Slack / Private Message Drop — page 209

[2020-10-02 15:18:47] [Kristian Andersen] [thread - ID: 2020-10-02 15:18:47] Yeah, I think that's a really intriguing possibility. Could have been related to animal farming, which would (strongly?) select for the FCS popping up in the first place. [2020-10-02 15:19:31] [Eddie Holmes] I can easily believe that. [2020-10-02 15:19:50] [Kristian Andersen] Clearly, once this thing hit humans, there was (is :disappointed: ) very very strong selection for maintaining that site. [2020-10-02 15:21:12] [Eddie Holmes] Totally. But, as you say, that's no surprise. [2020-10-02 15:31:33] [Eddie Holmes] In other news, I was *confidentially* (so keep to yourself) asked to comment on this. I've not read it, but looking that the tree these viruses are really not that close to Rubella. Bit surprised they got this into Nature. [shared file(s): Relatives of rubella virus in diverse mammals.pdf] [2020-10-02 15:43:20] [Kristian Andersen] Aahaha. I pushed back really hard on that paper - I reviewed it and was unenthused to say the least. [2020-10-02 15:43:37] [Kristian Andersen] I was shocked when they accepted it [2020-10-02 15:45:05] [Kristian Andersen] I might have referenced back to some of your earlier studies to say how low impact this one is.... ```In the revised version of the manuscript the authors provide evidence to show that yellow-necked field mouse could be the/a reservoir for rustrela virus. They have also toned down their language about relevance to human disease. However, beyond these points, my main comments from the first submission still stand - the study is well performed and the methods appropriate, but the scope is too limiting and not of sufficient interest to the broad audience of Nature. The authors discuss the relevance of their findings to e.g., the ability to develop an animal model for Rubella, but that is much too early to tell - the authors don't isolate the virus, let alone show that the viruses are capable of infecting animals - and, importantly, whether that leads to comparable disease to Rubella. So while I find the study of interest and I think these are cool findings, I just don't see how the study would rise to the interest of the readership of Nature. Boiled down, the study is a metagenomic survey of a few different species of animals where a couple of novel viruses have been identified (albeit relatives of Matonaviridae - which have not previously been described). Compare the current study to previous virus discovery studies in Nature by e.g., Shi et al (PMID 29618816 and 27880757) where they discover hundreds of viruses - including close relatives of human pathogens - from very large-scale surveys.``` [2020-10-02 16:07:45] [Eddie Holmes] Spot on. I've no idea why they took this. A similar story can be told for a multitude of viruses. We previously found a relative to Rubella virus in fish. [2020-10-02 16:24:13]