Slack / Private Message Drop — page 562

Hah - you'd imagine him beating the Trevor out of her and replace it with physics smugness :wink: [2021-03-02 18:01:52] [Eddie Holmes] Oh, don't get me started... [2021-03-02 18:04:27] [Kristian Andersen] Back to science - we just picked up two _very_ interesting "CA" lineage viruses carrying the d144 deletion and a few other mutations, including N501Y and (more intriguingly) L455F - two out of six of the contact residues hit in a single lineage. L455F is rare - mostly seen in a few genomes from Australia. Eddie, do you have any idea if that mutation was looked into? @Robert Garry your eyes on L455F? Remember, the "CA" lineage has the L452R mutation too, so I wonder if those two together might do something funky. [shared file(s): Screen Shot 2021-03-02 at 6.01.56 PM.png, Protein alignment.geneious] [2021-03-02 18:05:32] [Kristian Andersen] The screenshot - two bottom sequences = new genomes. Above that, "Type" B.1.429 and above that, Wuhan Hu-1. [2021-03-02 18:13:36] [Eddie Holmes] Can you tell me what the Australian sequences are? I'll look into it. No way that L455F will have been studied here. [2021-03-02 18:33:10] [Kristian Andersen] I can't... We're unfortunately not allowed to pull GISAID IDs... I can see UK has a few of the double mutants too. https://outbreak.info/situation-reports?pango&muts=S%3AN501Y&muts=S%3AL455F [2021-03-02 18:45:14] [Eddie Holmes] Ok, I'll ask about it. [2021-03-02 18:47:58] [Robert Garry] I'll look - any change to an aromatic amino acid could potentially set up a stronger binding. [2021-03-02 18:50:38] [Kristian Andersen] Yeah, interesting model here: http://biosig.unimelb.edu.au/covid3d/mutation/QHD43416/ACE2_BOAT/L455F/A. But I feel that L452R mutation must mess around with this whole interface, so lord knows what L455F does on top. Probably all just random, but pretty interesting to see 2/6 key binding residues hit in a single virus (and a characteristic deletion - so probably some funky infection). [2021-03-02 23:14:03] [Andrew Rambaut] Not seeing any UK ones on GISAID with both: [shared file(s): image.png] [2021-03-02 23:16:23] [Andrew Rambaut] A cluster of 20 from Australia in August with L445F and S477N? example: Australia/VIC17844/2020, EPI_ISL_779495