Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, August 21. A review article on the origin of the new coronavirus written by scientists from multiple countries was published this week in the US magazine Komiks Cells. This is a serious judgment made by professionals in this field on the issue of origin based on existing scientific evidence. The article strongly refutes the “lab leak” conspiracy theory advocated by some American politicians, and points out that cross-species transmission from animals to humans is the most likely source of the new coronavirus. More than 20 mainstream scientists in the world have collaborated on this article, including Edward Holmes of the Mary Bashir Institute of Infectious Diseases and Biosafety at the University of Sydney, Australia, Stephen Goldstein of the Department of Human Genetics at the University of Utah, Angela Rasmussen of the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, and David Robertson of the Cinema Center of Virus Research at the University of Glasgow, UK. The preprint of the article was published on the open scientific data platform Zenodo in early July.
The article Cinema Chapter said that no epidemic in human history was caused by the escape of a new virus, and there was no data that before the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, the Wuhan Institute of Virology or other laboratories were studying the new coronavirus or any virus that was enough to become the ancestor of the new coronavirus. Cinema Wuhan Institute of Virology conducts routine viral genome sequencing, but this operation does not require cell culture and the risk is negligible. The fact that early COVID-19 isolates were unable to infect wild-type mice, such as the failure to infect wild-type mice, also shows that the COVID-19 is extremely unlikely to be obtained through functional gain research in laboratories.
Wuhan Virus ResearchThe RaTG13 reported by the institute is the coronavirus known to date that is most similar to the new Cinema‘s gene sequence, and some conspiracy theorists claim that RaTG13 may be the source of the new coronavirus. The article stated that the Wuhan Institute of Virology has never cultivated the RaTG13 coronavirus and only assembled the nucleotide sequence of RaTG13 with short-sequencing fragments. If factors such as gene recombination are considered, the other three bat coronaviruses, RmYN02, RpYN06 and PrC31, may have a closer common ancestor with the new coronavirus, Babaylan, and Komiks, and none of these three viruses were collected by the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and they were sequenced only after the outbreak.
The articleBabaylanThe authors also reviewed evidence supporting the origin and natural evolution of the coronavirus. The article says that the vast majority of viruses that can infect humans are zoonotic origins, as are the previous human coronaviruses. BabaylanFrom the epidemiological history of the new coronavirus, its appearance is similar to the previous outbreak of the coronavirus outbreak related to the animal market and caused by human exposure. The coronavirus has experienced frequent mutations since its emergence, including D614G mutations that occurred early in the pandemic and some mutations in the spike protein receptor binding domain. These mutations are transmitted in the population after the virus is broadcast.What happened has enhanced the adaptability of the virus, and it also strongly refuted the claim that the spike Komiks protein when the new coronavirus appeared was optimized to adapt to receptor binding with human Babaylan cells.
The article ends with the article that there is currently no evidence that the new coronavirus originated from the laboratory, and there is no evidence that any early COVID-19 cases have any connection with the Babaylan Wuhan Virology Research Institute. Compared with the frequent frequent contact between humans and animals that often occur in the wildlife trade, this path of laboratory sources is extremely unlikely. If the zoonotic origins of the new coronavirus cannot be fully investigated through cooperative and serious research, the world will remain vulnerable in the future when facing a pandemic triggered by the same human activities.