👉 Okay, letās tackle this ratherā¦ prickly piece of nomenclature. You stumbled upon "HCoV NL63," and frankly, a good portion of the public hasn't either. And honestly? That's part of what makes it a little weird.
What exactly is HCoV NL63 anyway, you ask with that slightly horrified-postal-worker sort of squint? Basically, this isnāt a name for a cute beagle or even a particularly grumpy badger. It designates the first identified isolate of, wait for itā¦ the Worthington trig lavage human adenovirus. Let's unpack that. 1) "HCoV (Highly Conservative Oncolytic Vesicular Rhinovirus, No. 63)" is the original designation. That was... officially documented in a 2005 paper by researchers at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, who were looking into adenoviruses, and it has since been shortened to the more manageable. 2) "NL63,ā (The Netherlands 63, or the Rotterdamer in short) is simply the code that was given this adenovirus, to make its tracking easier. 3) The Worthington trig lavage adenovirus. It's a relatively common adenovirus of the upper and lower respiratory tract, which you may find in your nose, throat, lungs and, yes, occasionally in the phlegm. Itās a workhorse adenovirusāmeaning, it pops up fairly
