Slack / Private Message Drop — page 862

[2021-05-24 15:35:30] [Kristian Andersen] [thread - ID: 2021-05-24 15:35:30] It really is important - the issue isn't about lab leak, it's about that they _must_ have had the virus prior to the pandemic, which (a) is hugely unlikely and (b) there's absolutely zero evidence for - in fact, the evidence quite strongly suggest they didn't! [2021-05-24 15:36:14] [Eddie Holmes] Told the same to Simone at the SCMP [2021-05-24 15:37:39] [Eddie Holmes] Told another journo that if it's not a conspiracy theory it's without doubt a 'theory containing a conspiracy'. I hope they get sarcasm. [2021-05-24 15:39:43] [Kristian Andersen] We need this particular point to be crystal clear in the letter. Will find some time tonight. [2021-05-24 15:43:01] [Eddie Holmes] I'll take a look as well [2021-05-24 15:46:31] [Andrew Rambaut] [thread - ID: 2021-05-24 15:35:30] @Kristian Andersen Yes hopefully the more sensible ones on the BS letter will see what they were actually saying. But I was avoiding saying anything about the evidence fore the zoonosis as that needs a better venue than Twitter. [2021-05-24 15:47:08] [Andrew Rambaut] Sorry about this but could you post the link for the letter again? [2021-05-24 15:50:39] [Kristian Andersen] [thread - ID: 2021-05-24 15:35:30] @Kristian Andersen Relman clearly doesn't like the word - but it's because he doesn't realize what he's alleging. And yes, hopefully this'll help them understand that. [2021-05-24 15:51:15] [Robert Garry] While I have you all here does anyone have any issues with updating Holmes 2021 as follows: We are updating this post with four additional viruses: RpYN06, PrC31, RaTG15 and RsYN04 (Table 1, yellow highlights). These SARSr-CoVs are described in more detail in Zhou et al. (2021), Li et al. (2021) and Guo et al. (2021). ```The Spike proteins of RpYN06 and PrC31 share 98.2% identity (99.8% similar) in a 1246 aa overlap. RpYN06 and PrC31 spike are highly similar to Guangdong (GD) pangolin coronavirus in the N-terminus of the protein. RpYN06 and PrC31 have 2 or 3 predicted O-linked glyans near the S1/S2 junction (Indel 8) confirming the highly variable nature of this domain. ``` The Spike proteins of RatG15 and RsYN04 share 91.5% identity (96.5% similar) in a 1254 aa overlap. RatG15 and RsYN04 have an apparent insert of three amino acids CXK in the indel referred to here as 4a. Both viruses have a cysteine 5 or 4 amino acids towards the N-terminus that is not present in other SARSr-CoVs located within a conserved sequence (underlined). The two additional cysteines may form a tight cysteine loop or potentially these cysteines could coordinate with histidines to bind a metal ion. Variants of interest B.1.427/429 have a mutation in