• DOI: 10.1101/2021.01.06.20248960
• Publication Date: 2021-01-09T22:52:28Z
• Authors: Winston A. Haynes; Kathy Kamath; Carolina Lucas; John Shon; Akiko Iwasaki
• Keywords: 0301 basic medicine; 03 medical and health sciences; 3. Good health

AbstractIn 579 COVID patients’ samples collected between March and July of 2020, we examined the effects of non-synonymous mutations harbored by the circulating B.1.1.7 strain on linear antibody epitope signal for spike glycoprotein and nucleoprotein. At the antigen level, the mutations only substantially reduced signal in 0.5% of the population. Although some epitope mutations reduce measured signal in up to 6% of the population, these are not the dominant epitopes for their antigens. Given dominant epitope patterns observed, our data suggest that the mutations would not result in immune evasion of linear epitopes for a large majority of these COVID patients.