synthetic biology is all the rage!

 JB says   6 March 2020 at 9:19 am    Lots of “gain of function” research going on everywhere.  And synthetic biology is all the rage!

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https://www.edge.org/conversation/william_mcewan-molecular-cut-and-paste     William McEwan:  This afternoon I received in the post a slim FedEx envelope containing four small vials of DNA. The DNA had been synthesized according to my instructions in under three weeks, at a cost of 39 U.S. cents per base pair (the rungs adenine-thymine or guanine-cytosine in the DNA ladder). The 10 micrograms I ordered are dried, flaky, and barely visible to the naked eye, yet once I have restored them in water and made an RNA copy of this template, THEY WILL ENCODE A VIRUS I HAVE DESIGNED. …

Rossana says

11 March 2020 at 9:55 am

I am a microbiologist with experience creating mutants (not viruses) and I know that we have all the methods to manipulate genomic sequences without leaving any trace..
My previous comments:
What about producing a chimeric virus combing KP876546 or RaTG13 (or similar) with part of the RBD from CoVs isolated from pangolins (or similar) searching the missing link between bats and humans?  Furin cleavage site might come in addition to enhance virulence.               In this work a possible procedure to generate chimeric viruses is described:
Manipulation of the Coronavirus Genome Using Targeted RNA Recombination with Interspecies Chimeric Coronaviruses
Cornelis A.M. de Haan, Bert Jan Haijema, Paul S. Masters, and Peter J.M. Rottier

Are some virologist scared that the true will come out and their research will be limited?  I am ready to take the risk to see also my work limited.  Playing with the fire is dangerous without precautions…

Rossana says

13 March 2020 at 11:36 am

Both the polybasic cleavage site and O-linked glycans are unique to SARS-CoV-2 and not previously seen in lineage B betacoronaviruses.
This can come also from a lab, maybe even more easily than from natural recombination.  There are published works on the manipulation of the polybasic cleavage site in coronaviruses.

Further, if genetic manipulation had been performed, one would expect that one of the several reverse genetic systems available for betacoronaviruses would have been used.  However, this is not the case as the genetic data shows that SARS-CoV-2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbone….

New polybasic cleavage sites have only been observed after prolonged passaging of low pathogenicity avian influenza virus in cell culture or animals.  This can be easily done in a lab as well.  See PMID: 24667706 and PMID: 30209269.

 

The generation of SARS-CoV-2 by cell culture or animal passage would have required prior isolation of a progenitor virus with a very high genetic similarity….Can you exclude that such kind of virus has been isolated and not made public because it was under study?      https://www.virology.ws/2020/02/13/furin-cleavage-site-in-the-sars-cov-2-coronavirus-glycoprotein/

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https://joannenova.com.au/2021/09/uttar-pradesh-india-wipes-out-covid-with-ivermectin/

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