Fig. 7.

CpG dinucleotide content of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOCs): the distribution of CpG content in VOCs are plotted. The CpG content for sequences from the beginning of the pandemic (January and February 2020) are also plotted to facilitate comparison. The alpha-, beta-, delta-variants, and all sequences from non-VOCs (i.e., all sequences that are not classified as VOCs) had lower CpG content compared with that in sequences from the beginning of the pandemic. The gamma variant was an outlier with higher CpG content than other variants, non-VOCs, and the sequences from the beginning of the pandemic (pair-wise statistical analysis is provided in supplementary table 4, Supplementary Material online). The medians were compared using a Kruskal–Wallis H test. VOC, variant of concern.