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Marc Johnson Profile picture
Marc Johnson
@SolidEvidence
Molecular virologist, Professor, and wastewater detective. Same handle on bsky. Ignore the check, I'm doing an experiment.
18 subscribers
Aug 22 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
It’s been 2 days, 143 comments, and I’ve been called lots of bad names.
Here’s what I learned about protein based Novavax (NV) vs mRNA COVID vaccines.
1/ The pretty universally agreed on difference is that Novavax has fewer side effects.
If you have bad vaccine reactions, it is probably the better choice.
2/
Aug 17 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
It’s been 2 years since BA.2.86 first appeared (and I’m give the variant update to SAVE on Monday), so I thought I would do a little summary about this era of SARS-CoV-2 evolution.
1/ Image SARS-CoV-2 lineages come up with new constellations of mutations in 3 main ways.
1. Sequential acquisition of mutations during normal circulation.
2. Recombination.
3. Sweeping new lineages (almost certainly from persistent infections).
2/
Aug 16 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
I read @EricTopol's Super Agers book while we were traveling this summer.

Wow. That was the most rigorous (>1,500 refs), comprehensive, and bullshit-free book on health I’ve ever seen.

Too much info for a thread, but I’ll mention some highlights.

1/simonandschuster.com/books/Super-Ag… Fact 1, it’s not just genetics.
@EricTopol spent years sequencing the genomes of the ‘wellderly’ (people over 80 that have never had a chronic illness) to find the genes associated with healthy aging.
Their conclusion – there wasn’t much there. It’s not just genetics.
2/
Jul 18 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
A 'new' Texas cryptic lineage popped up this week.

We've got another traveler.

1/ Image This one was from a Texas sewershed from July 1 with a population of 1,000,000, which means it had to have been one of the Dallas sewersheds.

2/ Image
Jul 9 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
I've always found this frustrating.

You or your child has a respiratory infection. It's not flu or COVID. Your doctor can only tell you, 'you have a virus'.

Could it be a little bit more specific?

We hope to help answer this question, non-invasively, and for free.
1/ Image Contrary to my prior assumptions, many of the most common pathogens are not everywhere, all the time. They occur in discrete waves, often nationwide.

I wrote about this recently with Rhinoviruses, the most frequent cause of the common cold.

2/
Jun 29 • 16 tweets • 5 min read
This is cool. I was poking around at the Rhinovirus (common cold) data and realized that my perception about these viruses was completely wrong.
1/ Image Rhinoviruses (Rhino is Greek for nose) are picornaviruses in the enterovirus genus (same as polio). Enteros can be GI or respiratory (or both), but Rhinos are usually respiratory, and are the main cause of the common cold.

2/cdc.gov/rhinoviruses/a…
Jun 28 • 17 tweets • 5 min read
I’m thrilled to announce the update of our water surveillance dashboard.

Many improvements, and our first substantial move into ‘OneHealth’.

Read to the end to find the Easter Egg.
1/
 dholab.github.io/public_viz/001… The first big improvement is that the output is more precise, and interactive. For each data point we tell you the date, the reads mapped, the total reads in each sample, and the reads/billion for each pathogen.

The heat map color is dictated by reads/billion.

2/ Image
Jun 12 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
Our latest cryptic lineage paper was accepted in PLoS Pathogens.

This paper has some nuanced implications about the origins of SARS-CoV-2.
1/
 journals.plos.org/plospathogens/… There haven’t been a ton of changes to the manuscript since I wrote a post on the preprint, so I’ll make this summary brief and focus on the things that changed.
2/
Jun 6 • 15 tweets • 5 min read
This is so cool.

I’m pleased to share version 1.0 of our new dashboard for displaying data from our wastewater metagenomic project.

This is a collaborative projected between MU, U. Wisc @dho, and SecureBio; funded by Inkfish and Open Philanthropy.
1/
 lungfish-science.github.io/wastewater-das… For the last 18 months we have been getting weekly composite wastewater samples, isolating the viral fractions (the virome) and randomly sequencing everything.

We average about 1 billion reads per sample.
2/
Apr 20 • 16 tweets • 4 min read
We are recruiting sewersheds for an expanding project. Basically, we want to learn everything that can be learned from wastewater.
Read on if you are interested.
1/ Image This is a collaboration with SecureBio that started about 18 months.

