Slack / Private Message Drop — page 398

[thread - ID: 2021-01-13 08:35:43] @Kristian Andersen https://twitter.com/Cornedbeefpyatt/status/1349776702239633409?s=20 [2021-01-14 14:08:38] [Kristian Andersen] Human geneticists love to use the term "pathogenic mutation". I wonder if that's where it's coming from... Real garbage. I'm glad Trevor supports our hypothesis... :wink: [2021-01-14 14:09:41] [Eddie Holmes] I even discussed it with Eric Topol on his podcast! [2021-01-14 14:09:58] [Kristian Andersen] REALLY???? [2021-01-14 14:10:03] [Kristian Andersen] :zany_face: [2021-01-14 14:10:15] [Eddie Holmes] Yes!! [2021-01-14 14:10:19] [Kristian Andersen] WOW [2021-01-14 14:11:25] [Kristian Andersen] I still consider it MY (highly speculative!) hypothesis! MINE. MY HYPOTHESIS. [2021-01-14 14:18:09] [Eddie Holmes] It's also in that ABC Australian podcast I did the other the day. But you can have it - I'm not 100% convinced yet. I'm not sure why evolution in individual chronic hosts will lead to convergent evolution for increased transmissibility at the population scale. A few years ago we did a norovirus modelling study that said this sort of thing was unlikely, but that could easily be bollocks. https://academic.oup.com/ve/article/3/2/vex018/4055728 [2021-01-14 14:27:29] [Andrew Rambaut] There is no evidence that there is increased transmissibility in either the Brazilian or South African strain. [2021-01-14 14:28:28] [Andrew Rambaut] It is clearly fit in the populations it is spreading in. [2021-01-14 14:38:00] [Andrew Rambaut] The convergence is possibly for cellular infectivity and immune evasion - all things that will be selected for in a chronic infection without sterilising immunity. Strong competition between viruses for cells. However, my assumption has always been that this can only be likely to degrade transmissibility (given it was already transmissible at the beginning). But perhaps there is just a fortunate (for the virus) alignment of a within-host fitness peak and a between host one. And the latter involves too many intermediate steps with negative epistatic effects to reach in a stepwise