On 27/10/2020 08:00, jam...@echeque.com wrote:
On 2020-10-27 14:28, jim bell wrote:
On Monday, October 26, 2020, 03:25:41 AM PDT, grarpamp <grarp...@gmail.com>
wrote:
https://nerdhaspower.weebly.com/ratg13-is-fake.html
Full disclosure: While I consider myself conversant with many sciences and
technologies, 'biology' is probably my area of least knowledge.
I rapidly skimmed this article, but was doubtful when I saw this:
"RaTG13 looks like a “close cousin” of the Wuhan coronavirus – the two are 96%
identical throughout the whole sequence of the viral genome. If RaTG13 is a nature-borne
virus, one can comfortably conclude that the Wuhan coronavirus must very likely also come
from nature and must share a recent common ancestor with RaTG13."
Nuts.
We are far more closely related to a chimp, than the Wu Flu is related
to RTG13 >
four percent difference is a huge difference.
For primates, yes 4% difference is huge - it would take a few million
years of evolution to change 4% of a primate's DNA.
For viruses, it's actually very close; in about 50 years of normal
evolution a virus like SARS will usually change 4% of it's RNA.
Note that a many of the mutations in a coronavirus's RNA do not change
the expressed proteins - different sequences will code for exactly the
same proteins.
Random changes of up to a percent or so in viral DNA may not change the
viral proteins significantly or at all, whereas a random change of 1% in
human DNA would be universally fatal.
Consequently the human germline mutation rate has to be kept very low by
repair mechanisms etc, approximately 5×10^-10 per basepair per year.
For coronaviruses the mutation rate is about 8x10^-4 per basepair per
year, or 16 million times faster.
Wu Flu is mostly bat virus with a little bit of Aids virus,
That theory had people going for a bit but it turns out it's bollocks.
There is no HIV-specific RNA in SARS-CoV2, never mind the four sequences
claimed.
Two of the claimed insertions are actually different to the claimed
HIV-1 sequences and span different proteins, so they are just chance
near-matches.
The other two insertions code sequences of iirc six and seven amino
acids in a row which are also found in a row in a part of an AIDS
protein, but a) 6 or 7 identical amino acids is so small matches
frequently happen by chance and b) the identical amino acid sequences
also occur in dozens of proteins from other viruses, there is nothing
HIV-specific about them.
The paper was never peer-reviewed, and is now withdrawn - nothing to see
here.
Peter Fairbrother
