A new study was conducted on the coronavirus, which caused the death of more than 6.5 million people in total. Scientists are focusing on the possibility that SARS-Cov-2, which is called coronavirus as a result of their research, was produced in a laboratory environment.
Diseases called zoonosis can spread from animals to humans. The coronavirus, which has been researched for a long time, was first diagnosed with zoonosis. Accidental leakage of viruses from laboratories is more common than many people realize. This is how the 1977 flu epidemic is thought to have begun. But a leaked virus does not mean a designed virus. Virology labs are also full of non-engineering species.
The coronavirus could be a lab product
Scientists brought together by the World Health Organization (WHO) to visit Wuhan in February 2021 announced that a laboratory leak was unlikely. However, this conclusion was later challenged by WHO officials and it was stated that it was premature to reject this theory.
Studies conducted in Wuhan indicate that there are several different ways for the virus to leak out. A field trip focuses on researchers catching the virus while in the wild, returning to Wuhan and infecting other people. Another theory is that the researchers were infected with a wild-collected virus in the lab. However, some people claim that sars-cov-2 was obtained from other viruses already on hand and may have been leaked later.
Alex Washburne, a mathematical biologist who leads Selva, a New York-based startup in microbiome science, has published a research paper on the topic. Working with Antonius VanDongen, associate professor of pharmacology, and Valentin Bruttel, an umminologist, Washburne made some findings about the coronavirus in the bioRxiv publication.
In the analysis published Oct. 20, the team notes that when lab-generated viruses are combined with some form of genetic engineering, some genomic features emerge. However, he suggests that sars-cov-2 has these genomic features.
The team explained that they started from the assumption that creating a genome as long as the coronavirus would mean putting together shorter pieces of existing viruses. Additionally, the team claimed that the distribution of restriction sites for two popular restriction enzymes (BsaI and BsmBI) is “abnormal” in the coronavirus genome.
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