I think this preprint, by @Stuartturville, is potentially one of the more important recent SARS-CoV-2 papers. It promises to unwrap some of the most mystifying aspects of Omicron surrounding cell entry, TMPRSS2 use, & reduced lung invasion/pneumonia. 1/48 x.com/StuartTurville…

A nicely written paper exploring how describing complex objects (like cells or mobile phones) in terms of 1) how many steps are needed to make one and 2) how many of the objects exist, might be used to quantify the amount of selection needed to explain their existence.

Although antibody escape mutations get the most attention, for me the most interesting plotlines in the unfolding SARS-Cov-2 evolution story are those involving daring (and sometimes crazy) adaptive innovations. Ryan beautifully explores one of these subplots here.

You can now run HyPhy entirely in your browser thanks to Emscripten, Observable and biowasm (Robert Aboukhalil). Simple example in observablehq.com/@spond/hyphy-b…

Yaaaayyyy plants. Although I wonder how much more impressive that plant stack must've been 5K years ago (before we destroyed >50% of the world's forests)

Here Ryan unpacks some of the really interesting features of the new BA.2.87 lineage

This is a really nice overview of SARS-CoV-2 evolution to-date. My only minor niggles are : 1) some animals might also have chronic infections; 2) important geographical contexts of VOC emergences glossed over; and 3) IMHO treatment played no role in VOC emergences(except alpha).

This intense thread from Ryan links mutation patterns during chronic SC2 infections to optimization of the complex inner workings of the micro-factories that coronaviruses use to both replicate their genomes and produce transcripts for gene expression. I learned so much from it.

Today's teenagers are massively underrated. Amazing work from amazing highschoolers/new highschool graduates guided by the amazing Ben. Your research job will not be endangered by AI - it will be endangered by smart young people using AI in more cerative ways than you ever could.