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Beads, Boys and Bangles

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Sophia Bennett

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“JACK: Apoplexy will do perfectly well, Lots of people die of apoplexy, quite suddenly, don't they? ALGERNON: Yes, but it's hereditary, my dear fellow. It's a sort of thing that runs in families. JACK: Good heavens! Then I certainly won't choose that. What can I say? ALGERNON: Oh! Say influenza. JACK Oh, no! that wouldn't sound probable at all. Far too many people have had it.”

InfluenzaApoplexy
Book:The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays
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“The researchers looked deeper into these observations, in hopes of gaining insight into the mechanisms underlying the high evolutionary rate and extraordinary immunologic plasticity of influenza HA. They probed in more detail the precise codons that are used by the virus to encode the influenza HA1 protein. The discriminated between codons on the basis of volatility. Each three-nucleotide codon is related by a single nucleotide change to nine 'mutational neighbours.' Of those nine mutations, some proportion change the codon to a synonymous codon and some change it to a nonsynonymous one, which directs the incorporation of a different amino acid into the protein. More volatile codons are those for which a larger proportion of those nine mutational neighbours encode an amino acid change. The use of particular codons in a gene at a frequency that is disproportionate to their random selection for encoding a chosen amino acid is termed codon bias. Such bias is common and is influenced by many factors, but here the collaborators found strong evidence for codon bias that was particular for and restricted to the amino acids making up the HA1 epitopes. Remarkably, they observed that influenza employs a disproportionate number of volatile codons in its epitope-coding sequences. There was a bias for the use of codons that had the fewest synonymous mutational neighbours. In other words, influenza HA1 appears to have optimized the speed with which it can change amino acids in its epitopes. Amino acid changes can arise from fewer mutational events. The antibody combining regions are optimized to use codons that have a greater likelihood to undergo nonsynonymous single nucleotide substitutions : they are optimized for rapid evolution.”

EvolutionVolatilityInfluenzaEvolved For EvolvabilityVolatile Codons
Book:Viruses: Agents of Evolutionary Invention
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“I’VE BECOME MORE AWARE OF MYSELF. BECAUSE OF THE SITUATION. NOW THAT I KNOW I’M LEAVING, I SEE THINGS DIFFERENTLY. I’VE BEEN AWARE OF LITTLE THINGS THAT I WOULD HAVE MISSED BEFORE. “LIKE WHAT?” LIKE SEEING THE SUN SHINE OFF THE ROOF OF OUR OLD BARN. I SAW THAT THIS MORNING AND STOOD THERE, LOOKING AT IT. I FOUND IT MOVING. IT WAS BEAUTIFUL—IT REALLY WAS. I DON’T USUALLY THINK ABOUT IF A LANDSCAPE IS BEAUTIFUL OR NOT, BUT I COULDN’T CONTROL THIS FEELING. I SAW IT AND RECOGNIZED THAT IT WAS BEAUTIFUL. BUT YOU KNOW WHAT? IT MADE ME SAD. “SAD?” I CAN HEAR HIM TYPING. HE’S TRYING TO DO IT QUIETLY, BUT I CAN HEAR. “WHY?” I DON’T KNOW. I HAVE NO IDEA. “BECAUSE BEAUTY IS FLEETING, MAYBE?” NO, I SAY. IT’S THE OPPOSITE. BEAUTY ISN’T FLEETING. BEAUTY IS ETERNAL. BUT . . . I’M NOT. I’M FLEETING. THAT’S MORE THE POINT. HIS TYPING STOPS ABRUPTLY. “THAT’S QUITE PROFOUND. YOU DO SEEM MORE SELF-AWARE AND INTROSPECTIVE THAN WHEN I FIRST ARRIVED. IT MAKES ME THINK OF BAUdelaire: ‘I CAN BARELY CONCEIVE OF A TYPE OF BEAUTY IN WHICH THERE IS NO MELANCHOLY.’”

Iain Reid
Book:Foe
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