Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="JustbrewitMan, post: 3480780, member: 7806"] [USER=2524]@pj[/USER] I really appreciate your tenacity to try and adapt information to support your main contentions that it's a bioengineered situation and that there are 2 viruses "released" on the world. But you continue to fundamentally [B]NOT [/B]understand that when it comes to the process of infectivity, it's the end product receptor binding characteristics that ultimately determine whether a virus can infect a host efficiently. NOT achieving some arbitrary "very high" sequence similarity... There are [B]many [/B]ways to construct a protein with amino acids that can contain crucial sections (binding domains) in the proper 3D orientation to bind to and interact with a host receptor (in this case, the ACE2 receptor). Two proteins, if the right amino acid residues are used in the right sequences, can have [B]very very low overall genetic sequence homology[/B], yet [B]both will strongly bind to the same receptor[/B]. The 50-75% numbers for SARS-CoV-2 vs SARS-CoV-1 are fine because, as shown quite elegantly in the article you cited, the crucial binding residues for both are 3-dimensionally [B]IN THE RIGHT SPOTS[/B]. Let me use another analogy to try and emphasize the point I'm trying to make: [LIST] [*]Penicillin and Cephalosporin antibiotic work by inhibiting trans- and carboxypeptidase enzymes (also known as Penicillin-Binding Proteins, or PBPs), that help to synthesize bacterial cell wall. They inhibit PBP function by binding to the site of the PBP enzyme where the peptidoglycan precursor (used to make cell wall) would bind to...this inhibits the ability of the enyzme to do its job, cell wall production stops, and the bacterial cell will eventually "die". [*]Penicillins ans Cephalosporins are not even proteins and they have [B]quite dramatically different chemical structures[/B] than peptidoglycan. Yet 3-dimensionally, they are still able to bind to the same site (and in fact, the penicillins bind [B]better [/B]to the site on the PBP enzyme, which is why they are antibacterial). [/LIST] The rest of your contentions are not well-thought-out, disingenuous, or both. There are myriad publications that show that there are many bat species with many different coronaviruses within them. I don't have the exact numbers, but there are thousands of different bat species in the world. We've only tested a tiny subfraction of them for presence of viruses. Even Dr. Zheng-Li (the "bat lady") has only tested a small number of the bats endemic to China. But the data thus far definitively indicates [B]many different types of coronaviruses in bats[/B]. And its' definitive that they can recombinate their genetic material with ease. And there is ample evidence of strain evolution over time. [URL unfurl="true"]https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-woman-hunted-down-viruses-from-sars-to-the-new-coronavirus1/[/URL] Cheers, JBM [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach