We found a new (I think) cryptic lineage this week.
I know I say this all the time, but this is really weird.
Warning, this thread is for nerds only.
1/
Here’s what we do. Every week we download all of the new sequences from SRA and run a bunch of screens to look for anachronistic or cryptic lineages.
This new one popped up in 3 different screens.
2/
A good way to spot anachronistic lineages is to look for sequences that have been deleted in contemporary lineages. The virus can only undo a deletion through recombination. If we find seqs that lack the deletions, they have to be old (or contaminated with something old).
3/
Here’s a forecast from a wastewater perspective (because sh*t don’t lie)
1/
Background. The 4 main kinds of influenza circulating among humans (in order of severity) are:
FluA H3N2
FluA H1N1
FluB
FluC (many don’t know this one)
2/
Last season, there was a pretty even split between H1N1 and H3N2, with a little bit of FluB late in the season. At least according to CDC patient data. 3/
This preprint just came out. @wchnicholas and team reconstructed and tested the NJ Spike and found that it has the tightest ACE2 binding of any SC2 Spike ever measured. 2/ medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
We first found the NJ variant in 2023 because this sewershed from NJ with 1.5 million people because it regularly had a sequence that was a reversion to the bat sarbeco sequence, which is common in cryptics. 3/
We are not the first group to do unbiased sequencing of wastewater to monitor circulating viruses, but I think we are the first to ever do it at this scale.
Weekly wastewater samples for 18 months, totaling over 85 Billion sequence reads.
2/
Among the ‘known’ viruses, there was a fairly even split between bacteria viruses (phages) and eukaryotic viruses.
This was just raw reads though, if you look at diversity there was considerably more species of phages. 3/
It looks like Coeur d’Alene, ID cryptic is gone for now, but it has still managed to answer a lot of lingering questions for me about SARS-CoV-2 evolution, and what to expect next.
Here's a whole genome summary and interpretation. 1/
For a long time cryptic lineages were all from pre-Omicron lineages.
I started wondering:
Will there be Omicron cryptics?
If so, will they have the same evolutionary trajectories as the pre-Omicron cryptics?
ID shows that the answer to both questions is yes.
2/
We don’t do a lot of whole genome sequencing, so I sent 3 samples to @dho lab, who got fantastic sequences for all 3.
These samples were virtually 100% cryptic, so we have nearly complete coverage of the genome for a change. 3/