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Eric's generally pretty great, but this is clearly wrong and the wrong way to consider this problem.
A more useful calculation would be number of 30kb genomes within, say, 5% of SARS-CoV-2... https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1362113185369653250
A more useful calculation would be number of 30kb genomes within, say, 5% of SARS-CoV-2... https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1362113185369653250
that means any sequence within 1,500 point mutations of SARS-CoV-2.
But you can't just take 4^1,500. That would be the number of possible 1,500bp strings of DNA. You need to account for different positions across the genome and all of the variants that are off by 1,499 or 1,498
But you can't just take 4^1,500. That would be the number of possible 1,500bp strings of DNA. You need to account for different positions across the genome and all of the variants that are off by 1,499 or 1,498
This is where my piddling brain starts to hurt and I realize that the number is astronomically large - like, larger than the space of sequences that SARS-CoV-2 will ever explore - and I leave the remainder of the calculation as an exercise for the reader.
Enjoy.
