Slack / Private Message Drop — page 325

Yup - honestly, I think this is the way forward. As soon as we start giving it attention, well, it'll get more attention and it's not like they'll ever be happy unless we go visit some old mines... Essentially the argument is "we have considered it, and we don't find lab origins plausible" - but without even saying that. [2020-12-19 00:42:44] [Eddie Holmes] @Andrew Rambaut There are two B.1.1.7 cases from New South Wales. Both on GISAID. The first (EPI_ISL_678386) was collected from hotel quarantine on 30/11/2020, while the second (EPI_ISL_717711) was collected from hotel quarantine on 9/12/2020. Luckily it's not in the community. [2020-12-19 01:52:11] [Andrew Rambaut] [thread - ID: 2020-12-19 01:52:11] Thanks Eddie. A 12 year old and a 6 year old apparently so both with families. Was it the same family I wonder? [2020-12-19 08:04:57] [Andrew Rambaut] South African N501Y lineage also has E484K but not much else I think. It has a very long unsampled branch with some USA ones as an outgroup. So no real evidence of a big bunch of mutations happening together. [2020-12-19 08:50:00] [Kristian Andersen] Andrew, what's the best representative sequence for the UK lineage? All on GISAID? [2020-12-19 09:20:18] [Andrew Rambaut] Actually the earliest one is a pretty good one: `England/MILK-9E05B3/2020|2020-09-20` [2020-12-19 09:55:39] [Kristian Andersen] That additional mutation in the South African lineage is quite interesting - E484K is a flip of charge and K is novel in this position across all the CoVs. @Robert Garry - any chance you can please take a look at that mutation to see if you might have any insights? The mutation has popped up a few times independently across the tree. [2020-12-19 10:45:24] [Andrew Rambaut] 486 is a contact residue, right? Crops up in the Dutch mink. [2020-12-19 10:52:39] [Kristian Andersen] Yup - it's F in SC2, but L in SC1 and many of the bat viruses (I believe also L in the mink?) [2020-12-19 10:58:09] [Andrew Rambaut] yup [2020-12-19 11:01:14] [Kristian Andersen] I pinged Andrew Ward this morning to see if he could get one of his structural guys to take a close look at all of this - I'm sure you're already doing it too, but good to get a bunch of eyes on this. What's interesting about the SA link is that if we're really seeing this explosive growth, then it's down to N501Y and not all the other mutations. Which seems a little strange to me. [2020-12-19 11:02:15]