A genome, composed of a precisely ordered sequence of four nucleotides (ATCG),
encompasses a multitude of specific genome features like AAA motif. Mutations
occurring within a genome disrupt the sequential order and composition of these
features, thereby influencing the evolutionary trajectories and yielding variants. The
evolutionary relatedness between a variant and its ancestor can be estimated by
assessing evolutionary distances across a spectrum of genome features. This study
develops a novel, alignment‐free algorithm that considers both the sequential order
and composition of genome features, enabling computation of the Fréchet distance
(Fr) across multiple genome features to quantify the evolutionary status of a variant.
Integrating this algorithm with an artificial recurrent neural network (RNN) reveals
the quantitative evolutionary trajectory and origin of SARS‐CoV‐2, a puzzle unsolved
by alignment‐based phylogenetics. The RNN generates the evolutionary trajectory
from Fr data at two levels: genome sequence mutations and organism variants. At
the genome sequence level, SARS‐CoV‐2 evolutionarily shortens its genome to
enhance its infectious capacity. Mutating signature features, such as TTA and GCT,
increases its infectious potential and drives its evolution. At the organism level,
variants mutating a single biomarker possess low infectious potential. However,
mutating multiple markers dramatically increases their infectious capacity, propelling
the COVID‐19 pandemic. SARS‐CoV‐2 likely originates from mink coronavirus
variants, with its origin trajectory traced as follows: mink, cat, tiger, mouse, hamster,
dog, lion, gorilla, leopard, bat, and pangolin. Together, mutating multiple signature
features and biomarkers delineates the evolutionary trajectory of mink‐origin SARS‐
CoV‐2, leading to the COVID‐19 pandemic.