A team of three scientists, including German researcher Valentin Bruttel, claims to have found evidence of the laboratory origin of the coronavirus, which they believe is 99.9% artificial copy of the natural virus. The n-tv channel reported this on Sunday. The preprint was posted in the digital library bioRxiv.
Scientists claim to have found in the Sars-CoV-2 genome a kind of “fingerprint” of purposeful genetic manipulation. Bruttel, who holds a PhD in immunology from the University Hospital of Würzburg, told the TV station that he noticed features of the Sars-CoV-2 genome as early as the summer of 2021 that could indicate a laboratory origin. In his spare time, he began research with two other scientists.
“Combined with other molecular data, our results show that this virus is 99.9 percent artificial, possibly a manipulated copy of a natural virus,” Bruttel believes.
According to him, the methods used to do this are allegedly used in a very similar form by individual virological laboratories to produce synthetic viruses. Bruttel stated that he himself uses similar techniques in his daily work, but we are talking about the development of “completely harmless” protein-based medications for the treatment of autoimmune diseases.
The scientist explained that there is a constantly repeating pattern in the genome of the virus, a model imprint. Laboratories that genetically modify RNA viruses, like Sars-CoV-2, collect genetic material from individual DNA elements. The obvious “recognition sites” – a kind of “fingerprint” – are left next to where these elements are joined. Bruttel and his colleagues compared the genomes of known artificially created viruses and their natural “pattern viruses.”
“In natural viruses, the ‘recognition sites’ are distributed completely randomly,” Bruttel said. In artificial ones, however, these places always appear in a certain order.
“This pattern is found in Sars-CoV-2 , but not in closely related viruses,” the scientist said.
The n-tv channel reported that, the study involving Bruttel has already been criticized by a number of famous scientists.
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