The Coronavirus Thread

[Cunt]

I just got a new strain. Electric zebra kush or something...I don't care. It smokes good, and tastes like happy hay.

[rainbow]

But with your understanding of truth and lying, I'm not surprised at your misrepresentation of the facts.

...says the Trump asslicker

[JimC]

The species concept is rather difficult to apply to a virus...

[Brian Peacock]

Well yeah, but fundamentally we're talking about variations on the basic pattern rather than a mutation into a novel form.

[Svartalf]

The species concept is rather difficult to apply to a virus...

actually, I'm yet to fully understand the definition of distinctive speciation in higher animals and plants. my rule of thumb understanding is interfertility, like I differenciate dialects from acctual languages at the intercomprehension line, but I know that's a layman's attitude, and not necessarily the correct understanding.

[Tero]

A virus has a limited number of proteins it codes for. The coronaviruses all have the same number of genes that do the same things inside the infected cell. They insist on familes, so there are in fact at least 4 families. Alpha and beta are in the "bat group."

https:/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphacoronavirus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betacoronavirus

in there
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betacoron ... sification

and the ones we are dealing with have very similar biochemistry

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_ac ... oronavirus

[JimC]

The species concept is rather difficult to apply to a virus...

actually, I'm yet to fully understand the definition of distinctive speciation in higher animals and plants. my rule of thumb understanding is interfertility, like I differenciate dialects from acctual languages at the intercomprehension line, but I know that's a layman's attitude, and not necessarily the correct understanding.

That is actually the basis for one of the more important definitions of species, at least for most animals IMO. The best way to envision it is to imagine 2 populations of the original species, separated geographically by something like a mountain uplift, or a new sea, for a considerable period of time. Inevitably the 2 gene pools will become gradually more different. The test for whether they have truly become separate species comes when a change allows the 2 populations to meet again. If insufficient genetic change has occurred, then they will successfully interbreed, and merge into one breeding population. If they are no longer inter fertile, they remain separate, and can be legitimately classified as 2 separate species. Now, there are certainly a variety of situations where this concept is hard to apply, but it still remains a useful guide.

[JimC]

A virus has a limited number of proteins it codes for. The coronaviruses all have the same number of genes that do the same things inside the infected cell. They insist on familes, so there are in fact at least 4 families. Alpha and beta are in the "bat group."

https:/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphacoronavirus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betacoronavirus

in there
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betacoron ... sification

and the ones we are dealing with have very similar biochemistry

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_ac ... oronavirus

Sure. I'm not saying that there are not ways to classify viruses into groups based on biochemistry, just that the species concept is not a useful term in any such classification.

[Tero]

Our county has some 600 cases. It's taking an awful lot of time for viruses to disappear from tested people:
As of Wednesday afternoon, the Lancaster County COVID-19 dashboard shows 688 people have tested positive for COVID-19, four people have died, and 63 have recovered. Twenty-three new cases of the coronavirus were reported Wednesday in Lancaster County.

[L'Emmerdeur]

Not surprising, but tangentially relevant:

'Bat "super immunity" may explain how bats carry coronaviruses, study finds'

A University of Saskatchewan (USask) research team has uncovered how bats can carry the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) coronavirus without getting sick -- research that could shed light on how coronaviruses make the jump to humans and other animals.

Coronaviruses such as MERS, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), and more recently the COVID19-causing SARS-CoV-2 virus, are thought to have originated in bats. While these viruses can cause serious and often fatal disease in people, for reasons not previously well understood, bats seem unharmed.

"The bats don't get rid of the virus and yet don't get sick. We wanted to understand why the MERS virus doesn't shut down the bat immune responses as it does in humans," said USask microbiologist Vikram Misra.

In research just published in Scientific Reports, the team has demonstrated for the first time that cells from an insect-eating brown bat can be persistently infected with MERS coronavirus for months, due to important adaptations from both the bat and the virus working together.

"Instead of killing bat cells as the virus does with human cells, the MERS coronavirus enters a long-term relationship with the host, maintained by the bat's unique 'super' immune system," said Misra, corresponding author on the paper. "SARS-CoV-2 is thought to operate in the same way."

Misra says the team's work suggests that stresses on bats -- such as wet markets, other diseases, and possibly habitat loss -- may have a role in coronavirus spilling over to other species.

"When a bat experiences stress to their immune system, it disrupts this immune system-virus balance and allows the virus to multiply," he said.

[Svartalf]

The species concept is rather difficult to apply to a virus...

actually, I'm yet to fully understand the definition of distinctive speciation in higher animals and plants. my rule of thumb understanding is interfertility, like I differenciate dialects from acctual languages at the intercomprehension line, but I know that's a layman's attitude, and not necessarily the correct understanding.

That is actually the basis for one of the more important definitions of species, at least for most animals IMO. The best way to envision it is to imagine 2 populations of the original species, separated geographically by something like a mountain uplift, or a new sea, for a considerable period of time. Inevitably the 2 gene pools will become gradually more different. The test for whether they have truly become separate species comes when a change allows the 2 populations to meet again. If insufficient genetic change has occurred, then they will successfully interbreed, and merge into one breeding population. If they are no longer inter fertile, they remain separate, and can be legitimately classified as 2 separate species. Now, there are certainly a variety of situations where this concept is hard to apply, but it still remains a useful guide.

but could the intensely differentiated birds Darwin found in the Galapagos still breed between different types?

[Brian Peacock]

Our county has some 600 cases. It's taking an awful lot of time for viruses to disappear from tested people:
As of Wednesday afternoon, the Lancaster County COVID-19 dashboard shows 688 people have tested positive for COVID-19, four people have died, and 63 have recovered. Twenty-three new cases of the coronavirus were reported Wednesday in Lancaster County.

That's a mortality rate of c.10%. That's pretty high on the face of it, but it does rather depend on the number of people being tested.

[L'Emmerdeur]

Just recently there was a study released describing the effects of interbreeding between two species of Galapagos finches.

'How gene flow between species influences the evolution of Darwin's finches'

Despite the traditional view that species do not exchange genes by hybridisation, recent studies show that gene flow between closely related species is more common than previously thought. A team of scientists from Uppsala University and Princeton University now reports how gene flow between two species of Darwin's finches has affected their beak morphology. The study is published today [May 4, 2020] in Nature Ecology and Evolution.

[Svartalf]

interesting

[Tero]

Our county has some 600 cases. It's taking an awful lot of time for viruses to disappear from tested people:
As of Wednesday afternoon, the Lancaster County COVID-19 dashboard shows 688 people have tested positive for COVID-19, four people have died, and 63 have recovered. Twenty-three new cases of the coronavirus were reported Wednesday in Lancaster County.

That's a mortality rate of c.10%. That's pretty high on the face of it, but it does rather depend on the number of people being tested.

Well no, all we know is that 10% have recovered and can go back to normal life. Of the 688 only 4 have died. Less than a percent. But more will die as deaths lag the newly infected.