[timr]

> To your point however, could someone comment on the suitability of BsaI/BsmBI for the in vitro assembly of synthetic coronaviruses?

These are very commmon enzymes. Perhaps the most common today.

The GP comment is sort of misleading...you wouldn't just pick enzymes at random to do this analysis. You'd pick the enzymes in common use. These count.

> Is it all just about finding sites in the genome at the right locations which can be turned into restriction sites without disrupting any existing functional genetic elements? or is there more to it than that.

You can add or remove sites using different techniques, such as PCR mutagenesis.

> If a research team were to come along and decide they wanted to engineer their own coronavirus, how likely would it be that they would choose these restriction enzymes?

Highly likely.

[jpeloquin]

> The GP comment is sort of misleading...you wouldn't just pick enzymes at random to do this analysis.

I said pick blind, not at random. I recommend reading https://info.umkc.edu/drbanderson/p-hacking-and-the-problem-...

[timr]

I know what p-hacking is. There's no reason to believe that they've done that here. The choice of enzymes was motivated by the logic they outlined in the paper, the enzymes chosen are some of the most popular today, and the authors are completely forthright that the choice might affect the outcome.

To fairly make a critique like that, you need to have at least some evidence that a selection bias was applied for no other reason than to affect the p-value. Otherwise, literally every study can be accused of "p-hacking". Here, there's a very good, obvious explanation for the choice that they made, and therefore all you can really say is that the results might be different if you looked at a different set of enzymes.