I love @biorxivpreprint but I am a lot worried about this #preprint, which has been widely shared and fuels conspiracy theories on #nCoV2019 and Chinese bioweapons based on flawed analyses.
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I've checked it because this claim that HIV inserts in #nCoV2019 & not fortuitous is insane. So I aligned the sequences & those inserts are real. However I've blast those peptides & founds > 100 hits from various organisms. In my view #nCoV2019 - HIV link not ascertained. https://twitter.com/ARanganathan72/status/1223320879162986496 …
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please can you post a comment to this effect on the paper?
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Thanks. I will do later on when I will have time to do so properly.
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OK I am back to this. I've been looking at the data incl accession numbers included in the paper -> Bat coronavirus RTG13 accession MN996532 seems missing from the paper. RTG13 phylogenetically close to nCov19 does carry these insertions. To me major flaw & debunk the claims.
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yeah their BLAST search was limited to viral sequences which is a much smaller space (in the database, not in reality) and it makes just...zero sense, from a protein design point of view
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I agree, no e-value provided, no clear justification why they blasted on viruses .... Hits are found in bats, parasites, bacteria ....
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Personally, I would never use “uncanny” in a scientific paper title, plus the “unique inserts” isn’t great, however when people aren’t that fluent in EN they often directly translate how they would say something in their native language and it can seem flowery or OTT in EN
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e.g. us Germans always have to fight the tendency to make paragraph length sentences
joking aside, posting this paper as is at the current time was highly irresponsible - enough conspiracy theories are floating around without giving them the veneer of scientific credibility
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Irresponsible click-bait
@Aseem73218670 -
Indeed. Lots of crap came out recently.
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