Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag | bioRxiv | The finding of 4 unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV, all of which have identity /similarity to amino acid residues in key structural proteins of HIV-1 is unlikely to be fortuitous in nature.

(post is archived)

You are currently inside a comment thread.

[–] • 1 pt

From the comment section:

I agree with Jason Weir, Song Yang, and others.

Regarding these purported HIV sequences. I studied gp120 structure in an transmission electron microscopy lab in grad school. gp120 has long non-conserved regions that effectively hypermutate. This is a major mechanism of HIV immune system evasion, because it changes the gp120 presented region so fast the immune system can't keep up with it.

This happens because HIV is an RNA virus. It has a couple of mutations per replication on average. In late stagesof infection there can be 500K to 1 million copies per milliliter. do the math on that. Because of this, we call HIV a quasi-species. It's got a very bushy tree within one person that is infected.

Within the quasi species of HIV, in the gp120 non-conserved high mutationregions you are going to find just about any short sequence there sooner or later. These inserts are short, up to 15 or so nucleotides, but mostly 5 to 8. And this is the spike protein, which is an area that mutates and finds new receptors.

If you want to look at anengineered virus, look up SHIV (simian HIV). That was designed and produced in a laboratory. It has huge regions transferred from other viruses. It makes monkeys sick with human-like HIV.

I think that this paper is ignorant and amateurish pseudoscience. No. Absolutely not. This is not some escaped bioweapon.

19 1 • Reply • Share ›

link