3 ms·
do you understand that there is no one "the sequence"? At best you could be referring to it as "a furin cleavage site"/"a sequence". Moreover, we know that th
by dnautics 5y ago
do you understand that there is no one "the sequence"?
At best you could be referring to it as "a furin cleavage site"/"a sequence".
Moreover, we know that the specific furin cleavage sequence in the SARS-Cov-2 occurs nowhere else among coronaviruses.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago> do you understand that there is no one "the sequence"? The linked paper is, literally, about a specific sequence. That’s the paper we’re discussing in this comment section.
- dnautics 5y agoI'm sorry, that is simply not the case, neither at the protein level nor at the DNA level. Furin cleavage sites have diversity. The canonical minimal furin cleavage site sequence is RX(R/K)R, which had a highly variable amino acid and a choice between the two basic amino acids in another position. This variability is sampled across the coronavirus furin cleavage site sequences.
- shadowgovt 5y agoThe next question, to my mind, is "How common is that cleavage site in other viruses, especially other viruses endemic to the origin location of SARS-Cov-2?" With a follow-up of "How possible would it be for multi-virus splicing to generate that sequence from two otherwise-unrelated, possibly damaged sequences ending up head-to-tail in the DNA of a host cell?" We know of other novel viruses that have resulted from sequences of multiple viruses being spliced together in a living host naturally. I don't know how we'd disambiguate that possibility from human synthesis.
- dnautics 5y agoThese questions are answered in the op paper