Researchers inspected the genome of the corona pandemic agent (SARS-CoV-2) and reported in the journal “Nature Medicine”: “Our analysis clearly shows that it is not a laboratory construct or deliberately modified virus.” It has its natural hazard Processes in animals developed before it jumped to humans, or only in very few patients at first, they explain.
Shortly after the outbreak of the epidemic, Chinese researchers deciphered the genetic material of the pathogen and made the data freely accessible to all researchers worldwide. A team led by Kristian Andersen from the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California (USA) compared the SARS-CoV-2 genome with that of other coronavirus strains and focused on meaningful characteristics such as the genetic template for outwardly protruding proteins in the virus envelope (spike proteins), with which the virus virtually grabs the outer walls of human or animal cells and penetrates them.
“If anyone had tried to put together a new corona virus as a pathogen, they would have built it on the backbone of a known virus that causes disease,” the researchers say. “These two properties – the changes in the RBD portion of the spike protein and its special backbone – preclude manipulation in the laboratory as a potential source for SARS-CoV-2,” Anderson told ScienceNews magazine.
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