Potential misdating (is: 2023, should: 2022) of 32 German RKI sequences

[corneliusroemer]

Release data: 2023-11-03, 2023-11-05, 2024-01-15 Submitter: Brinkmann,A.,Kohl,C.,Schrick,L.,Michel,J.,Schaade,L.,Nitsche,A. Submitting institution: Robert Koch Institut Country: Germany NCBI virus link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/virus/vssi/#/virus?SeqType_s=Nucleotide&VirusLineage_ss=Monkeypox%20virus,%20taxid:10244&Authors_idx%20q.op%3DAND=viscardi&CreateDate_dt=2024-01-09T00:00:00.00Z%20TO%202024-01-20T23:59:59.00Z Example Genbank: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/OR743494 Status: Submitter contacted (2024-01-21), submitter double checked and confirmed dates are correct (2024-01-22)

List of Genbank accessions

``` OR743494 OR743495 OR743497 OR743498 OR777671 OR777672 OR777673 OR777675 OR777676 OR777678 OR777679 OR777680 OR777681 PP093697 PP093698 PP093699 PP093700 PP093701 PP093702 PP093703 PP093705 PP093706 PP093708 PP093712 PP093715 PP093716 PP093717 PP093719 PP093722 PP093723 PP093724 PP093727 ```

I noticed a potential year-off-by-one date error in 32 recently submitted German sequences. Off-by-one year errors have been regularly observed in SARS-CoV-2 sequences from a range of labs, so it is not unexpected that this can also happen in mpox sequences.

The common ancestor of the 32 sequences has only 1 extra SNP compared to summer 2022 sequences. Yet all sequences are supposed to be collected more than 1 year later. With a clock rate of around 12 SNPs/year, this indicates a likely date entry error.

Other sequences from the same submitters dated to 2023 are in line with the clock and cluster with other 2023 sequences from other labs. This is notably not the case here: no other lab has submitted sequences from this putative 2023 lineage.

[corneliusroemer]

The submitter kindly confirmed that the dates are correct and not a typo. So there isn't any misdating!