Private channel session 739
6 messages over 57m, 2020-12-30 – 2020-12-30.
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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I took the information from the channel on the SC2 spike mutations that arise on human-to-human passage and human-to-animal passage including serial passage in lab animals and put together this figure. First step was to make a Swiss model that fills in the gaps of the cryo structure. This is the complete sequence sans any disorderedregions or FCS mutations. It's striking that there are so many examples of the very same mutations in the UK/South Africa variants showing up during transfers to different species. Seems to me that the mutations fall into FIVE general classes, The ones that get the most attention and are likely key for interspecies transfer are of course the RBD mutations. There is strong evidence for immune selection in the RBD and in the N-terminal domain epitopes. The third hotspot for mutation is in and around the FCS. Whether or not this region is under immune selection isanyone's guess, but there is no doubt the region contributes to transmissibility. A fourth mutant class that is also likely to be under immune selection are what I've labeled the membrane proximal region [MPER]. There are some important MPER antibodies in HIV field, so these mutations could also be from immune selection. Finally, are the S2mutations, which group naturally with Doug. I suspect that these S2 mutations are likely not epitopes (but it's possible). Rather I think that Doug and A82V before it from EBOV are teaching that the adjacent mutation in two ofthe lions Q613R, plus other mutations that look to be mostly in the metastable regions of S2 could influencerefolding to the 6-helix bundle possibly affecting infection efficiency. Note - I'll change the human eventually tosomeone unlike @Covidfaker who actually was infected with SC2. [shared file(s): image.png]
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Red spheres: the UK variant, Blue spheres: ZA variant, Magenta: both UK/ZA, Yellow spheres: animals.
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Now if you had just produced that in time to be your Christmas card
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Fantastic.
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For the Christmas card I would replace the alpha helices with strings of face masks.
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And, change the color scheme to more reds and greens!