December 6, 2024
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Virologist in Wuhan says the lab has no close relatives of the COVID virus
Shi Zhengli, a virologist at the Center for the Theory of COVID-19 Laboratory Releases, revealed the coronavirus sequences at the Wuhan Institute.
Chinese virologist Shi Zhengli has demonstrated that his lab has not worked with close relatives of SARS-CoV-2.
Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images
After years of rumors that it is the virus that causes COVID-19 escaped from a laboratory In China, the virologist at the center of the claims has presented data on dozens of new coronaviruses collected from bats in southern China. At a conference in Japan this week, Shi Zhengli, a specialist in bat coronaviruses, announced that none of the viruses stored in his freezers is the most recent ancestor of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Shi was leading coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), a high-level biosafety laboratory, when the first cases of COVID-19 were reported in that city. Shortly after, theories were created that the virus escaped from the WIV – either accidentally or on purpose.
Shi has consistently said that SARS-CoV-2 was never seen before studied in his laboratory. But some commentators have continued to wonder if his team had much to do with the many bat coronaviruses collected in southern China over the decades. Shi promised to sequence the genomes of the coronaviruses and release the data.
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The latest analysis, which has not been peer-reviewed, includes data from the whole genomes of 56 new betacoronaviruses, a broad group related to SARS-CoV-2, as well as some partial sequences. All viruses were collected between 2004 and 2021.
“We found no new sequences that are more closely related to SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2,” Shi said in a pre-recorded presentation at the conference, Preparing for the Next Pandemic: Evolution, Pathogenesis. and Virology of Coronaviruses, in Awaji, Japan, on December 4. Earlier this year, Shi moved from WIV to the laboratory in Guangzhou, the newly established national research institute for infectious diseases.
The results support his assertion that the WIV lab had no sequences derived from viruses that were related to SARS-CoV-2 other than those described in scientific papers, says Jonathan Pekar, an evolutionary biologist at the University. Edinburgh, United Kingdom. “This confirms what he was saying: that there was nothing tightly connected, as we’ve seen over the years,” he says.
Viruses most closely related to SARS-CoV-2 were found in bats in Laos and Yunnan, southern China, but years, if not decades, after they diverged from the common ancestor with the virus that causes COVID-19. “Basically, it found a lot of what we expected,” says Leo Poon, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong.
A long-standing partnership
For decades, he collaborated with Shi Peter DaszakPresident of the EcoHealth Alliance, a New York City-based non-profit organization that monitors bats in southern China for coronaviruses and their risk to humans. It was work Funded by the US National Institutes of Health and the US Agency for International Development, but in May of this year, it has The government suspended federal funding Because EcoHealth did not provide sufficient oversight of research activities at WIV. Among these activities was the modification of a coronavirus associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) to study the potential origin of this type of virus in bats.
Over the years, the collaboration between Shi and Daszak collected more than 15,000 bat stems from the region. The team tested for coronaviruses, and re-sequenced the genomes of those that tested positive. The collection expands the known diversity of coronaviruses. “At least he found sequences that could provide more context for understanding coronaviruses,” says Pekar.
In a larger analysis of 233 sequences – including new and previously published sequences – Shi and his colleagues identified 7 broad lineages and evidence of viruses that exchanged RNA fragments extensively, a process known as recombination. Daszak says the analysis also assesses the risk of these viruses jumping to people and identifies potential drug targets; “information of direct value to public health”.
Daszak says the group has faced delays in submitting work for peer review due to funding cuts and challenges in working across regions. Several US government studies EcoHealth. However, the researchers plan to submit the analysis to a journal in the coming weeks.
This article is and was reproduced with permission first published December 6, 2024.
