Mutations in the Coronavirus Spike Protein

The last post talked about antibodies to the spike protein of the coronavirus, and one of the main things that everyone has to keep an eye on are the mutations in that area That has implications for monoclonal antibody therapy, for vaccine production, and for the behavior of the coronavirus itself Antibodies against the Spike protein could range from neutralizing ones that will stop the virus in its tracks all the way to others that would cause antibody-dependent enhancement and make the viral infection even worse (see below), and we don�t know how the mutational landscape might alter the activity of any given monoclonal candidate A new preprint on spike muations (from researchers at Los Alamos, Duke, and Sheffield) has gotten a great deal of attention in the last couple of days, and I think that a detailed look at it would be useful to help explain these issues