Channel: potholer54

Category: Science & Technology

Tags: wuhan labwuhanpotholer54sars-cov2manmade virusnicholas wadelab leakcovid19

Description: I covered these two issues last year -- that the virus was natural but leaked from a lab, and that the virus was manmade. Since then a flurry of new claims have popped up. Sources are below CORRECTIONS: 1) Although I was correct in saying there is a 99% similarity between humans and chimpanzees, and 96% between SARS-Cov2 and RaTG13, there have been comments in the forum about whether the comparison is appropriate. I'll just sum this up by saying that clearly ape genomes and virus genomes are not comparing like-for-like, the comparison merely highlights the difference that a small genetic difference can make in an organism. The point being made -- which hasn't changed -- is that it would take years to forcibly 'evolve' SARS-Cov2 from RaTG13 in a lab, even if it could be done. 2) One of the posters wrote: "At 6.27 - The paper by Zou et al is describing RmYNO2. This virus does not contain a furin site, but an insertion of amino-acids at the furin site position found in SARS-COV2. The idea is that amino acid insertions can naturally occur and subsequent point mutation could lead to a furin site." 3) @12:54 the wrong images are shown for the sources. The correct sources are listed below under 'SOURCES' DONATIONS TO CHARITY: The charity I urge people to donate to (instead of sending money to me) is called Health in Harmony (see my video youtube.com/watch?v=j9-GRugP9pU.) It funds hospitals and affordable health care to villages on the edge of a national parks, in return for a pledge not to cut down trees. The pledges are monitored, and the result has been a dramatic decrease in deforestation rates and an increase in the health of the local population. Thanks to your generous contributions, the founders are spreading the idea to other countries. See also psmag.com/social-justice/save-the-trees-well-save-your-life-46121 for an explanation of their work. You can make a donation by bank transfer here… healthinharmony.org/donate I have now monetized my channel, and am in the process of setting Health in Harmony up as the beneficiary. When this is done, ads will start appearng at the beginning of my videos. SOURCES: My video "Did SARS-Cov-2 start in a Chinese lab?" youtube.com/watch?v=ab-r0capbzk&t=1275s RaTG13 could not be a proximal source of the Wuhan virus: virological.org/t/tackling-rumors-of-a-suspicious-origin-of-ncov2019/384 Example of a similar furin cleavage site in nature: "A Novel Bat Coronavirus Closely Related to SARSCoV-2 Contains Natural Insertions at the S1/S2 Cleavage Site of the Spike Protein" cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(20)30662-X.pdf How the furin cleavage site can evolve: "A palindromic RNA sequence as a common breakpoint contributor to copy-choice recombination in SARS-COV-2" Nature article critiquing claim about the furin cleavage site being unique: nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01541-z “RaTG13 is too divergent to be this ancestral virus,” David Robertson, the head of viral genomics and bioinformatics at the University of Glasgow: factcheck.org/2021/06/scicheck-the-facts-and-gaps-on-the-origin-of-the-coronavirus "] If the RaTG13 genome had been used as the backbone for the creation of SARS-CoV-2, the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) group would have needed to passage it in cells or animals for years to accumulate 3.8% sequence divergence." Response to Segreto and Deigin: "There is no evidence of SARS-CoV-2 laboratory origin: Response to Segreto and Deigin (DOI: 10.1002/bies.202000240)" Not yet peer-reviewed: My information that humans and chimps share 99% of DNA comes from the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (geneticliteracyproject.org/2021/01/18/humans-and-chimpanzees-share-99-of-the-same-dna-this-is-the-1-difference/). Piplani et. al paper on ACE2 affinity: "In silico comparison of SARS CoV 2 spike protein ACE2 binding afnities across species and implications for virus origin" nature.com/articles/s41598-021-92388-5.pdf On SARS-CoV-2 being unlikely due to serial passage (lab evolution) because of a lack of human immune system 'signature': @12:54 "Finally, the generation of the predicted O-linked glycans is also unlikely to have occurred due to cell-culture passage, as such features suggest the involvement of an immune system18." Andersen et al., Nature Medicine 2020: "This strongly implies SARS-CoV-2 could not have been developed in a lab, even by a system of simulated natural selection. " leelabvirus.host/covid19/origins-part3?fbclid=IwAR3W1WYE4MKDcr_Y62h01yi1S8Z5lAGopPEuAkqwtjGKiWzVbTNgdwRrvec