Thread by @franciscodeasis

[Thread] Pangolin CoV... or Bat CoV in pangolins samples?
TLDR: A researcher of the team that sequenced the pangolins samples had taken samples in the mine of RaTG13 and in the place where RmYN02 was collected, also catched bats in Yunnan. Probably contaminated pangolin samples

@Daoyu15 was the first to note that the raw sequence reads of the pangolins “contained unexpected reads and was in serious risk of contamination” in early June 2020. But now we can explain how it was possible to happen this in Guangdong
zenodo.org/record/4450267…

Jin-Ping Chen, the corresponding author of the first paper of the pangolins, and LiBiao Zhang, who has been sampling the mine of RaTG13 and the place in Mengla where RmYN02 was collected, are close colleagues in GIABR & GIZ
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
giz.gd.cn/yjdw_/yjy/

LiBiao Zhang was probably in the mine on 27-Jul-12 with HKU team (he is co-author in Lau et al. (2017)) and a week later on 06-Aug-12 with WIV in their 1st visit. Surprisingly, he is co-author in the AdV isolates paper, but not credited in Ge et al. (2016)

https://twitter.com/franciscodeasis/status/1332355181338615811

LiBiao Zhang was also sampling in the same location as Holmes. GPS coordinates are 4 km apart, although it seems that Holmes’ team obfuscated a bit the location. He may even have sampled a close relative bat unnoticing that was infected with similar virus

https://twitter.com/franciscodeasis/status/1357866936592437253

Also, Libiao Zhang was in Yunnan in July 2019 catching bats with students. So, we have not only two possible sources of lab contamination, but also we cannot rule out a lab zoonosis if any bats were sent to GIABR/GIZ and kept in the same room as pangolins
wemp.app/posts/41b8ab05…

Thanks @BillyBostickson for the link

Another possibility is that one of these students (Libiao Zhang is probably already well immunized) served as a human intermediate host for the pangolins. Not being able to infect h2h but h2p? I think it is less likely but cannot rule out either

https://twitter.com/TheSeeker268/status/1262383068142358529

Also pointed by @TheSeeker: "the binding affinity of the pangolin ACE2 receptor for SARS-CoV-2 RBD was later on reported to be low" sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

There is a fifth possible source of the contamination, but from a Bayesian point of view it should be less likely. We will explain it in an special thread on lab contamination soon