I would point out (and I am not being antagonistic) that the reason you and others think this is odd or bizarre after the fact is that you haven't tried to work in an infection lab during the unknown viral outbreak when the whole world is screaming at you for answers.
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Replying to @stuartjdneil @lab_leak and
Possibly germane: the competing paper by Lu et al (https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(20)30251-8/fulltext …) published on Jan 30 also does not mention "furin" in the text. The focus is on RBD. A paper focused on rapid genomic characterization of 2019-nCoV might legitimately not discuss FCS under time pressure.
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Replying to @trvrb @stuartjdneil and
I agree it's good to set up (-) & (+) controls: (-) analysis level: "proteins encoded by 2019-nCoV, bat-SL-CoVZC45.. ZXC21 were similar, with only a few minor insertions or deletions. A notable difference was a longer spike protein encoded by 2019-nCoV " https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(20)30251-8/fulltext …
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(-) control 2: the lab that was shut down for rectification after sharing the genome on Jan 11. Was focused on the NTD and RBD: "An amino acid sequence alignment of RBD sequences from WHCV, SARS-CoVs and bat SARS-like CoVs was performed"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2008-3 …
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(+) control 1: "The present study for the first time (on January 21st, 2020) reported a very important mutation.. not present in the S proteins of most other Betacoronavirus (e.g. SARS coronavirus)."https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338804501_A_furin_cleavage_site_was_discovered_in_the_S_protein_of_the_2019_novel_coronavirus …
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(+) control 2 titled "The spike glycoprotein of the new coronavirus 2019-nCoV contains a furin-like cleavage site absent in CoV of the same clade" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7114094/ …pic.twitter.com/d3DVQsKJhH
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Let's look at Dr Shi's papers. "The major differences in the sequence of the S gene of 2019-nCoV are the 3 short insertions in the N-terminal domain as well as changes in.. key residues in the receptor-binding motif compared with the sequence of SARS-CoV"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2012-7#change-history …
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Paper 2: Even after aligning spike, they didn't see the new FCS insertion. "aligning 2019-nCoV S protein sequence with those of SARS-CoV and several bat-SL-CoVs, we predicted that the cleavage site for generating S1 and S2 subunits is located at R694/S695" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7033706/ …
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Furthermore, all 3 authors on this paper had been part of a collaboration engineering an S1/S2 FCS into a MERS-like CoV (pseudotyped) in 2015.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4524054/ …
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I'm not saying this is a smoking gun for SARS-CoV-2 being engineered. But as
@zeynep pointed out, it should at least be considered as an oddity.2 replies 2 retweets 11 likes
Oddity, but not a coverup. You have to assume people with this much expertise understand not explicitly mentioning it in that paper isn’t going to be a coverup, given genome already available and everyone will go
as soon as they see it. Coverups have to make sense in context.
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It could be a mistake omission due to panic (despite very carefully picking out nearby insertions and even looking at the very site compared to other SARSrCoVs in their collection). Or it could be a situation where they could not draw attention to it.
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Someone told me an anecdote about scientists in the West told not to speak about impt details of a discovery which were potentially dual use. But the scientists fought back, pointing out that the omission would draw attention. In China, can scientists push back against the gov?
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