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Slack / Private Message Drop, p.319 [SLACK_000533] · slack_pm:msg:03350

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@Andrew Rambaut Although now looking, it seems the ancestral amino acid is A

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2020-12-16 06:57 Andrew Rambaut open

@Robert Garry What would your thoughts about V701A be?
2020-12-16 06:57 Robert F. Garry open

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6511/1603.full
2020-12-16 06:58 Andrew Rambaut open

Yes! We briefly considered whether it had emerged from the rat infested sewers of London Town.
2020-12-16 07:00 Andrew Rambaut open

@Andrew Rambaut Is it too far away from the FCS to be related to that? I ask because the South African outbreak with 501Y has a mutation at 701 apparently.
2020-12-16 07:01 Andrew Rambaut

@Andrew Rambaut Although now looking, it seems the ancestral amino acid is A
2020-12-16 07:22 Robert F. Garry open

@Andrew Rambaut Yeah the A in the ancestral threw me off a bit, but - that region between the FCS and the S2' cleavage site it generally thought to be clipped out - the S2' cleavage exposes what is likely the fusion peptide (there may be other FPs). There is some thought in some of the other CoVs that that clipped out peptide between the FCS and the S2' site might have some biological activity, but I haven't seen anything convincing.
2020-12-16 07:25 Robert F. Garry open

@Andrew Rambaut Is 701 too far away to affect the FCS? Yeah probably...
2020-12-16 07:36 Andrew Rambaut open

@Andrew Rambaut :+1: