Wednesday, July 22, 2020

No, the coronavirus wasn't made in a lab. A genetic analysis shows it's from nature.


As the pandemic of COVID-19 shocked the world, many global misinformation theories were created. Many of these conspiracies behaved similarly as viruses by spreading rapidly online just like COVID did offline. One of these conspiracies was the COVID-19 was deliberately created in a laboratory. A new study suggested that COVID-19 was caused by a natural behavior and not made in a lab. A group of researchers from Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla California decided to analyze further the situation after the genetic makeup was revealed. It was clear to them right away that the virus wasn't human-made as SARS-CoV-2 was not derived from any previously used virus backbone, which you would need in order to engineer new viruses. Although some stretches of the virus genetic material were similar to HIV, this similarity is something that stems from those viruses sharing a common ancestor as evolution suggest. Another evidence found suggested that SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses are commonly found in nature including in animals such as bats and pangolins showing how easy they swap genes. An evidence to this is the amino acid of ACE2, which is found in COVID-19 as well as pangolins and causes the tight binding spike. This spike binding characteristic allows COVID-19 to stick to human cells easily and become more contagious. In conclusion, the evidence presented suggest that COVID-19 was most likely naturally occurring and not man made.
Link to article: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-covid-19-not-human-made-lab-genetic-analysis-nature

2 comments:

  1. This article is very interesting to me because I too have seen a lot of outlets saying that the virus was man made. Since the virus is naturally occurring, I wonder what the catalyst was for the virus to appear because it's never had an effect on the population like it did in these past months. I would love to do more research to find the "why" it started when it did.

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  2. There has been countless conspiracies regarding this Corona virus that has been plaguing our lives for several months now. I completely agree with the fact that Corona Virus was Not man made. Its very interesting to know that this virus also shares similar genetic material to HIV.

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