[World Tribune] The Wuhan coronavirus has four more amino acids than other coronaviruses, making its transmission easier, according to a French research team which examined the gene sequence of COVID-19.The research team’s findings have led some in the research community to speculate about whether it is "synthetic" and whether China’s scientists intended to develop a virus more difficult to contain than SARS.
Such alarming conjecture is impossible to test without original reports and data which China continues to withhold.
National Taiwan University (NTU) public health researcher Fang Chi-tai, who cited the research team’s findings, said that given China’s poor track record with lab safety management the virus is likely to have escaped from a Chinese facility, possibly the Wuhan Institute of Virology which is located near the original epicenter of the outbreak.
Fang said he had heard that many U.S. and Europe-based researchers had asserted that the virus was linked to the institute, adding this assertion was highly possible as the facility’s biosafety level 4 laboratory houses samples of SARS, Ebola and other deadly viruses.
Analyses of COVID-19, Fang said, have shown that is has a 96 percent genetic similarity with an RaTG13 bat virus at the institute.
While viruses need to be at least 99 percent similar to call them "the same," it is the differences in particular that have led researchers to speculate that COVID-19 was manufactured by modifying RaTG13, Fang said, according to a Taipei Times report.
Mutations of viruses that occur naturally only result in small, singular changes, Fang said, adding that one would not normally see a naturally mutated virus suddenly take on four amino acids.
While such a large mutation is not impossible, it is highly unlikely, Fang said.
However, only an internal administrative review at the institute could rule out whether the virus was manufactured there, Fang said, adding that such an investigation would require access to lab records, which is unlikely to happen in communist China.