Slack / Private Message Drop — page 73

[Kristian Andersen] And yes - of the six key mutations in the RBD, one of them occur in tissue culture for SARS (*but* it's also present in the pangolin RBD). [2020-06-11 17:27:24] [Eddie Holmes] Are you saying they deliberately inserted the furin cleavage site? I see no evidence of them ever doing that before. (I don't think RaTG13 had a different name...I think there a partial sequence from another virus that is identical. Can we do a quick zoom? [2020-06-11 17:38:22] [Eddie Holmes] To me, "Loss of furin site in tissue culture meaning it's active" strongly argues AGAINST culturing as being the cause of the cleavage site insertion. [2020-06-11 17:44:39] [Kristian Andersen] Just making some dinner - let's Zoom in ~30mins? [2020-06-11 17:47:04] [Eddie Holmes] Let's say 6:30 pm time. OK? [2020-06-11 18:29:24] [Eddie Holmes] https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/98148315438 [2020-06-11 18:30:12] [Kristian Andersen] I'm on! [2020-06-11 20:14:23] [Kristian Andersen] :bat:/n Eddie: 80/20 Kristian: 70/30 [2020-06-11 20:34:35] [Eddie Holmes] 90/10. I think. [2020-06-11 20:37:51] [Eddie Holmes] Strictly confidentially, I literally (2 mins ago) just got an email that says: "Recently, we isolated a pangolin-Cov that is highly related with SARS-CoV-2 (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2313-x). We further found that the infected pangolins showed similar CT scans with COVID-19 patients (please see the attachment, a and b are virus-positive pangolins, while c is virus-negative). Thus, we further did the transcriptome of their multiple tissue, and found they showed similar immune response as that of COVID-19 patients, that is, an inadequate interferon response, but excessive inflammatory response and an over-exuberant cytokine response.In addition, we found other interesting results". I don't the viruses are any closer to the ones we have but the clinical/transcriptome results are interesting...if true (you can never tell) would you expect a clinically similar infection in an animal in nature if this had come out of a lab? [2020-06-11 20:38:25] [Eddie Holmes] I will of course agree to help to see what more I can discover.