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This has been known for a while, but I'm not complaining about it. Ever since this whole thing started, several scientists have been finding things which are "i

This has been known for a while, but I'm not complaining about it. Ever since this whole thing started, several scientists have been finding things which are "interesting to take a look into them further", to put it in some way. I have a close friend who works w/ population genetics and basically does phylogenies all day. For those who don't know, a phylogeny is an analysis where you study how similar/dissimilar are sequences between known things in order to infer what are the most plausible evolutionary relationships that (could have) happened. So, this friend of mine has been taking a look at some of the published sequences ever since they came out and his personal conclusion is that there is no way that SARS-CoV-2 came to be in a "natural" way. Among other interesting things, he claims that the virus does not seem to have a single "origin". I'll try to explain, so while you're figuring out what the "history" of something is (i.e. ancestors, lineage), you usually get some sort of tree-like arrangement where some structural rules are strongly (but not completely) preserved, like if A -> B and B -> C then A -> C, you get the idea. In SARS-CoV-2's case, such rules (or lack thereof) suggest that different regions of the sequence cannot be assumed to have followed the same evolutionary history; which is kind of weird, honestly. This is something that has been observed naturally, but under very specific constraints which are unlikely to apply to SARS-CoV-2 and how it has spread throughout the world. Anyway, I'm happy that these sort of studies are finally coming to light and that, for whatever reason, people are now allowed to talk about it. The whole point of science is to engage in rational discussion and build on each other's knowledge in order to attain the truth. PS: I have degrees in Genomics and Molecular Biology, and have worked for around 15 years on the field.

shadowgovt 5y ago
> same origin Sure, but that can also indicate it's a virus resulting from natural stitching together of DNA sequences from multiple infections in one living host, like HIV. How do we disambiguate novel virus arising from multi-infection interference from human synthesis?
- moralestapia 5y ago
  >How do we disambiguate novel virus arising from multi-infection interference from human synthesis? Best you can do is work with probabilities and try to infer which theory is more plausible than others.
DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
> different regions of the sequence cannot be assumed to have followed the same evolutionary history This is because of recombination, which is extremely common among coronaviruses. If you look at the phylogenetics of the relatives of SARS-CoV-2 (forget about SARS-CoV-2 for a moment), you get different trees if you look at different genes. Did the Wuhan Institute of Virology engineer all the different viruses found in nature in bats? That's the conclusion your friend would have to draw, based on the logic you've presented.

shadowgovt 5y ago

> same origin Sure, but that can also indicate it's a virus resulting from natural stitching together of DNA sequences from multiple infections in one living host, like HIV. How do we disambiguate novel virus arising from multi-infection interference from human synthesis?

moralestapia 5y ago
>How do we disambiguate novel virus arising from multi-infection interference from human synthesis? Best you can do is work with probabilities and try to infer which theory is more plausible than others.

DiogenesKynikos 5y ago

> different regions of the sequence cannot be assumed to have followed the same evolutionary history This is because of recombination, which is extremely common among coronaviruses. If you look at the phylogenetics of the relatives of SARS-CoV-2 (forget about SARS-CoV-2 for a moment), you get different trees if you look at different genes. Did the Wuhan Institute of Virology engineer all the different viruses found in nature in bats? That's the conclusion your friend would have to draw, based on the logic you've presented.