Chapter 35 Who says simulated evolution is not evolution?

Chen Yuanguang chose to cooperate with Levitt, who shared with him some of the most cutting-edge scientific research trends, and he tried to find specific solutions.

"Yuan Guang, the virus mutates too quickly.
Do you think we can use vaccines to induce its directed evolution and gradually reduce its toxicity to a level lower than that of influenza?"

After Levitt and Chen Yuanguang became familiar with each other, he liked to call him by his Chinese name.

Through Chen Yuanguang's paper on protein-induced evolution, he came up with the idea of ​​taking the approach of induced evolution to actively choose the direction of evolution.

Chen Yuanguang replied on the other end of the phone: "Professor, I previously thought of researching a broad-spectrum vaccine to combat its continued mutation.

Now it seems that induced directed evolution combined with a broad-spectrum vaccine should be able to eliminate the virus in four to five vaccinations.”

Once you have an idea, just start working on it.

"Yuan Guang, this is a great idea. We should look for the most common mutation sites in existing strains.

Then design antigens to cover the points with the highest mutation frequency, so as to minimize the immune escape ability of current and future mutant viruses.

Yuan Guang, your idea is correct."

"Yuan Guang, cut off the binding ability between the S protein and the ACE receptor, which can reduce the infectivity of the virus. Considering that common mutations have appeared in the virus lineage, such as D614G observed in Harvard and del69-70 observed in China, we now need to find common mutations between them."

"The current data is not enough, and we need more data to verify it."

“Yuan Guang, since we don’t have enough mutation data right now, we can use computer simulation to calculate the mutation situation. This approach is fine.

But there is a problem: how do you ensure that the high-frequency common mutations you calculate are the same as the mutations in the real world?

This is too difficult. Once the design algorithm is wrong, the antigen design will not achieve the expected broad-spectrum effect."

"Yuan Guang, you are truly a genius. The latest mutant strains detected in cities such as New York, Tokyo, and Johannesburg are exactly the same as the common mutations simulated by the algorithm we designed. We have already found our way!"

"Yuan Guang, we can prepare to submit our manuscript now. If our ideas are used in the design of subsequent broad-spectrum vaccines, considering its value, our results will be enough to win the Nobel Prize next year!"

"Yuan Guang, I really regret not trying to get you to study for my doctorate."

Levitt's attitude changed from cooperation in the beginning to complete submission later on, and he even felt like he was currying favor with someone powerful.

As for Bawendi, after learning about Chen Yuanguang's work, he said directly: "Yuanguang, after this result is completed, I think you can get a doctorate degree, and MIT and I have nothing more to teach you.

Your achievements in computational chemistry have far surpassed mine, and you are not that interested in doing experiments. I think it will be more beneficial for your growth if you enter the next stage faster."

MIT organized experts to review the paper and gave it a very high evaluation. After publishing it in Science, they specially invited researchers from around the world who are engaged in this work to hold a remote video conference. "Conditions are limited, so we can only introduce to you online the outstanding contribution made by Mr. Light Chen, a Ph.D. in the Department of Chemistry of our university, in fighting the virus."

Professor Rank is a professor of biology at a 985 university in China. He has been engaged in related research since the beginning of the virus epidemic and is quite interested in seminars and lectures at top foreign universities.

Some of their groups engaged in research in related universities also share some information. Online meetings of the scale of MIT with 2,000 people are relatively rare.

It was also because everyone in the group said that MIT attached great importance to this meeting, and a big shot said that this was an unprecedented breakthrough result, so he signed up.

Rank found out in the group that there were no vacancies for those who came five minutes later than him.

With the endorsement of MIT and Levitt, this seminar was very popular.

Rank knew who Levitt was, but the other light Chen was Chinese. The problem was that he had never heard of this person before.

The paper has only been accepted by Science and has not yet been published. Moreover, the top journals that Chen Yuanguang had previously published were more focused on the fields of computational chemistry and computational biology. Those who do vaccine research are all virology experts, so it is normal that people don’t understand it.

"Why does this person look familiar, and looks quite young?" Rank muttered to himself after entering the Zoom video conference room.

“The design of a broad-spectrum vaccine is not a simple addition of mutation sites; it requires rigorous bioinformatics calculations and joint analysis of experimental evidence.

The more mutation sites, the better. The most important thing is that the data needs to be accurate. We need to find its commonalities. The more prominent the commonalities are, the more significant the sequential immunization effect will be.

The problems we face this time are extremely challenging. Global health is under attack, and it is unlikely that we can wait until the data on virus mutations accumulates to a certain level before designing a broad-spectrum vaccine.

Therefore, without enough strains and mutation points, we cannot find commonalities, but we have to make broad-spectrum vaccines because traditional vaccines, even mRNA, have a limited coverage time, and judging from the current virus mutation situation, this coverage time will be very, very short.

Faced with this dilemma, my solution is to simulate evolution, simulate virus evolution, and analyze the simulated virus mutation points together with the real virus mutation points to find commonalities. In short, "

There is absolutely no pressure when speaking to the video.

If the sound had not been muted, the screams of two thousand people would have drowned out his voice.

As Rank listened, he thought, this is too outrageous. If you design a vaccine based on a simulated virus, how can you ensure that the virus will really evolve according to the mutation points you simulated?

This is not science, this is metaphysics. Even if it is dressed in the cloak of data analysis and data modeling, it is still metaphysics.

It wasn't until he saw the final data comparison that the mutant virus they simulated in April actually appeared in the global monitoring report in July that Rank's jaw dropped to the table.

(End of this chapter)