Revised Preprint of Huanan Seafood Market Samples
The preprint reporting the results from 923 environmental and 457 animal samples from the Huanan Seafood market has been extensively revised, expanded and polished. The raw genomic data is also publicly available, but no smoking gun was found to inform on the origin of SARS-CoV-2.
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Prof Francois Balloux
Director @UGI_at_UCL. Interest in Infectious disease epidemiology, pathogen genomics and global health Mastodon account: @FBalloux@genomic.social
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The preprint reporting the results from 923 environmental and 457 animal samples from the Huanan Seafood market has been extensively revised, expanded and polished. The raw genomic data is also publicly available.
— Prof Francois Balloux (@BallouxFrancois) March 29, 2023
1/https://t.co/emTsXgNXI3 -
I enjoyed reading it. The write-up is nuanced and much clearer, and there's a lot of information to digest, even if there's no smoking gun either way. The samples may have been collected too late (January) to capture a clear pattern that may inform on the origin of SARS-CoV-2.
— Prof Francois Balloux (@BallouxFrancois) March 29, 2023
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In short, none of the animal samples analysed were found to be infected with SARS-CoV-2. There is evidence for a large number of wild and domestic animals at the market (including many susceptible to SARS-CoV-2), but no obvious pattern of mammalian and viral co-occurrence.
— Prof Francois Balloux (@BallouxFrancois) March 29, 2023
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There is a 'mini-glitch of sorts' that many may obsess over. In figure 4F, the 'raccoon dog sample' (Q61 - Env_0660 in this preprint) is given as containing mostly domestic dog (Canis) mitochondrial reads, rather than raccoon dog (Nyctereutes).
— Prof Francois Balloux (@BallouxFrancois) March 29, 2023
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This likely stems from the raccoon dog's genome not having been included in Liu's reference panel. In the supplementary material, they also use another approach based on a single mitochondrial gene, which points to the sample carrying a lot of raccoon dog mitochondrial reads.
— Prof Francois Balloux (@BallouxFrancois) March 29, 2023
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Anyway, I'm delighted this preprint has been released in a revised, improved form and that the raw data has been made public. I believe the authors of the preprint should be commended for this great piece of science.
— Prof Francois Balloux (@BallouxFrancois) March 29, 2023
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