Slack / Private Message Drop — page 336

[2020-12-21 14:31:01] [Andrew Rambaut] (most 501Y from Wales are this lineage at the moment but it is changing) [2020-12-21 14:31:30] [Andrew Rambaut] So no other spikes apart from 614G but everyone has one of those these days [2020-12-21 14:36:35] [Kristian Andersen] That's interesting about the Wales lineage - so if that's really spreading fast too and we believe there's a causal relationship, then it's down to N501Y - potentially with D614G, but as you say, they all have that one (including that earlier cluster in Australia that didn't go anywhere). [2020-12-21 14:42:23] [Robert Garry] guess not - color blind [2020-12-21 14:57:41] [Andrew Rambaut] My feeling is the Welsh cluster isn't growing at the same rate. It is at least as old but hasn't taken over or spread to other places. Also may have been amplified by some hospital outbreaks. [2020-12-21 14:59:54] [Kristian Andersen] Makes sense. [2020-12-21 15:14:32] [Andrew Rambaut] Just found a genome from mid July that has N501Y and the ORF8 stop Possibly part of the precursor lineage. [2020-12-21 15:57:36] [Robert Garry] From Sun: "In our previous study, we generated a mouse-adapted strain of SARS-CoV-2 (MASCp6) by 6 serial passages of a SARS-CoV-2 in the lung of *aged* BALB/c mice, which caused moderate lung damage and no fatality in mice. Herein, we further serially passaged for additional 30 times to generate a more virulent SARS-CoV-2, and the resulting virus at passage 36 ( named as MASCp36) was used for stock preparation and titration." And a little deeper dive into the supplement reveals that N501Y came up early - by 6 passages [and it wasn't pathogenic] the other 2 muts took more passages [and tjhose mutations - probably Q493K actually made the virus pathogenic for mice. . Aged mice are definitely immunosuppressed. So, evidence for the immunocompromised theory. [2020-12-21 16:07:54] [Eddie Holmes] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55364445 [2020-12-21 16:13:41] [Andrew Rambaut] We should offer to go do it. [2020-12-21 16:13:58] [Kristian Andersen] YES - we can collect our fat checks at the same time! [2020-12-21 16:14:57] [Kristian Andersen]