Talk:Coronavirus spike protein

update: cathepsin cleavage of spike
Two new articles (1 publication, 1 preprint) identify two sites in SARS-CoV-2 spike as cleaved by cathepsin L. These are at amino acid positions 260 and 637. The published article is. The preprint is:. I have a conflict of interest re their addition, as I am an author on the journal article so will leave here for information. Edemmott (talk) 15:23, 24 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Interesting papers, thanks for sharing! As you've probably seen, while non-peer-reviewed preprints can be interesting reading and sometimes handy sources of unpaywalled text, they aren't generally considered reliable sources for articles (see WP:PREPRINTS). Looking forward to seeing it published! As for the first paper, normally we try to rely on secondary sources (reviews etc), especially for medical topics. For basic science research (not medical claims) primary sources can be useful, and there's obviously examples already in the article. Do you have a suggested change including it? I wrote most of this article, and tried to describe the key features of SARS-CoV-2 spike without too many hot-off-the-press primary papers - I'd never be able to keep up with all of them! Opabinia regalis (talk) 06:25, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Vaccine-produced vs. viral spike
The statement that spike proteins are not dangerous is misleading, in my opinion. The reason vaccines don't seem to show spike-induced toxicity probably has to do with proteolysis, membrane anchoring of antigenic fragments, and more or less short-term, localized expression. Spike itself, as found on the virus, was shown to have toxic effects in multiple studies: These are only some examples, but there are many more articles. In contrast, through vaccination, the level of circulating spike seems to be either undetectable or extremely low, on the order of picograms/ml. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AndreiSf (talk • contribs) 13:13, 5 November 2021 (UTC)
 * This is called original research and it has no place on wikipedia's article space. We follow what the secondary reliable sources say, not your opinion interpreting the primary literature to fit a narrative you have constructed out of those sources. In order to make a statement like this in article space, you would need a review article published in a reputable journal which confirms this interpretation. From your various edits, it seems you may have some formal expertise in this area, as do I. But we cannot allow our interpretations of the primary literature substitute for actual review articles here. Regardless of what credentials we may have.

— Shibboleth ink  (♔ ♕) 01:03, 7 November 2021 (UTC)


 * It seems with the current state of the science, the Misinformation section should be updated to correct the statement that spike proteins from SARS-CoV-2 aren't dangerous.
 * Does anyone disagree? 96.10.178.70 (talk) 16:18, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

Question about vaccine-produced spike?
Is the spike protein produced in the body after injection with current COVID vaccines trimeric? Also, is the trimeric protein 1273 amino acids, or is 1273 the monomer (in which case the trimer is 3819)? Bwrs (talk) 21:43, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

Structure section too technical
The structure section as it currently stands seenms very difficult to understand because it contains many technical terms. I tried to insert this information: "The coronavirus spike contains three segments: a large ectodomain, a single-pass transmembrane anchor, and a short intracellular tail" and could not even figure out if that was already in but with different terminology. Overall we can try to improve its readibility according to our Manual of Style (MOS). Forich (talk) 20:11, 21 October 2022 (UTC)