TWiEVO 57: SARS-CoV-2 receptor binding evolution blooms

June 24, 2020

Jessie, Allie and Tyler join Nels and Vincent to describe their work on deep mutational scanning of the SARS-CoV-2 receptor binding domain.

Hosts: Nels Elde and Vincent Racaniello

Guests: Jesse Bloom, Allie Greaney, and Tyler Starr

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3 comments on “TWiEVO 57: SARS-CoV-2 receptor binding evolution blooms

  1. Holy mother lode of cool stuff… this paper is a portal into a lab where two lead scientists’ brains share lock down lab time and spew onto the surface of innocent yeast to shed light on possible CoV2 entry mechanisms and their real time evolutionary processes. Good lord. So cool!

    My favorite part of this TWiEVO was the last bit when Tyler and Allie gave their what’s next statements and Tyler pointed to evolution and Allie went toward Immunological impacts in and around the receptor binding domains that this paper explores.

    I, and I speak for TWiXers in general I think, have been Scienced. After a few hours of reading this paper, listening and re-listening to this show… I finally cracked a post yeast elixir (which was embodied in a very cold porter) thinking on the lack of blue in the otherwise sea of red from Figure 3B showing Mutation Effects on Binding and the most satisfying and suggestive models in Figure 7 Mutational constraint of antibody epitopes.

    Sharing this data and the Altair: Interactive Statistical Visualizations for Python that came out recently – calling out Sarah Hilton’s work and the paper referenced by VanderPlas and others.

    This was a well spent hour or two. Thanks! I hope to come back to this with refined eyes after further learning and reading – spawned by this thing we are all experiencing.

  2. Thomas Westman Jul 15, 2020

    Miss the science picks for episode 57

  3. Echoing Thomas Westman – please add the Science Picks! The show was great and the picks were compelling as audio, but your loyal followers need the links!