Coronavirus
Out of context: Reply #6118
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- yuekit1
This is interesting IMO...because there's such an extensive record of SARS-CoV-2 evolution (everywhere it spreads scientists are collecting the genomes), turns out it's possible to create a computer model that accurately simulates its evolution within this type of research called bioinformatics.
https://www.ebi.ac.uk/training/o…
And this can also be run backwards to figure out what the ancestral strains of the virus looked liked. From this you can actually start to see what is more likely for the origin.
When spillover from animals to humans takes place it almost always includes multiple spillover events and that's what seems to have happened. There are two slightly different versions of the virus right in the beginning, which could not have evolved from each other. And there wasn't much circulation among humans before that, based on genetic clock the virus emerged shortly before it was detected.