Private channel session 442
22 messages over 2h 0m, 2020-10-02 – 2020-10-02.
A “conversation” here is an activity session — a run of messages with under 60 minutes of silence inside it. The channel had no native conversation boundaries.
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Quite a lot to catch-up on. I don't think we'll get any straight info about Trump's condition.
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That cleavage site paper is really interesting...a key point is that the polybasic insertion is selected against in Vero cells: that journalist from the NYT (Nicholas Wade) was trying to argue with me that passage in Vero cells was a way that the polybasic insertion could occur...clearly the conspiracy theorists have been discussing this. So, this blows itout the water.
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Not completely...
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@Andrew Rambaut I think you could to invite Shi. Coming from you the invite might be accepted: it will deemed tobe a friendly audience.
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Ha, I knew you'd say that!
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No way the virus would have gained it in Veros, but there's a non-zero chance that it could have gained it upon passage on human primary cells - e.g., human lung cells. The concern here is that we know that type of work was going on at WIV (the EgoHealth stuff), so we certainly can't dismiss it based on this. Hence Bob needs to do the experiment :wink:
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Agreed. I only meant the Vero cell thing. Somebody must have proposed this.
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In other words - had they repeated e.g., the experiment previously done with bovine coronavirus, no questions SARS-CoV-2 with the FCS would have been selected very rapidly.
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By the way, I only gave Wade some generic off-the-record comments. He was suggesting that the observation that all the human viruses are monophyletic was evidence for a lab escape....he's definitely been drinking the Kool-aid.
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Doesn't surprise me about Wade - really disappointing. But reading his questions I was like "well, I'd have to start with explaining evolution to him first - I ain't got time for that shit".
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He probably has a hotline to Alina. I'm for the cryptic circulation in humans theory as well, not least because ofgetting the first cluster of cases most be tiny.
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Yeah, I think that's a really intriguing possibility. Could have been related to animal farming, which would (strongly?) select for the FCS popping up in the first place.
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I can easily believe that.
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Clearly, once this thing hit humans, there was (is :disappointed: ) very very strong selection for maintaining that site.
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Totally. But, as you say, that's no surprise.
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In other news, I was *confidentially* (so keep to yourself) asked to comment on this. I've not read it, but looking that the tree these viruses are really not that close to Rubella. Bit surprised they got this into Nature. [shared file(s): Relatives of rubella virus in diverse mammals.pdf]
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Aahaha. I pushed back really hard on that paper - I reviewed it and was unenthused to say the least.
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I was shocked when they accepted it
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I might have referenced back to some of your earlier studies to say how low impact this one is.... ```In the revised version of the manuscript the authors provide evidence to show that yellow-necked field mouse could be the/a reservoir for rustrela virus. They have also toned down their language about relevance to human disease. However, beyond these points, my main comments from the first submission still stand - the study is well performed and the methods appropriate, but the scope is too limiting and not of sufficient interest to the broad audience of Nature. The authors discuss the relevance of their findings to e.g., the ability to develop an animal model for Rubella, but that is much too early to tell - the authors don't isolate the virus, let alone show that the viruses are capable of infecting animals - and, importantly, whether that leads to comparable disease to Rubella.So while I find the study of interest and I think these are cool findings, I just don't see how the study would rise to the interest of the readership of Nature. Boiled down, the study is a metagenomic survey of a few different species ofanimals where a couple of novel viruses have been identified (albeit relatives of Matonaviridae - which have not previously been described). Compare the current study to previous virus discovery studies in Nature by e.g., Shi etal (PMID 29618816 and 27880757) where they discover hundreds of viruses - including close relatives of human pathogens - from very large-scale surveys.```
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Spot on. I've no idea why they took this. A similar story can be told for a multitude of viruses. We previously found arelative to Rubella virus in fish.
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I think you should use the opportunity to point out yes Eddie's fish virus [if you seek you find] but that surveillance ofemerging pathogens in humans is a MUCH MORE direct and cost-effective strategy to respond to pandemic threats. What are we supposed to do - spend a couple of billion and make vaccines to these viruses? Just my 2 cents.
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Great point! A Science journalist wants talk about the paper so I will stress that.