Chat message

Slack / Private Message Drop, pp.69-70 [SLACK_000283] · slack_pm:msg:00706

Date: 2020-06-11 14:44
Type: chat message · slack
recipient: Kristian G. Andersen, Robert F. Garry, Andrew Rambaut
speaker: Edward C. Holmes
Topics: Furin cleavage site and molecular features Natural origin / zoonotic spillover

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May be. Perhaps rodents are involved in SARS-CoV-2? I'm really struggling to understand why someone would "put" a furin site into a random bat virus they had not previously sequenced and published. Has the Baric group ever done such an experiment? Accidental lab escape is one thing, but why would deliberately do this to a bat virus? Then why would publish the sequence of a related bat virus that puts you in frame? There was no need to that if you were guilty.

Extracted statements

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Statement	Grade	Attribution	Stance
I'm really struggling to understand why someone would "put" a furin site into a random bat virus they had not previously sequenced and published.	quoted / not their view	quoted_external sentence carries quotation marks	asserts

Statement

Grade

Attribution

Stance

I'm really struggling to understand why someone would "put" a furin site into a random bat virus they had not previously sequenced and published.

quoted / not their view

quoted_external sentence carries quotation marks

asserts

In context

A single line often inverts meaning once you see what it answers, so neighbouring messages are always shown.

2020-06-11 14:33 Edward C. Holmes open

What smoking guns Kristian? I don't quite see it. What recent evidence are you talking about? That Follis paper was literally the first one I looked at. Doesn't it's presence in HKU1 suggest that these events in nature a lot? Do we know what animal HKU1 comes from? I was reading Mike's paper to suggest that D614G was under selection to increase the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2, because it was directly related to the furin cleavage insertion, such that it not perfectly adapted to humans on emergence.
2020-06-11 14:33 Edward C. Holmes open

What about Bill Gallaher's evidence?
2020-06-11 14:34 Robert F. Garry open

HKU1 actually does have an optimal furin site - some strains have a insert or deletion of SSS - yes some of these Shave predicted O-glycans [shared file(s): HKU-1 Spike.pdf]
2020-06-11 14:38 Robert F. Garry open

"animal HKU1 comes from" Rodents maybe - probably
2020-06-11 14:44 Edward C. Holmes

May be. Perhaps rodents are involved in SARS-CoV-2? I'm really struggling to understand why someone would "put" a furin site into a random bat virus they had not previously sequenced and published. Has the Baric group ever done such an experiment? Accidental lab escape is one thing, but why would deliberately do this to a bat virus? Then why would publish the sequence of a related bat virus that puts you in frame? There was no need to that if you were guilty.
2020-06-11 15:02 Robert F. Garry open

"Then why would publish the sequence of a related bat virus that puts you in frame?" To throw off M15 and Pompeo?
2020-06-11 15:13 Kristian G. Andersen open

People have put furin sites into CoVs previously - here's one example from SARS: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7111780/
2020-06-11 15:13 Kristian G. Andersen open

There's a paper where they put it into a bat virus and shows it has much broader host range - I believe from Baric's group. I'll find it.
2020-06-11 15:15 Edward C. Holmes open

At S1/S2?

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