[FRIAM] whackadoodles go mainstream!

[uǝlƃ ☣]

It's unclear to me whether we'd expect the virus to evolve faster or slower, depending on where it "originated". It seems to me that if it first appeared in a species that was dissimilar, then when it finally landed in a more optimal host type, it would evolve quickly (at least in non-critical regions) to thrive in that host type. On the other hand, if it lands in an almost already optimal host type, then it shouldn't evolve much at all. And only if it's under some sort of pressure to evolve (e.g. the immune system) would it do so quickly.

What *would* you people who can read all this stuff *expect* to happen?

On 4/20/20 3:57 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> As a ballpark the receptor binding domain is 211 residues, so 20^211, however only a small part of it seems to be actively evolving. [1]  (see Table 1)
> 
> https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.10.986398v1
> 
> *From: *Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> on behalf of David Eric Smith <desmith at santafe.edu>
> *Reply-To: *The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
> *Date: *Monday, April 20, 2020 at 3:49 PM
> *To: *The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject: *Re: [FRIAM] whackadoodles go mainstream!
> 
>     https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9?fbclid=IwAR1vyx1SqreXoeVgFVKBIayEWGOgZn5IbXmx3-V4nsrWiIlrYvYHQW2TuLA 
> 
> There is discussion in here about the kind of mosaic it is, and the nearest identified variants for different parts.  I find this interesting as a question in evolutionary dynamics of either convergence or recombination.  The question of how “hard” an engineering problem it is to find non-local optimizers for various biding problems if you happen not to have templates in the same basin of attraction is an interesting question to me in methods of protein biochemistry.  The question of what level of sophistication we currently imagine is in use around the world is a potentially interesting question of sophistication versus availability of method, also practical if one works in threat defenses.

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