I had missed this, very good. It has seemed clear that of the SARS2-like viruses, the SARS2 spike is most similar to the ancestral, though I haven't been able to guess if the furin site was retained or a recent (natural) insertion. Does it still hold up that it's ancestral tho?
Bill Gallagher has done a tremendous job over at @virological_org showing the (evolutionary) mechanism by which SARS-CoV-2 got that furin cleavage site.
Such a nerdy analysis - love it! 
http://virological.org/t/tackling-rumors-of-a-suspicious-origin-of-ncov2019/384 …pic.twitter.com/8PUmSrbnGj
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Other viruses in this lineage, the "pangolin" viruses most notably (since RmYN02 clearly has replaced this entire region) don't have the furin site and were identified after this analysis. So I still wonder if we can say the furin site is ancestral, obv not engineered regardless.
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@chrismartenson have you seen this?Bedankt, Twitter gebruikt dit om je tijdlijn te verbeteren. Ongedaan makenOngedaan maken
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