Chat message

Slack / Private Message Drop, p.345 [SLACK_000559] · slack_pm:msg:03634

Date: 2020-12-28 15:14
Type: chat message · slack
recipient: Kristian G. Andersen, Edward C. Holmes, Andrew Rambaut
speaker: Robert F. Garry

Recipients on this medium are inferred from channel membership, not per-message addressing.

The cats are very interesting as previously discussed here. Surely seems like they are getting infected pretty easily.In the zoos the cats are probably getting infected by the airborne route. People coughing and breathing into open cages? I suppose that the zookeepers could infecting them somehow, but there are not too many instances ofpeople and these big cats together in very close quarters except under very controlled conditions [like a vet doing anexam]. As for origins, it does put a heavy spotlight back on the Feliforms.

In context

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

2020-12-28 14:50 Edward C. Holmes open

I don't have the sequence for that Cambodian virus and I'll see I can get hold of the key bits of the spike protein. Iwas told it was 'quite divergent'.
2020-12-28 14:50 Robert F. Garry open

@Eddie Holmes Oh that's very interesting! Will be interested to see Spike.
2020-12-28 14:53 Edward C. Holmes open

@Eddie Holmes I'll see what I can do...complex politics.
2020-12-28 14:56 Robert F. Garry open

Thanks Eddie - @Kristian Andersen It suddenly occurs to me that the monkey passaged virus data might be interesting - weren't there changes in the spike?
2020-12-28 15:14 Robert F. Garry

The cats are very interesting as previously discussed here. Surely seems like they are getting infected pretty easily.In the zoos the cats are probably getting infected by the airborne route. People coughing and breathing into open cages? I suppose that the zookeepers could infecting them somehow, but there are not too many instances ofpeople and these big cats together in very close quarters except under very controlled conditions [like a vet doing anexam]. As for origins, it does put a heavy spotlight back on the Feliforms.
2020-12-28 16:00 Edward C. Holmes open

If it is moving around zoos in an airborne manner then the infections in felids are even more striking as you would expect supposedly high risk animals like great apes also to be infected. Yet, it is consistently not apes and consistently is tigers.
2020-12-28 16:41 Kristian G. Andersen open

@Eddie Holmes That _*is*_ close - interesting....
2020-12-28 16:43 Kristian G. Andersen open

@Robert Garry - not sure if there were changes in the passaged viruses - something to ask Mark when he's back (1/4 - same for the rest of the lab).
2020-12-28 17:28 Edward C. Holmes open

@Eddie Holmes And here's a simplot. There's clearly a region from ~8-18 Kb where it is about as close to SARS-CoV-2 as RaTG13... [shared file(s): SimPlot.bmp]

Full conversation →