'Never been found naturally': Rare genome indicates COVID-19 is man-made, say US experts

Two United States experts have said on June 6 that “damning” science strongly indicates that COVID-19 causing novel coronavirus, is man-me and optimised in a lab for maximum infectivity before leing to a pandemic last year. In an opinion piece for Wall Street Journal published on Sunday, Dr. Steven Quay and Richard Muller noted two crucial pieces of evidence to back ir claim of SARS-CoV-2 being manufactured in a laboratory after ory was long derided as little more than speculation. 

Firstly, according to US experts, it is nature of gain-of-function research which includes scientists tweaking genome of virus to make it more infectious or lethal such as one taking place in China’s Wuhan Insitute of Virology. Quay and Muller wrote that COVID-19 pathogen has a genetic footprint that has never been observed in a natural coronavirus. Quay is founder of US-based biopharmaceutical company Atossa rapeutics and Muller is a Physics professor at University of California Berkeley.

" most compelling reason to favour lab leak hyposis is firmly based in science," experts wrote.

Both American experts explained that COVID-19 has genome sequencing CGC-CGG or ‘ double CGG’ which is one of 36 sequencing patterns. CGC is rarely used in class of coronaviruses that can recombine with CoV-2 which is a “damning fact.”. Quay wrote, “ insertion sequence of choice is double CGG.” y furr said, “That’s because it is reily available and convenient, and scientists have a great deal of experience inserting it...An ditional vantage of double CGG sequence compared with or 35 possible choices: It creates a useful beacon that permits scientists to track insertion in laboratory.”

"In fact, in entire class of coronaviruses that includes CoV-2, CGG-CGG combination has never been found naturally. That means common method of viruses picking up new skills, called recombination, cannot operate here. A virus simply cannot pick up a sequence from anor virus if that sequence isn't present in any or virus," experts noted.

“Why did it replicate choice lab's gain-of-function researchers would have me?" experts said. "Yes, it could have happened randomly, through mutations. But do you believe that? At minimum, this fact -- that coronavirus, with all its random possibilities, took rare and unnatural combination used by human researchers -- implies that leing ory for origin of coronavirus must be laboratory escape.”

Wuhan Lab Evidence Would Have Been 'Destroyed' By China

opinion piece was published after former British intelligence service or MI6 chief said that evidence of novel coronavirus leak from Wuhan lab that could be origin of COVID-19 pandemic would have been destroyed by Chinese officials. Sir Richard Dearlove, who was in charge of MI6 service between 1999 and 2004, has said that it would now be challenging to prove that Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was working on experiments to make a coronavirus that would be more dely to humans. 

Since COVID-19 pandemic began, claims, dismissed as a conspiracy ory, have also emerged that novel coronavirus might have accidentally leaked from laboratory where scientists were working on pathogen. However, many scientists have insisted that virus migrated naturally from animals to humans. 

conspiracy ory proponents are fact that WIV h been studying coronaviruses in bats for more than ten years. It is located just a few miles away from Huanan wet market, which is also one of earliest known clusters of COVID-19 in China. former MI6 chief said that West h been naive in placing trust in China which h infiltrated scientific institutions and journals in UK along with rest of world. Richard told Daily Telegraph's Planet Normal podcast that it was possible Chinese scientists in WIV who were willing to speak about any coronavirus experiments were “silenced.”

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