The coronavirus, COVID-19, which originated in China and is responsible for the global pandemic, has a unique structural feature that none of its closest viral relatives yet identified have, a furin polybasic cleavage site.<\/p>\n
Cleavage sites similar to that found in COVID-19 are present in some naturally-occurring coronaviruses, but in completely separate evolutionary pathways from COVID-19.<\/p>\n
It has also been demonstrated that such coronavirus cleavage sites can be modified by genetic engineering to alter viral pathogenicity, sometimes increasing it.<\/p>\n
For example, in a 2011 study, using site-directed mutagenesis, a non-infective influenza virus was transformed into a pathogenic one by the replacement of two native amino acids in its cleavage site with two new basic amino acids.<\/p>\n
Scientists in China have used site-directed mutagenesis to alter the cleavage site of an infectious bronchitis virus by introducing basic amino acids, thereby increasing its pathogenicity and resulting in a gain of function such that the new virus was capable of infecting the brain producing severe encephalitis.<\/p>\n
An alternative method for introducing a polybasic cleavage site and producing a pathogenic virus from a naturally-occurring non-pathogenic one is by a technique called reassortment or mixing two or more viruses in a host animal or cell culture system from which a new virus emerges through a natural recombination process.<\/p>\n
The scientific conventional wisdom claims that COVID-19 is a naturally-occurring bat beta-coronavirus that jumped from animals to humans presumably in the Wuhan Seafood Market, an assertion with which the Chinese Communist Party and the World Health Organisation wholeheartedly agree.<\/p>\n
There is also general, if unproven, agreement within the scientific community that the closest relative to COVID-19, and perhaps the strain from which it evolved, is another bat beta-coronavirus named RaTG13.<\/p>\n
But RaTG13 does not have COVID-19s furin polybasic cleavage site nor do any of the other close relatives that have been so far identified.<\/p>\n
One of the main reasons we do not yet know the origin of COVID-19 is because China has not opened its research files and databases for inspection, sources containing information about the vast number of coronaviruses they have isolated and the experiments conducted on them.<\/p>\n
One example is RaBtCoV\/4991 (GenBank KP876546), which is one of the many bat coronaviruses isolated from an abandoned mineshaft in Yunnan Province, often mentioned as a potential starting point for a human disease outbreak.<\/p>\n
Although isolated in 2013, RaBtCoV\/4991 has never been fully sequenced or practically studied at all, even though, according to one source, the RaBtCoV\/4991 short sequence is a 100 per cent match for RaTG13 and SNU01, the viral isolate from the first COVID-19 patient in South Korea.<\/p>\n
Applying the bioengineering techniques of recombination, site-directed mutagenesis and reassortment, CoVid-19 could have been created through the introduction of a furin polybasic cleavage site onto an appropriate coronavirus backbone from the catalogue of isolated strains in Chinese laboratories. <\/p>\n
China also has animal models to test the ability of such new viruses to infect humans.<\/p>\n
It is only the lack of candour by the Chinese government that prevents the world from knowing the true origin of COVID-19.<\/p>\n
(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL)<\/p>\n
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Continued here: The coronavirus, COVID-19, which originated in China and is responsible for the global pandemic, has a unique structural feature that none of its closest viral relatives yet identified have, a furin polybasic cleavage site. Cleavage sites similar to that found in COVID-19 are present in some naturally-occurring coronaviruses, but in completely separate evolutionary pathways from COVID-19 Continue reading
\nHow China could have made COVID-19 while hiding its origin - WION<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"