https://socictopen.socict.org/files/original/6dcb619c9795edc27647d2c418802598.pdf a048705bb789993ee5c0883bfbf1dc0e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Coronavirus Description An account of the resource Dominio científico: Coronavirus Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Date of origin of the SARS coronavirus strains Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Li Wei, Zhao Yi, Zhu Xiaopeng, Chen Runsheng, Wang Yuelan, Sun Shiwei, Bu Dongbo, Lu Hongchao, Cai Lun, Ling Lunjiang, Xu Jingyi, Zhang Jingfen Description An account of the resource Abstract Background A new respiratory infectious epidemic, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), broke out and spread throughout the world. By now the putative pathogen of SARS has been identified as a new coronavirus, a single positive-strand RNA virus. RNA viruses commonly have a high rate of genetic mutation. It is therefore important to know the mutation rate of the SARS coronavirus as it spreads through the population. Moreover, finding a date for the last common ancestor of SARS coronavirus strains would be useful for understanding the circumstances surrounding the emergence of the SARS pandemic and the rate at which SARS coronavirus diverge. Methods We propose a mathematical model to estimate the evolution rate of the SARS coronavirus genome and the time of the last common ancestor of the sequenced SARS strains. Under some common assumptions and justifiable simplifications, a few simple equations incorporating the evolution rate (K) and time of the last common ancestor of the strains (T0) can be deduced. We then implemented the least square method to estimate K and T0 from the dataset of sequences and corresponding times. Monte Carlo stimulation was employed to discuss the results. Results Based on 6 strains with accurate dates of host death, we estimated the time of the last common ancestor to be about August or September 2002, and the evolution rate to be about 0.16 base/day, that is, the SARS coronavirus would on average change a base every seven days. We validated our method by dividing the strains into two groups, which coincided with the results from comparative genomics. Conclusion The applied method is simple to implement and avoid the difficulty and subjectivity of choosing the root of phylogenetic tree. Based on 6 strains with accurate date of host death, we estimated a time of the last common ancestor, which is coincident with epidemic investigations, and an evolution rate in the same range as that reported for the HIV-1 virus. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context DOI: 10.1186/1471-2334-4-3 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived BMC Infectious Diseases Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available BMC Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Infectious and parasitic diseases