Fig. 1

Ebola genome-wide mutational bias and viral load. a Comparison of the viral load (1/Ct) in hospitalised fatal versus hospitalised survived blood samples taken during the acute phase upon admission to an Ebola virus treatment centre. These data followed the normal distribution, so P values were calculated with a two-sided t test. b Comparison of the nucleotide variation from the dominant genome sequence in an individual patient in hospitalised fatal versus hospitalised survived cases. The variation frequency was calculated by transversion or transition deviations using a 200-nucleotide sliding window, and the P values were calculated with a one-sided Wilcoxon rank sum test as the data did not fit a normal distribution. c Q-Q plots were used to compare the distribution of the average nucleotide deviation in an individual patient in hospitalised fatal versus hospitalised survived cases using a 200-nucleotide sliding window along the genome for hospitalised survived versus hospitalised fatal cases. d Average nucleotide variation along the Ebola genome calculated by substitutions leading to either transversion or transition changes using a 200-nucleotide sliding window. e Comparison of the viral load (1/Ct) in hospitalised fatal versus hospitalised survived cases. A two-sided Spearman rank correlation test was used to estimate the correlation of the average nucleotide variation and viral load (1/Ct) of each sample from a patient, where the R value is the correlation coefficient ranging in − 1 (strong negative correlation) and + 1 (strong positive correlation), and P is the P value for this test