International team’s gene series investigation shows positive Covid samples in raccoon dog DNA
Recently published genetic knowledge collected at a live food market in Wuhan has connected Covid-19 to raccoon dogs, adding weight to the theory that inflamed animals sold triggered the coronavirus pandemic, according to researchers involved in the work.
Swabs taken from stalls at the Huanan seafood market within two months of its closure on January 1, 2020 were found to involve Covid and human DNA. When the effects were published last year, Chinese researchers said the samples did not involve animal DNA.
This conclusion has now been reversed through a foreign team of scientists. Their investigation of gene sequences published through the Chinese team in the Gisaid clinical knowledge base revealed that some of the positive Covid samples were in raccoon dog DNA. DNA traces belonging to other mammals, in addition to civets, were also provided in Covid-positive samples.
The finding doesn’t turn out that raccoon dogs or other covid-infected animals triggered the pandemic, but the scientists who submitted the paintings to a World Health Organization expert panel on Tuesday make it more likely.
“Knowledge is even more related to the origin of advertising,” Professor Kristian Andersen, an evolutionary biologist at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, told Science magazine. Andersen attended an assembly of the WHO Scientific Advisory Group on the origins of new pathogens and is running in the news.
The recently downloaded genetic sequences were detected by Florence Débarre, an evolutionary biologist at the National Center for Scientific Research in Los Angeles. She alerted Andersen and Professor Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona, who wrote papers proving the origin of the pandemic.
What triggered the worst pandemic in a century has become the focus of intense and poisonous debate. One theory proposes that the virus arose in wild animals and spread to humans through contamination on the market. Another suspicion escaped from the nearby Wuhan Institute of Virology, where researchers are working with similar pathogens.
The lab leak theory has made headlines in recent weeks after an assessment of U. S. Department of Energy intelligence. The U. S. and Republican-led hearings on the origins of the pandemic. Concrete evidence for either theory is lacking and may never be found.
The most recent genetic knowledge does not turn out that raccoon dogs or other mammals have become inflamed with Covid and spread it on the market. If the animals had become inflamed, they would possibly have contracted the virus from inflamed humans. But the effects point to the option that the cause is an inflamed animal and, ultimately, illicit trade.
While scientists hope the debate will continue, one wonders why the Chinese team didn’t publish genetic knowledge sooner. One member of the team, George Gao, former director of China’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told Science that “there is nothing new in the images. It is also unclear why the knowledge was later extracted from Gisaid’s site.
Debarre said it is running on a findings report, which will be made public, and will only answer questions once it’s done.
Dr Jonathan Stoye, virologist and senior organisation leader at the Francis Crick Institute in London, said: “The discovery of raccoon dogs inflamed with Sars-CoV-2 reinforces the plausibility that farm animals inflamed with coronavirus have been a link on the number of occasions before the Covid-19 pandemic.
“However, this does not refute theories of laboratory leaks: it would require proof that those animals were inflamed prior to their arrival and exposure to the Huanan seafood market, which would possibly never be possible. “
Also on Friday, the WHO said the covid-19 pandemic could take hold this year and pose a threat to the flu.
“I think we’re getting to a point where we can look at covid-19 the same way we see seasonal flu: a health threat, a virus that will continue to kill, but a virus that doesn’t affect our society. “Michael Ryan, WHO’s emergencies director, said, adding: “I will come. . . This year.