Thread by @ydeigin

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RaTG13, who art thou?

So @Daoyu15 pointed to this great preprint that once again confirmed that RaTG13 doesn't bind well to bat ACE2. The beauty of this work is that it tested ACE2 of the very species RaTG13 was allegedly sampled from, R. affinis.

biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

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As this figure shows, RaTG13 is really bad at binding to R. affinis bat ACE2. Even the T403R mutation that makes it bind really well to human ACE2 is helpless when it comes to R. affinis ACE2. Weird? Weird.

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What is even more weird is how well it binds to human ACE2. Sure it's no champ like SARS2 but RaTG13 binds to human ACE2 just 1/2 as well (100k cells/well), which is also about 8x better than SARS2 does to R. affinis ACE2 (12k cells/well) (see above fig.)

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So RaTG13, what gives? Where'd you learn to bind to human ACE2 so well? Humanized mice, perhaps?

Or were you the the virus that infected the Mojiang miners?

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Finally, are you really the same as 4991 or are you a hair different in your spike protein? About 1.1% different so that the difference between your S gene and that of SARS1 would be 1.1% different than the diff reported for 4991 and SARS1 in 2019?

https://twitter.com/franciscodeasis/status/1392602430823714816?s=20

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Oh, and if you were worthy enough to be named 4991 from 2014 all the way to 2019, why did you have to be quietly renamed to RaTG13 in Feb 2020?

So many questions, I know. On top of that, you're a stupid virus, so you can't talk. Damn.