Slack / Private Message Drop — page 1013

[2021-10-01 05:17:32] [Robert Garry] Agree @Eddie Holmes would have decimated - I agree no impact - the only news was Linfa calling out 4$ about the Shi and no journo is going there. The *major* problem with the debate was that it wasn't one. It was a round robin of talking points and except for a few brief comments like Linfa calling out Alina virtually no opportunity to challenge or rebut the nonsense. . Should have been question - answer (1 min)- rebuttal (1 min)- rebuttal (30 sec). [2021-10-01 05:28:14] [Robert Garry] First question: Dr Chan - please outline the scientific evidence for a Lab Leak. [2021-10-03 07:04:25] [Robert Garry] @Andrew Rambaut !channel yeah - most definitely the template switching or copy-choice error has to involved reading a template 3' to 5'. All you said was true if the template for the jump is a stray mRNA it would need to be reverse complement for going from the neg strand on the replicative intermediate (often visualized as double-stranded) to the pos strand (second round). So as you say the first round (pos to neg for the jump) would generate positive RNA that would encode the modified spikes. Not so sure that there is a huge advantage one way or the other in terms of whether the jump occurs first or second round, There are dozens of rounds of replication both positive to negative (generates replicative intermediates) AND negative to positive which generate mRNAS and genomes. [2021-10-03 07:05:40] [Robert Garry] If the template is a related pos RNA virus rather than a mRNA in the same cell then you will have a lot of negative strands. so the question of when the jump happens pos to neg or neg to pos is not an issue. [2021-10-03 07:12:05] [Robert Garry] Finally, Mike Worobey pinged me with a different but related question. He wants to do a virological post (and asked me - old school- to help). His hypothesis is that if there is a co-infection with BANAL-20-52 (NSRS at S1/S2) and one of the RmYN02 like viruses such as BANAL-20-116 (NSPAAR) you could generate by a template switch or copy-choice error a virus with something very close to NSPRRARS. It's very possible. [2021-10-03 07:29:16] [Robert Garry] So Yuri - the masterblaster - got that part right about the reverse complement (his pango mRNA is the reverse complement), That being said - I am a little biased toward most of the copy choice errors involving mixed virus infections for the reason that the replication machinery for the virus is complicated by the fact that you need the nucleocapsid proteins and other factors bound to the template to get efficient replication "transcription" ( the pos to neg first round or if you a re a neg strand virus the first neg to pos round). Does not mean it can't involve a mRNA - Yuri even found some examples in the literature - just means for me it's much more infrequent. [2021-10-03 07:46:44] [Robert Garry] https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/JVI.79.11.6620-6630.2005 [2021-10-03 07:49:35] [Robert Garry] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2908549/ [2021-10-03 07:54:30] [Robert Garry] The old schoolers call the first round "replication" (generates the replicative intermediates). The second round they call "transcription"- generates the mRNAs. [2021-10-03 08:09:22]