Ryan Hisner
Teacher. Learner. Investigating mysteries of SARS-CoV-2 evolution. LongDesertTrain on another platform.
- Reposted by Ryan Hisner60 new sequences from Germany 🇩🇪, 40% are BA3.2*. Update for December 1-21, 2025:
- BA.3.2 has gone from ~8% to ~44% of all sequences in Scotland over the course of December. Larger sample sizes in a smaller nation (Scotland), unsurprisingly present a much more consistent picture in variant trends than smaller sample sizes over a much larger, more heterogeneous country (Germany).
- Reposted by Ryan HisnerPoint blank. 10-shots. Execution. A US citizen, a VA ICU Nurse. Then lying. Blocking a real investigation.
- New Cryptic (North Carolina) derived from a 2020, pre-B.1.1 lineage, meaning from an infection that has lasted nearly six years. It has one of the classic patterns of Cryptic reversions to Bat-CoV/SARS-1 spike residues: Q498Y-N501T. Eager to see the rest of the genome.
- While transmission is unlikely it can't be ruled out. At least 2 Cryptic-like variants have transmitted: • Early 2022, Iran, 4 patients, ≥1 death (a child) • From Canary Islands (Dec 2022/Jan 2023) to Spain (Oct 2024), 2 patients, ≥1 death. bsky.app/profile/ryan...
- New @dropsitenews.com video from opposite side confirms: man in gray coat & red-billed cap disarmed the victim—who was legally carrying & never reached for or touched his gun—before any shots were fired. See his mittened, empty hands reaching to the victim's waistband, then emerging with the gun.
- Reposted by Ryan HisnerReally excited our paper about how H5N1 rapidly adapted to cattle (and how these adaptations also increased its ability to infect cells from the human respiratory tract) is now published! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Ryan Hisnerin case you're curious about how angry Minnesota is about ICE, it was -20 today
- Reposted by Ryan HisnerI'll say it again: Minneapolis will be their Gettysburg
- One new A->G cluster showed up today in an XFG from Brazil. 10/13 private nuc mutations here are A->G, and eight of them appear in a 229-nt stretch in the spike NTD. Still no idea what's behind these, though some sort of unusual ADAR fusillade seems to be the best guess. 1/2
- (virological wonkery alert) Turns out there are quite a few of these A->G clusters, some even making up substantial branches in the past—an AY.74 branch had 11 A->G muts in a 380-nt stretch. 👇 These don't seem to occur for any other mut type—only A->G. 1/3 threadreaderapp.com/thread/18347...
- Several of the A->G muts here have been seen in previous A->G clusters. And as always, the entire A->G cluster happens all at once—never stepwise. Phylogenetic tree courtesy of the @angieshinrichs.bsky.social-curated SARS-CoV-2 Usher tree. 2/2
- Seems to be the most dramatic breakthrough in preventing/slowing dementia & alzheimer's ever. But it's a vaccine, so it doesn't get headlines. Wish you could get the shingles vaccine before age 50. You don't have to be 50 to get shingles—I can attest as I had it last summer (not recommended).
- The Shingles vaccine and reduction of dementia: a new natural experiment from Canada replicated 3 others and adds to this week's link to slowing of biological aging. erictopol.substack.com/p/spotlight-...
- Reposted by Ryan HisnerThey are targeting children because they are trying incite violence. I have talked to many journalists today, and they all made the same observation: Border Patrol and ICE have been rolling around with maximum aggression, lingering for ages as crowds, gather, seemingly trying to cause a riot.
- The Trump administration's brutality is on graphic display in Minneapolis and its vulgar stupidity in the Greenland fiasco, but just as harmful, though less splashy, is the way they are destroying US science.
- This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again. www.nature.com/immersive/d4...
- Still more new NSP1 mutations in the BA.3.2 uploaded from the Netherlands today. We've never seen anything like this kind of rapid evolution in NSP1 (whose primary role is to shut down host-protein translation and degrade host mRNA). I've labeled all BA.3.2-specific NSP1 muts here. 1/3
- Another weird aspect of BA.3.2 evolution so far: an extraordinary number of NSP1 mutations. NSP1 is only 180 AA, but a new mutation shows up almost every day there, often on top of previous new ones. The @nextstrain.org visual here can't even accommodate all the NSP1 muts—at least 2 are invisible.
- I suspect these are compensatory mutations for the ∆84-86 and/or ∆141-143 NSP1 deletions. At least one study that found NSP1 deletions from 82-86 to be deleterious, & the lack of 82-86 deletions in nearly all major lineages (despite countless independent acquisitions of them) supports this. 2/3
- And ∆141-143 is definitely deleterious. The phylogenetic evidence for this was already very strong, and two separate studies have confirmed that ∆141-143 reduces viral fitness and NSP1's ability to shut down host translation. 3/3 bsky.app/profile/ryan...
- Reposted by Ryan HisnerBA.3.2 reaches dominance in Netherlands
