How seriously do you take Dr. Li-Meng Yan? And how seriously does the article Unusual Features of the Sars-CoV2 Genome Suggesting a Sophisticated Laboratory Modification rather than a Natural Evolution and Delineation of its Probable Synthetic Pathway, published by her and her co-authors, under the auspices of the Rule of Law Society and the Rule of Law Foundation, New York, September 14? As the title suggests, the document claims that the coronavirus was created by man, in a laboratory.
The paper was uploaded to the CERN-run open source research repository Zenodo, and the Hindustan Times reported on Wednesday (bit.ly/33uFyy4). It was not as widely reported as Dr. Yan’s comments in Loose Women, a segment of a television show hosted by a UK television channel, in which she said much the same thing, albeit without any of the scientific arguments, without foundation, – presented in the document.
Here’s what that document claimed:
One, ZC45, a bat virus, or a closely related variant or mutant, bears striking similarity to Sars-CoV2, as shown by genome sequencing, with 94% to 100% similarity to key viral proteins.
The Sars-CoV2 spike protein is essentially a trimer (essentially three parts) each of which has an S1 and S2 part with a furin cleavage site at the border between the two. Other research has already established that the human cellular enzyme furin cleaves, or breaks, the S1 and S2 units at the cleavage site, and that the S1 unit then binds to the ACE receptor, another protein found on the surface of most of human cells. This binding then facilitates the entry of the viral protein into human cells. The ability of the virus to bind to the receptor and the presence of the cleavage site that responds to a human cannon enzyme are the reasons why Covid-19 is as infectious as it is.
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Both the furin cleavage site and the spike protein’s ability to bind to the ACE2 receptor are unnatural, the paper argued.
In their preface to this scientific hypothesis, the authors also state that the process of creating such a virus in a laboratory could take only six months. They call for more research and investigation into the origin of the virus. Even if your hypothesis is subsequently proven wrong, this is a recommendation no one can argue with: the origin of the virus should be investigated, not so much to blame (although there will be some as well), but to prepare for the next virus and the next. pandemic.
Dr. Yan, currently in the US, where she fled in late April, is a virologist who used to work at the School of Public Health at the University of Hong Kong and who has long claimed that China knew about it. virus and the fact that person-to-person transmission of the infection was occurring long before it manifested itself. Her claims about man-made creation of the virus are more recent.
Interestingly, a March article in Nature titled The Proximal Origin of Sars-Cov2, written by Kristian G Andersen of the Scripps Research Institute in California, argued, again picking up on the same two distinguishing features of Sars-CoV2, that the virus was natural. The viral protein showed high “affinity” for binding to the receptor, they said, but this interaction was not “ideal” or “optimal.” In simple terms, this meant that if someone had set out to engineer the virus, they would have chosen the “ideal” binding relationship, not just an optimal one. The document also said that there were other coronaviruses that had similar “cleavage sites” and that this was not unique to Sars-CoV2.
However, the two articles differ in one significant respect. The one published in Nature said that “the genetic data irrefutably shows that Sars-CoV2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbones.” Dr. Yan’s said (again, unsubstantiated that) a “genomic sequence analysis reveals that ZC45, or a closely related bat coronavirus, should be the backbone used for the creation of Sars-CoV2.”
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Dr. Yan’s claims are also being viewed through a political lens, with scientists in the US pointing out that the two nonprofits that published the document were linked to Steve Bannon, former Trump adviser and former president. far-right Breitbart News executive. spewing slander on the study findings.
Clearly, only more research and investigation can shed light on the origin of the virus that has so far infected 29,927,685 and killed 942,564 worldwide. India ended Wednesday with 5,115,846 cases and 83,230 deaths.
But as Vivek Wadhwa, a columnist for this article, a leading thinker on technology and a distinguished fellow of the Labor and Labor Program at Harvard Law School, said in a recent Foreign Policy article: “If genetic engineering weren’t behind of this pandemic, it could very well unleash the next one ”. That’s because, “genetic engineering, with all its potential for good and evil, has been democratized,” Wadhwa wrote.
“Thanks to a technological revolution in genetic engineering, all the tools necessary to create a virus have become so cheap, simple and readily available that any rogue scientist or college-age biohacker can use them.”
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