# Spike protein D614G variant paper published in Cell today

**URL:** <https://virological.org/t/spike-protein-d614g-variant-paper-published-in-cell-today/526>\
**Category:** nCoV-2019 Genomic Epidemiology\
**Created:** [July 3, 2020, 1:13am UTC](https://virological.org/t/spike-protein-d614g-variant-paper-published-in-cell-today/526 "2020-07-03T01:13:13Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Brian\_Foley](https://virological.org/user_avatar/virological.org/brian_foley/32/598_2.png) [@Brian\_Foley](https://virological.org/u/Brian_Foley)\
**Post date:** [July 3, 2020, 1:13am UTC](https://virological.org/t/spike-protein-d614g-variant-paper-published-in-cell-today/526/1 "2020-07-03T01:13:13Z")

</div>

Our paper was published in Cell today:  
DOI:[https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2020.06.043](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2020.06.043)

[https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)30820-5](https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)30820-5)

> **[Newer, More Dominant COVID-19 Variant Is More Infectious in the Lab](https://www.genengnews.com/news/newer-more-dominant-covid-19-variant-is-more-infectious-in-the-lab/)**
>
> A newer variant of COVID-19-causing virus is now predominant across the globe and, lab findings indicate, may be more transmissible

A paper using different methods just went up on the bioRxiv which concludes that there is no evidence that D614G has any selective advantage in the population.

> **[No evidence for increased transmissibility from recurrent mutations in...](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.21.108506v4)**
>
> The COVID-19 pandemic is caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which jumped into the human population in late 2019 from a currently uncharacterised reservoir. Due to this extremely recent association with humans, SARS-CoV-2 may not yet be fully...

  
and  

> **[Emergence of genomic diversity and recurrent mutations in SARS-CoV-2](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1567134820301829)**
>
> SARS-CoV-2 is a SARS-like coronavirus of likely zoonotic origin first identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, the capital of China's Hubei province. The…

I think it is good to read about both methods to understand why they come to different conclusions. Both our web site and the web site for the other method are online now:

[https://cov.lanl.gov/content/index](https://cov.lanl.gov/content/index)

[https://macman123.shinyapps.io/ugi-scov2-alignment-screen/](https://macman123.shinyapps.io/ugi-scov2-alignment-screen/)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Brian\_Foley](https://virological.org/user_avatar/virological.org/brian_foley/32/598_2.png) [@Brian\_Foley](https://virological.org/u/Brian_Foley)\
**Post date:** [July 3, 2020, 1:24am UTC](https://virological.org/t/spike-protein-d614g-variant-paper-published-in-cell-today/526/2 "2020-07-03T01:24:02Z")

</div>

![_Spike_D614G_DatamonkeyMay10](https://virological.org/uploads/default/original/2X/3/38e8ed45366d68046771359b5086d9ab428f168f.png) ![D614G_Global_May27_tree](https://virological.org/uploads/default/original/2X/b/b40d5137063807921db2a707c4acbdd97b0f66a2.jpeg)

The Datamonkey and Nextstrain sites allow interactive exploration of the same data:

[http://covid19.datamonkey.org/2020/04/01/covid19-analysis/](http://covid19.datamonkey.org/2020/04/01/covid19-analysis/)

[https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global?c=gt-nuc\_23403&l=radial](https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global?c=gt-nuc_23403&l=radial)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![grubaughlab](https://virological.org/user_avatar/virological.org/grubaughlab/32/453_2.png) [@grubaughlab](https://virological.org/u/grubaughlab)\
**Post date:** [July 3, 2020, 1:45am UTC](https://virological.org/t/spike-protein-d614g-variant-paper-published-in-cell-today/526/3 "2020-07-03T01:45:32Z")

</div>

We also published this perspective today

Making sense of mutation: what D614G means for the COVID-19 pandemic remains unclear  
[https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)30817-5](https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)30817-5)