Researchers find evidence that coronavirus came from lab

A team of three scientists, including German researcher Valentin Bruttel, claims to have found evidence of laboratory origin of the coronavirus, which they believe is 99.9% man-made copy of a natural virus, Report informs citing TASS.

The preprint has been placed in the electronic library bioRxiv.

Scientists claim to have found a kind of “imprint” of targeted genetic manipulation in the Sars-CoV-2 genome. Bruttel, who received a doctorate in immunology from the University Hospital of Wurzburg, told the TV channel that in the summer of 2021 he noticed features of the Sars-CoV-2 genome that could indicate a laboratory origin. In his free time, he began to conduct research with two other scientists.

“Combined with other molecular data, our results indicate that this virus is 99.9% an artificial, possibly manipulated copy of a natural virus,” Bruttel said. He noted that the methods used for this are allegedly used in a very similar form by individual virological laboratories for the production of synthetic viruses. Bruttel said he himself uses similar techniques in his daily work, but he is talking about developing "completely harmless" protein-based drugs to treat autoimmune diseases.

The scientist explained that in the genome of the virus there is a constantly repeating pattern - an exemplary imprint. Laboratories that genetically modify RNA viruses, like Sars-CoV-2, collect genetic material from individual DNA elements. Next to the junctions of these elements, obvious "recognition sites" remain - a kind of "imprint". Bruttel and his colleagues compared the genomes of known artificial viruses and their natural "virus samples". "In natural viruses, the “recognition sites” are completely random," Bruttel said. In artificial ones, these places always appear in a certain order.

“In the case of Sars-CoV-2, this pattern can be found, but not in closely related viruses,” the scientist said.