[HN Gopher] Why does the SARS-Cov2 genome end in aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...
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       Why does the SARS-Cov2 genome end in
       aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa? (2020)
        
       Author : jdwg
       Score  : 26 points
       Date   : 2023-02-11 22:05 UTC (55 minutes ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (bioinformatics.stackexchange.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (bioinformatics.stackexchange.com)
        
       | matt_daemon wrote:
       | Trying to overflow the buffer?
        
         | ugjka wrote:
         | Mining the next block
        
       | einpoklum wrote:
       | Perhaps it shares some ancestry with the legendary Black Beast of
       | Aaaa?
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJfowXTXOfU
        
         | brookst wrote:
         | Or maybe it was developed in a bioweapon lab at the castle of
         | aaaaaaaa...
        
       | fuckyah wrote:
       | [dead]
        
       | rmbyrro wrote:
       | 99.111111111111% of the internet will tell you it's proof of
       | either Chinese or US Military conspiracy to dominate the world.
        
         | luckylion wrote:
         | Had it started with aaaaaaaaaaaaa, I would've put my money on
         | someone optimizing for the virus yellow pages.
        
       | aatd86 wrote:
       | Because the biohacker who created it was listening to "Stay fly"
       | by 3-6 Mafia and got inspired /joke
        
       | jtchang wrote:
       | It's like a NOP slide for viruses:
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOP_slide
       | 
       | Just kidding...sort of!
        
       | zxcvbn4038 wrote:
       | Maybe the scientist who made it died before he finished?
       | ATTACGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA......
        
         | jMyles wrote:
         | Look, if he died while engineering a virus, he wouldn't bother
         | to code "AAAAAAA" he'd just say it!
        
       | HL33tibCe7 wrote:
       | Read https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-
       | source...
        
       | gleenn wrote:
       | I don't think this is nearly as true for virii genomes, but
       | larger species have lots of protetive sections of DNA to protect
       | from mutations. If you lose a non-protein-coding section of DNA
       | to mutation, no harm to the species occurs. In humans, only about
       | 1.5% of our DNA codes for protein that is actually generated.
       | Virii are physically extremely tiny in terms of cell size and
       | must be very efficient in terms of storing the DNA within them so
       | way more actually codes, but no doubt there are similar factors
       | at play.
        
       | hknmtt wrote:
       | we have a computer model based on which the entire world was
       | taken prisoner by totalitarian governments drunk on absolute
       | power, yet nobody ever seen the thing all of this was based on in
       | real world....
        
       | FormerBandmate wrote:
       | The top answer at the link explains it best:
       | 
       | Good observation! The 3' poly(A) tail is actually a very common
       | feature of positive-strand RNA viruses, including coronaviruses
       | and picornaviruses.
       | 
       | For coronaviruses in particular, we know that the poly(A) tail is
       | required for replication, functioning in conjunction with the 3'
       | untranslated region (UTR) as a cis-acting signal for negative
       | strand synthesis and attachment to the ribosome during
       | translation. Mutants lacking the poly(A) tail are severely
       | compromised in replication.
        
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       (page generated 2023-02-11 23:00 UTC)