Plot thickens & strengthens for lab-engineered origin of COVID virus & not wet-market spillover zoonotic jump; Washburn & Bruttel: "Endonuclease fingerprint indicates a synthetic origin of SARS-CoV-2"

Differs from closest relatives by significantly higher rate of synonymous mutations in synthetic-looking recognitions sites, has synthetic fingerprint unlikely to have evolved from its close relatives

Before featuring this nice work by Washburne with his focus on restrictions sites, I would say it adds nicely to the lab inserted ‘furin cleavage site’. The prior substack I wrote on (nice work by many that we build upon as we try to understand the complexities) it shows that the COVID Wuhan initial legacy strain is the only coronavirus with this furin cleavage site insertion just in between the S1 and S2 sub-units. I think (likely you agree?) this is the motherload and scientists like Washburne help thicken the plot and firm up the science, the body of evidence on the lab origin, and not the bogus wet-market ‘spillover’ zoonotic jump.

It is a'9' amino-acid sequence 'PRRARSVAS' (see 3rd coronavirus from the base titled ‘Wuhan’ in red and the 9 amino acid sequence) that changed the world; FURIN Cleavage Site (FCS) insertion in SARS-CoV-2 inserted between S1 & S2 sub-units of spike protein (devastating, pathogenic, infectious).

COVID was created in the lab via gain-of-function research stitching together viruses or parts of virus to create chimera viruses, and Fauci, Francis Collins, Baric, Daszak etc., have a direct role. We are to figure it out fully and hold everyone of them to account if shown to have been reckless and irresponsible behavior that threatened the world.

Good work by Washburne et al.:

SOURCE:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.10.18.512756v1

“To prevent future pandemics, it is important that we understand whether SARS-CoV-2 spilled over directly from animals to people, or indirectly in a laboratory accident. The genome of SARS-COV-2 contains a peculiar pattern of unique restriction endonuclease recognition sites allowing efficient dis- and re-assembly of the viral genome characteristic of synthetic viruses. Here, we report the likelihood of observing such a pattern in coronaviruses with no history of bioengineering. We find that SARS-CoV-2 is an anomaly, more likely a product of synthetic genome assembly than natural evolution.

The restriction map of SARS-CoV-2 is consistent with many previously reported synthetic coronavirus genomes, meets all the criteria required for an efficient reverse genetic system, differs from closest relatives by a significantly higher rate of synonymous mutations in these synthetic-looking recognitions sites, and has a synthetic fingerprint unlikely to have evolved from its close relatives. We report a high likelihood that SARS-CoV-2 may have originated as an infectious clone assembled in vitro.”