from the social-distance-moved-to-12-feet dept.
Mutation in SARS-CoV-2 spike protein renders virus up to eight times more infectious:
A mutation in the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2—one of several genetic mutations in the concerning variants that have emerged in the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Brazil—makes the virus up to eight times more infectious in human cells than the initial virus that originated in China, according to research published in the journal eLife.
The study, led by researchers at New York University, the New York Genome Center, and Mount Sinai, corroborates findings that the D614G mutation makes SARS-CoV-2 more transmissible.
"In the months since we initially conducted this study, the importance of the D614G mutation has grown: the mutation has reached near universal prevalence and is included in all current variants of concern," said Neville Sanjana, assistant professor of biology at NYU, assistant professor of neuroscience and physiology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, and Core Faculty Member at the New York Genome Center. "Confirming that the mutation leads to more transmissibility may help explain, in part, why the virus has spread so rapidly over the past year."
[The researchers] found that the D614G variant increased transduction, or transmissibility, of the virus up to eight-fold as compared to the original virus. The researchers also found that the spike protein mutation made the virus more resistant to being cleaved or split by other proteins. This provides a possible mechanism for the variant's increased ability to infect cells, as the hardier variant resulted in a greater proportion of intact spike protein per virus.
"With our experimental setup we are able to quickly and specifically assess the contribution of G614 and other mutations to the increased spread of SARS-CoV-2," said Tristan Jordan, a postdoctoral scholar in the tenOever Lab at Mount Sinai and co-first author of the study.
Journal Reference:
Zharko Daniloski, Tristan X Jordan, Juliana K Ilmain, et al. The Spike D614G mutation increases SARS-CoV-2 infection of multiple human cell types, (DOI: 10.7554/eLife.65365)
(Score: 5, Informative) by FatPhil on Thursday February 18 2021, @11:51AM (21 children)
"Up to 8-fold". So it might be only 2% more transmissible - as that's less than an 8-fold increase?
> "With our experimental setup we are able to quickly and specifically assess the contribution of G614 and other mutations to the increased spread of SARS-CoV-2," said Tristan Jordan
Clearly you aren't, as you've apparently not been able to specify whether it's 2% more transmissible or 700% more transmissible.
Science communication should be clear and unambiguous. This is failing.
And I doubt their figure anyway - there's no huge obvious uptick in rate in these countries and others that aligns with the arrival of the new strain, the 8x figure is just scaremongering, again, bad science communication. It looks like our local (where there are no lockdowns of any kind) R factor is creeping up from 1.1 to 1.2 - yes that's bad, but that means that most people are still not passing on the disease to most of the people they encounter. A change in 8 of that transmissibility by a factor of 8 would be immediately extremely obvious. Maybe they're measuring some parameter that describes some interaction at the molecular level. But that's not what the scary headline says, and if so, they're deliberately deceiving, which is even worse science communication.
Give this academic the Fauci award for clarity!
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2, Informative) by kvutza on Thursday February 18 2021, @01:56PM (5 children)
According to both the situation in the country where I am and where the new strains spread, and according to news from other affected countries, it is with a big new spread. And you are not immune after having Covid-19 with the initial strains. I am one of those who got the new variant even when wearing face mask. I went quite well through it, but I got it very quick when I had to go out of my overall distancing.
TL;DR It is really more infectious, and you're gonna get it (again). It does not mean a more severe form though (for now).
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 18 2021, @04:50PM (3 children)
FFS, you don't wear a mask to protect yourself. You wear a mask to protect others if you happen to be asymptomatic. Nothing you do will protect yourself short of staying home and avoiding any other living person.
This is why mask wearing is just stupid. It gives people a false sense of security that they can go about their business.
Go back to school and learn about how infections diseases spread.
(Score: 1, Touché) by kvutza on Thursday February 18 2021, @05:10PM
Thank you, I know it. I had to write that people (incl. me) had face masks (at places where I met some). It would had been safer for me with the respirator face mask (they protect those who wear them), but I am in a low-risk group thus I wear just ordinary face masks.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 18 2021, @06:01PM (1 child)
You wear a mask to protect others at all times since asymptomatic transmission is a thing[1]. Mask wearing also appears to reduce the severity of disease when mask wearers are infected, by reducing the initial viral exposure [2].
Not wearing a mask (over both your mouth and nose) makes you a selfish jerk (and possibly a grandma killer).
[1] https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4851 [bmj.com]
[2] https://www.healthline.com/health-news/wearing-a-mask-may-reduce-how-sick-you-get-from-covid-19 [healthline.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 19 2021, @06:52PM
"Not wearing a mask (over both your mouth and nose) makes you a selfish jerk (and possibly a grandma killer)."
Fuck you, you fucking suck-ass slave! I'm not responsible for nature or your shitty immune system. Eat vegetables and exercise you tub of shit. Also, if you're such a sycophantic bitch, we don't need you. Die already!
