hirenj

25 ms·

91.
by hirenj 6y ago
This seems to be a stark counterpoint to the Great Barrington declaration, and pointedly lays out the argument against herd immunity, with a call to sign the John Snow memo. Which only seems prudent since winter is actually coming, and cond
92.
by hirenj 6y ago
I wonder why we need to supplement glucosamine (e.g. to treat arthritis) when it is synthesised by the body from glucose in one of our basic metabolic pathways. I could only imagine this becomes a problem unless a) the enzymes responsible s
93.
by hirenj 6y ago
Also, I find it is massively unsatisfying that SARS-CoV 1/2 don’t use Sialic acids to recognise our cells, when it’s more likely than not to find a virus that binds sialic acids.
94.
by hirenj 6y ago
Sialic acids are super interesting, and the biosynthesis of sugars with them on is controlled by a small group of enzymes (20-ish). These enzymes have different tissues and cell type expression profiles, and can catalyse linkage of sialic a
95.
by hirenj 6y ago
Of the five salient points they make here, I would argue that they are a lot less strong than the authors believe them to be. Point 1 can also likely be made for the original Sars-CoV, and probably is irrelevant. If they show CoV-2 is more
96.
by hirenj 6y ago
I had no idea there was more to the page because of the weird scrolling on the site, so I missed the glycan (sugar) stuff, which is my bread and butter. I think the consensus is that there is not likely any shielding going on with the glyca
97.
by hirenj 6y ago
It very well could use both mechanisms, which I neglected to think about. I only think endocytosis is important because that specific mechanism uses ACE2 and heparan sulfate (which can be blocked using heparin I think).
98.
by hirenj 6y ago
While this might come across as a pedantic point, I don’t think CoV-2 comes in via membrane fusion, but it is rather endocytosed (i.e. the receptor is pulled back into the cell, taking the virus with it). This is an important distinction to
99.
by hirenj 6y ago
Funnily enough over this last weekend, I read a great review on this subject from earlier this year: “Synaptic Specificity, Recognition Molecules, and Assembly of Neural Circuits” by Sanes and Zipursky https://doi.org/10.101
100.
by hirenj 7y ago
It's weird, right? I spent some time last night trying to figure out exactly what the mechanism is that chloroquine has when it works. It looks like there may be more than one mechanism in place. In the malaria parasite, it kills the
101.
by hirenj 7y ago
Excellent question! Here's the answer: We have no idea! Blood type antigens are complex carbohydrates, and A/B/O is the difference between N-acetyl-Galactosamine/Galactose/nothing at the end of a sugar chain. So let
102.
by hirenj 7y ago
I recommend reading the review below on known effects of blood groups on infection. Not super surprising in that blood group may have general effects. I can't think how this would work mechanistically without knowing the glycans on ACE
103.
by hirenj 7y ago
Whether you believe this or not comes down to whether you believe references 32-34 from the paper. I haven't read the stuff about transgenic expression of human ace2 in mice, but it would sound a lot more like it was aberrantly express
104.
by hirenj 7y ago
I just spent a few minutes reading up on this. The real crux of this article is that they pulled out genetic variants associated with expression levels of ACE2 (from gtex, which should be solid enough). These variants are more prevalent in
105.
by hirenj 7y ago
Peer review is not even a bulwark against bad data. I've seen many papers with spurious conclusions. Where peer review is critical is the first pass filter. I can't read all the literature, so I need some editorial filter in place
106.
by hirenj 7y ago
I may have been a little hasty, which is to say COVID-19 might not recognise sialic acids. Which puts a bit of a dent in my theory. But Sialic acids are really interesting!
107.
by hirenj 7y ago
On the HIV inserts, may I point you to this informative comment from a previous thread? I'm afraid it's not good information. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22206393
108.
by hirenj 7y ago
Fun fact: Coronavirus also recognises sialic acids (but they need an extra acetylation on top). Fun fact 2: Sialic acids are important for protecting your gut / balancing the microbiome. Fun fact 3: Bats apparently have a much simpler
109.
by hirenj 7y ago
Within my field, it looks like science twitter is useful, but only up to a limit. The primary use derived from it is a list I found myself added to. It actually contained people who were only peripherally related to the research I do, but m
110.
by hirenj 7y ago
There's an entire community project waiting to happen here with annotation of each of these images with an NCBI taxonomy ID. I would certainly love to see these illustrations come back in to vogue in various databases. There is value i
111.
by hirenj 7y ago
This looks like a whole lot of rubbish to me. They're excited they managed to get blast hits for these short inserts. But in the spirit of open-mindedness, what do I need to be convinced this is even interesting? First I want to see wh
112.
by hirenj 7y ago
This looks like this is an analogue of heparin, that preferentially binds gB (on HSV). It looks this is all about presenting the sulfation in the right shape for recognition, and the cyclodextrin is the delivery mechanism (and upgrade from
113.
by hirenj 7y ago
I’m using this in a scientific drawing tool that I put together - it was remarkably easy to integrate, and the sketch aesthetic is great for presentations or when you wish to convey uncertainty. I’m still hanging out for a browser implement
114.
by hirenj 7y ago
Given two genes, A and B, you could list out the information encoded by them as “A”,”B” and “AB”. Which is basically the Shannon estimate on complexity, right? However in reality, the gene dose makes a difference - so it’s more like the gen
115.
by hirenj 7y ago
If I had an infinite amount of time, I would love to convert this over to run in the browser / SVG.. I hope there are some enterprising young souls out there who are keen on the challenge!
116.
by hirenj 7y ago
I'm actually partly there with that workflow. I directly annotate PDFs and then let a server side script extract relevant annotations that can be used to place the file in the right folder. Similarly, I extract out highlighted text, bu
117.
by hirenj 7y ago
I'm trying to establish convention in our lab that bibliography generation is the last step before submission. It always ends up that the bibliography (ie field codes with ref info in Word) is the most fragile part of the document, and
118.
by hirenj 7y ago
I really love the idea of ditching reference managers. The utility of these three scripts (or something like them) really is demonstrated when on mobile. RSS feeds, Twitter (or emails from colleagues) give me a raw list of papers to read. U
119.
by hirenj 7y ago
I never realised that the APOE variant bound heparin sulfate (HS). HS is actually a cool molecule (glycan) from the perspective of its ability to encode information in its pattern of sulfation. The signals can be mixed and the precise bindi
120.
by hirenj 7y ago
The difference is that the peptides are generated by chopping up larger proteins, while miniproteins are synthesised as short proteins. I.e. you need other enzymes to turn a protein into peptide, but a microprotein only needs to be translat

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