Science desk
< December 2	<< Nov \| December \| Jan >>	Current desk >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Science Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

December 3

SARS‑CoV‑2 original strain name

Reading about the SARS‑CoV‑2 variants, a thought occurred to me; is there a name for the original strain of SARS‑CoV‑2, eg. "SARS‑CoV‑2 wild-type" or "SARS‑CoV‑2 original" or something like that? Or is its name just "SARS‑CoV‑2", without any qualifiers? There are some older designators, like SARS‑CoV‑2 strain G and SARS‑CoV‑2 strain L; are these differences regarded as being on the same level as the Greek-lettered variants, or as just minor differences within a single variant? The Anome (talk) 14:11, 3 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The article titled Variants of SARS-CoV-2 contains all the information you seek. As is stated in the "Overview" section, the ancestral strain was labeled "S" or "A" (by Chinese and Western researchers respectively) and the dominant derived strain from that was labeled "L" or "B" respectively by the same researchers. From the "B" type, we get the variant class "B.1" that produced most (but not all) of the WHO variants of concern. According to the section "Reference Sequence" notes that because there is not a clear "patient zero", it is impossible to identify and isolate the exact oldest variant, but that section gives several candidates, including one called "Wuhan-1", several others only identified by data base serial numbers. The greek letter system is ONLY used for particular "variants of concern", not all strains (there are thousands of identifiable strains of SARS-CoV-2) similar to how not all weather events get names, only those that reach certain thresholds. --Jayron 32 14:27, 3 December 2021 (UTC) Ed: I have amended my answer per below. --Jayron 32 15:18, 3 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

All tropical storms get named, tropical storms that don't meet the criteria are not tropical storms but tropical depressions 1 through 89 (89 is unreachable) or tropical disturbances (either called invest 90L to 99L odometer-style (L if atLantic, A if Arabian, B if Bengal, C if CPac, E if EPac etc) or nothing at all). Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 15:00, 3 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You forgot to say "well, axully..." Yes, thank you. You are correct. I have amended my answer. --Jayron 32 15:18, 3 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

AFAIK there's no current variant of concern which is not from B.1. The gamma variant is labelled P.1 but only because of too many levels of varients as our article explains. Nil Einne (talk) 20:11, 4 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

With rona it's too low by 1 and too late to fix (alpha should be beta, ixnay the germ with no name), with others it's too high by 1 and too late to fix (UXCIII is naked uranium, exoplanet letters always skip a, an octave is only seven notes, centuries would be normal if one 8th century book had AD 0) Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 16:35, 3 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

how long would an aqueous solution of imidacloprid last under visible light from a household LED bulb?

I’ve purchased Temprid Fx (containing imidacloprid concentrate plus a pyrethroid as part of a multi-prong effort against a bad domestic infestation by roaches in my NYC apartment. (I’m concerned about pyrethroid resistance so I got Temprid Fx knowing it contains a neonicotinoid. If I dilute the concentrate as directed and put it in a pump sprayer (it’s not exactly clear but it’s weakly opaque / whitish translucent) and left the sprayer it in my kitchen exposed to light for a few hours, how long (what order of magnitude of time) would it take for substantial amounts of the imidacloprid to degrade ? Yanping Nora Soong (talk) 16:27, 3 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

According to our article, it has a half-life of 39 days on the surface of soil. I would expect something on the same order-of-magnitude in your kitchen. A few hours should not be enough to degrade it noticeably. --Jayron 32 17:10, 3 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The literature says it degrades rapidly in water when exposed to light via photolysis (UV). [1] In general, this seems to involve UV-wavelength light (e.g. half-life of 4 hours irradiated at 290 nm). How could I predict its half-life under visible light in aqueous solution? Could I predict it from the HOMO-LUMO gap? Yanping Nora Soong (talk) 15:11, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]