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Earlier this week a science reporter named Nicholas Wade, who has worked for both Nature and the NY Times, published a lengthy piece on Medium titled “Origin of Covid Following the Clues.” The piece can be broken into three parts. The first looks at what could be called the PR push to dismiss the lab leak theory. The second, about the kind of research taking place in the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the third part looks at the existing evidence and asks whether it fits more easily with the idea of a natural origin or with a lab leak.
It s Time To Build: How Hospitals Can Thrive As Care Goes Digital forbes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from forbes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
How did SARS-CoV-2 first evolve in humans?
In a perspective article recently published in the journal
Science, Hyeryun Choe and Michael Farzan from the Scripps Research Institute, USA, have described the early-stage evolution of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in humans. They have provided a detailed overview of how early mutations in SARS-CoV-2 spike protein facilitate its adaptation in human systems.
How does SARS-CoV-2 enter human cells?
The spike glycoprotein on the viral envelope is the main entry protein of SARS-CoV-2 that initiates viral entry into human cells. Upon binding to the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor on the human cell membrane, the spike protein undergoes a series of conformational changes, which collectively result in viral entry and infection establishment.
The numerals in the illustration show the main mutation sites of the B.1.1.7 variant first detected in the U.K., which is more transmissible than other variants. Here, the virus s spike protein (red) is bound to a human cell (blue). Juan Gaertner/Science Source
Back in the fall, Tom Wenseleers made a bold claim on Twitter. He tweeted that the new coronavirus variant emerging in the U.K. was more transmissible or could spread more quickly than over versions of the virus. I posted a graph [on Twitter] showing the U.K. variant had a transmission advantage over the other types of the virus, says Wenseleers, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Leuven in Belgium.