Omkar Marne at the Charlotte Regional Biomedical Symposium
Omkar puts our SARS-CoV-2 work in front of the region
On September 14, 2026, Omkar Marne gave a talk at the Charlotte Regional Biomedical Symposium. His talk was titled “The SARS-CoV-2 phylogeny is sensitive to alignment parameters and outgroup selection.” Omkar is a Ph.D. Candidate in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at UNC Charlotte.
What Omkar showed
A phylogenetic tree is only as good as the choices behind it. Researchers who build a SARS-CoV-2 tree must choose how to align the genomes, which outgroup to use to root the tree, and which statistics to report on its branches. Many studies make those choices once and never test them.
Omkar tested them. He showed that the SARS-CoV-2 tree changes when alignment parameters and outgroup selection change. That result matters for anyone who uses the tree to trace the origin or spread of a variant.
From talk to manuscript
The talk came three days after we submitted the full study for peer review. The manuscript, “Alignment, outgroup, and branch statistic choices shape SARS-CoV-2 phylogenomics”, is by Omkar Marne, Brad Bartman, Anastasiia Duchenko, and me. The data are already public on Zenodo.
Congratulations, Omkar, and thank you to the organizers for a great symposium.
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