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A highly divergent cryptic SARS-CoV-2 lineage exhibits strong receptor binding and immune evasion

2025-11-20 infectious diseases Title + abstract only
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SARS-CoV-2 genomic surveillance in wastewater enables the identification of cryptic lineages, often with numerous mutations not observed in circulating variants. Here, we discovered a unique cryptic SARS-CoV-2 lineage (designated NJ) from New Jersey wastewater that carries many rare mutations and exhibits the highest binding affinity to the hACE2 receptor among all tested SARS-CoV-2 variant RBDs, including the latest Omicron lineages. Moreover, NJ shows extensive evasion against all five major c...

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