corona

  

As you have seen in the news, coronavirus is in the US now. I am opening this up as an extra discussion, worth the same points as a normal discussion, and I will keep it open for several weeks as we learn more about this novel virus and its impact. 
Rapid and open sharing of data by scientists is what has enabled this information to be shared across the globe:
(1) Take a look at the phylogeny generated from the sequence of COVID-19 and the geography of the current outbreak
nextstrain.org  (Links to an external site.)  
(2) Now take a look at what this new virus is most closely related to by examining a phylogeny of the viruses associated with different animals (bats, snakes, pangolins, etc.). What animal did this virus most likely come from and why? What evidence was used?
Preprints are drafts of papers before they are published. As such they are not yet peer-reviewed but due to the urgent need for data in this crisis, I will suspend our normal rules and allow preprints.
You can find hints here at the preprint server for Biology, just type “coronavirus” into the search box:
www.biorxiv.org/content/ (Links to an external site.)