NIH-halted study unveils its massive analysis of bat coronaviruses

[Mary Wilson]

By Jon Cohen, Kai KupferschmidtJun. 1, 2020 , 7:30 PM

An international team of scientists whose funding for research on bat coronaviruses was recently yanked by the U.S. government has published what it calls the most comprehensive analysis ever done of such viruses. In a preprint posted yesterday on bioRxiv, the researchers examine partial genetic sequences of 781 coronaviruses found in bats in China, more than one-third of which have never been published.

Although the analysis cannot pinpoint the origin of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, it does single out one genus, Rhinolophus, also known as Chinese horseshoe bats, as crucial to the evolution of coronaviruses. “It seems that by sheer phylogeographic, historical, evolutionary bad luck, Rhinolophus ends up being the major reservoir for SARS [severe acute respiratory syndrome]-related coronaviruses,” says study co-author Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that last month saw its multimillion-dollar grant to study bat coronaviruses with colleagues in China cut by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). On 21 May, 77 Nobel laureates urged NIH to reconsider its decision to end the funding.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...nveils-its-massive-analysis-bat-coronaviruses


RESEARCH ARTICLE
Emergence of SARS-CoV-2 through recombination and strong purifying selection

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/05/28/sciadv.abb9153

 

[Emily]

Just to clarify, the research paper above was mentioned in the article, but the paper by Daszak and Shi is just a preprint:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.31.116061v1

bioRxiv is receiving many new papers on coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. A reminder: these are preliminary reports that have not been peer-reviewed. They should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or be reported in news media as established information.
Origin and cross-species transmission of bat coronaviruses in China
Alice Latinne, Ben Hu, Kevin J. Olival, Guangjian Zhu, Libiao Zhang, Hongying Li, Aleksei A. Chmura, Hume E. Field, Carlos Zambrana-Torrelio, Jonathan H. Epstein, Bei Li, Wei Zhang, Lin-Fa Wang, Zheng-Li Shi, Peter Daszak
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.31.116061

The 77 Nobel laureates come off in their letter as very pious and disdainful of politics, (aka the US taxpayers who furnish the hard-earned money that pays their salaries and expenses), but they are engaging in politics by lobbying the US government for funding.

Why the grant was defunded was made clear to EcoHealthAlliance in spite of what Daszak says:

https://www.sciencemag.org/sites/de...lled.partial email transcripts.April 2020.pdf

Partial transcript of email exchanges in which NIH cuts off grant funding to EcoHealth Alliance
April 19th 2020: Michael Lauer, NIH Deputy Director for Extramural Research, writes to EcoHealth Alliance’s vice president for research, Kevin Olival and Naomi Schrag, Columbia University’s Research Integrity Officer (The email was misaddressed to Schrag; Columbia was not involved in the grant in any way):
EcoHealth Alliance, Inc. is the recipient, as grantee, of an NIH grant entitled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence.” It is our understanding that one of the sub-recipients on this grant is the Wuhan Institute of Virology (“WIV”). It is our understanding that Wuhan Institute of Virology studies the interaction between corona viruses and bats. The scientific community believes that the coronavirus causing COVID-19 jumped from bats to humans likely in Wuhan where the COVID-19 pandemic began. There are now allegations that the current crisis was precipitated by the release from Wuhan Institute of Virology of the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19. Given these concerns, we are pursuing suspension of Wuhan Institute of Virology from participation in federal programs.

The unlucky Rhinolophus bat is not resident in the region of Wuhan. Its bad luck is that it was captured and brought to Wuhan for study because researchers were paid by US taxpayers to do that dangerous work. As the research article referenced in the first post concludes:

While the direct reservoir of SARS-CoV-2 is still being sought, one thing is clear: reducing or eliminating direct human contact with wild animals is critical to preventing new coronavirus zoonosis in the future.

That includes mist-netting bats for sampling or bringing them back to Wuhan for research. Contact is contact.

 

[bertrand789]

il y a ceci:
https://www.francetvinfo.fr/sante/ma...t_3993379.html

C'est franchement un truc grossier, mais le plus abject, c'est l'autre cit? plus haut. Si en France, la peine de mort ?tait en usage, ce me semblerait le minimum ( la corruption des politiques et des faux scientifiques). Je ne comprends pas pourquoi ces deux pays la Chine et les U.S.A ne font pas le vrai m?nage ...