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 18 2021, @05:20PM
IOW, all the circus they are forcing on us for an year already, is literally for nothing.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday February 18 2021, @02:01PM
Yes, it should - however - this is not science communication, this is population manipulation wearing a sciency robe - it sounds scary, and as such is scaring more of the population than clearly communicated science would, thus it is succeeding - while being extremely distasteful in the process.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Thursday February 18 2021, @03:06PM
But that does not bring in advertising dollars or sell cell phones.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Thursday February 18 2021, @04:39PM (8 children)
The actual answer is 1.3x to 7.7x. "Up to 8x" is a perfectly reasonable way to describe that range.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Friday February 19 2021, @09:10AM (7 children)
Now ask yourself why you made the mistake of conflating the two.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 19 2021, @10:04PM (4 children)
Same reason you did and similar to why the PR/journalist did. But at least he tried to look into it and got closer to the real answer than bitching based on you feelings. But that OK, blame it on the scientist that wasn't responsible for it by calling the scientist deliberately deceptive when he perfectly accurate not that you checked either of TFAs to find out.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday February 20 2021, @10:54PM (3 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 21 2021, @02:58AM (2 children)
Because if you really had noticed the difference between transmission and transduction, you would have pointed that out instead of a generic "uptoitis" claim about transmissibility that the researcher didn't even make, let alone the summary article. But even if they had, you are still wrong since the ranges had a lower bound.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday February 22 2021, @12:17AM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 22 2021, @02:44AM
Then educate us and show where the researcher said it was 8x more transmissible. When doing so, it is probably a good idea to remember what quotation marks are or quote the actual research article.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday February 21 2021, @09:36PM (1 child)
OK. What is the difference between transmission and transduction?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday February 22 2021, @12:14AM
Basically it's about as far apart as you can get when viewing the macroscopic and the microscopic regarding virus spread.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Thursday February 18 2021, @05:34PM (1 child)
Come now, you should know better than to judge the research based on the reporting of it. They even link to the actual scientific article at the bottom of the page.
And right there in the abstract they say the transmissibility increased by 1.3x to 7.7x, depending on the particular base variant of the virus and the genetic background of the individuals exposed.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 18 2021, @11:17PM
That isn't completely accurate. They measured viral transduction. This is a clinical measure that is not the same as "transmissiblity" would be understood by the layman. All other things equal, increased transduction will lead to an increase in transmissibility, but they are not perfectly correlated or causal. A 700% increase in transduction could cause a 40% increase in transmissibility; a 40% increase in transduction could cause a 700% increase in transmissibility. There are lots of factors at work, after all.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Barenflimski on Thursday February 18 2021, @06:43PM
I'm impressed you were able to write a post about how ridiculous these articles have gotten and not be down-modded as a troll.
Are the tides finally turning? Are people actually inspecting the data finally?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 18 2021, @10:17PM
Or you could actually read the paper instead of the summary of it
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 18 2021, @11:51AM (1 child)
D64G has been around forever. It is not that big a deal. Wait for these new ones to come to your fully vaccinated, immunity passport-waving town:
> Vaccination elicits immune responses capable of potently neutralizing SARS-CoV-2. However, ongoing surveillance has revealed the emergence of variants harboring mutations in spike, the main target of neutralizing antibodies. To understand the impact of globally circulating variants, we evaluated the neutralization potency of 48 sera from BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273 vaccine recipients against pseudoviruses bearing spike proteins derived from 10 strains of SARS- CoV-2. While multiple strains exhibited vaccine-induced cross-neutralization comparable to wild- type pseudovirus, 5 strains harboring receptor-binding domain mutations, including K417N/T, E484K, and N501Y, were highly resistant to neutralization. Cross-neutralization of B.1.351 variants was weak and comparable to SARS-CoV and bat-derived WIV1-CoV, suggesting that a relatively small number of mutations can mediate potent escape from vaccine responses. While the clinical impact of neutralization resistance remains uncertain, these results highlight the potential for variants to escape from neutralizing humoral immunity and emphasize the need to develop broadly protective interventions against the evolving pandemic.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.14.21251704v1 [medrxiv.org]
People who were already infected should be relatively safer vs the vaccinated, since they were exposed to the entire virus rather than only the sike protein:
> One important aspect of immunity not addressed by our work is cellular immunity contributed by cytotoxic lymphocytes, including T and NK cells. Even in the absence of neutralizing humoral immunity, previous studies have suggested that cellular immunity can mitigate severe or prolonged infection (Le Bert et al. 2020). In convalescent individuals, T-cell immunity would not be restricted to spike-derived epitopes, but also from other more abundant proteins such as nucleocapsid. As such, it would be reasonable to assume that T-cell-mediated immunity elicited by infection would remain largely intact for circulating variants including B.1.351. However, with the exception of killed whole virus vaccines, all currently available vaccine designs only provide spike protein as the target immunogen, thus limiting T-cell immunity to spike epitopes. It has yet to be determined if the circulating mutations in these epitopes will similarly impair T-cell responses in addition to escaping neutralizing antibodies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 18 2021, @11:55AM
Typos:
*D614G
*Spike
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 18 2021, @12:23PM
https://archive.org/download/TerryADavis_TempleOS_Archive/videos/2017/2017-07-12T04:47:05+00:00%20-%2008JewishPig.MP4 [archive.org]
TERRY UNHINGED!
(Score: 3, Informative) by kvutza on Thursday February 18 2021, @01:50PM
"The increased transduction with Spike D614G ranged from 1.3 to 2.4-fold in Caco-2 and Calu-3 cells expressing endogenous ACE2, and 1.5 to 7.7-fold in A549ACE2 and Huh7.5ACE2 overexpressing ACE2."
That is, it depends on the particular mutation and your genetic background. The worst case with 7.7 times more infectious. If you get lucky, then just 1.3 times more infectious, but do not count on such a luck, really: The more infectious forms will prevail.
article [elifesciences.org]