Basically, we isolate the viral fraction from wastewater and sequence the crap out of it (~1 billion reads/sample). This is unbiased sequencing; we don’t want to miss anything.
2/
 securebio.org
Apr 19 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
This battle between Harvard and the administration is so befuddling. The latest plot twist makes less sense than the last season of Lost.

Let me give a very quick summary for those not following along.
1/11 The last few weeks Harvard had been talking with the administration about concerns over antisemitism on campuses, but the talks lacked details, and Harvard was told that they would get a letter last Friday with more specifics.
2/
Apr 12 • 25 tweets • 7 min read
Last month there was an announcement that I thought was a major advancement in world health, but it got little attention.
I thought I would tell you all a little bit about it and why it is so important.
1/25 This breakthrough has to do with HIV, which was a zoonotic pathogen. The progenitor of HIV infects chimpanzees in Cameroon.

No one knows exactly when or how HIV crossed into humans, but the first undisputed HIV patient sample (discovered retrospectively) was from 1959 in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.Image
Apr 6 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
I briefly thought the SA BA.3.2 was in the US, but it turns out the virus was just messing with me again.

This was kind of interesting though.
1/ We've been screening all of the new wastewater data a few times a week for signs of BA.3.2.

One of the many screens we have is looking for reads that have C21846T+T21864C together, which are in BA.3.2 but no current lineages (it works better to look for pairs of changes).

2/
Mar 17 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Here is this week's analysis. One mutation popped out as increasing in frequency in the last data set.

S:G842S

Wonder what that is from.

1/ Image Not a very common mutation. Mostly associated with with XEC.11*
2/
 cov-spectrum.org/explore/United…Image
Mar 17 • 16 tweets • 5 min read
I’m very pleased to announce the launch of our LungFish Data Explorer dashboard for tracking SARS-Cov-2 lineages from wastewater.

1/
 inkfishmedical.github.io/wastewater-das… Here’s the problem we hope this dashboard will help solve.  SARS-CoV-2 remains very prevalent in the US.

However, sequence surveillance from patients has plummeted. In addition to fewer samples, the average sequence takes >3 weeks to be reported (and it’s getting slower).

2/ Image
Mar 1 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
So what's happening with medical research in the US? This is the cumulative award count from the NIH for the year.

Doesn't look so good.

But it gets worse.
1/ Image Before grants are awarded, they have to be evaluated in meetings called study sections.

Before a study section can meet, it has to be listed in the federal registry for at least 15 days.

These are the new study section meetings listed in the federal registry this year.
2/ Image
Feb 28 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
There something new on the SARS-CoV-2 landscape, and I’m not sure what it is.
1/ Image S:S31F and S:K182N are on the rise.

The two aren’t on the same sequencing strand, but I confirmed that they are generally appearing together in the same samples.

2/
Feb 11 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Brief update on the new cryptic lineage we found from Petersburg City, Virginia.

We went back and screened all of the samples from that sewershed since the beginning of 2024 and learned a few things about it.
1/ Image First, I think I was wrong about the lineage being JN.1 derived. I thought it was JN.1 because it had 22926C (455S), but it looks like it only acquired that recently.

In samples as recent as December the lineage lacked 455S and 456L.
2/ Image
Jan 31 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Wastewater variant update. This is the composite data from over 1,000 US samples collected over the last 6 weeks.
1/ Image You have to extrapolate a little bit because several changes are shared by multiple lineages.

It appears that the new lineage I mentioned last week (MC.10.1 + 445P) is around 4% and is the fastest growing of the lot. It now has a PANGO designation - PA.1
2/
Jan 26 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Here's the latest composite US wastewater data.

It's a little bit confusing this week.

1/ Image Clearly LP.8 is still the main lineage gaining traction. All of its changes are moving in the same direction (up).

LF.7 is much lower, but looking a little bit more alive than last week.
2/ Image
Jan 24 • 17 tweets • 5 min read
What fraction of patient sequences are derived from persistent SARS-CoV-2 infections? (volume 3)

This is something that we can actually calculate.
1/ The key is the mutation Orf1a:K1795Q, which frequently appears in persistent infections (and even more often in cryptic lineages).

2/