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7 Nov, 61 tweets, 24 min read
1. #MERS thread to collate random tweets since 2020

2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7. ???
8. Drosten MERS
9. Bernd Kaina MERS Insert hypothesis

10. Good analogy
11. @daoyu15 MERS contamination @WIV

12. China's MERS Response via @coroldo1

13. Professional jealousies?

"The first scientist to question the discovery was Vincent Racaniello, He said the fragment might have come from a mixed virus with pieces of the MERS virus in it, or even from something the bat ate."

14. Mouse-adapted MERS coronavirus causes lethal lung disease in human DPP4 knockin mice

15. George Gao and MERS

16. Bats and hCOVs

17. For MERS-CoV infection, HIV-pseudovirus was used during a WIV experiment on fatal swine acute diarrhoea syndrome caused by HKU2-related bat cov

18. Codon-humanized S genes of SADS-CoV or MERS-CoV cloned into pcDNA3.1 were used for pseudovirus construction

19. MERS-CoV HIV Pseudovirus

20. MERS-HIV-WIV16

21. Contamination of Cell Lines?

22. Did novel recombinant SARS-like viruses emerge?

23.
2015 Middle East respiratory syndrome outbreak Korea
kjim.org/journal/view.p…
24. WHO MERS

who.int/health-topics/…
25. George Gao and an RBD-based MERS vaccine. MERS-CoV RBD (E367-Y606)

26. Spike protein features of SARS, MERS & other viruses (George Gao)

27. Long 31 tweet thread on FCS and MERS Research
(George Gao)

28. Gao's Conclusion



and

29. @TheSeeker268 discovered a thesis

Structural and functional insights into MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV spike glycoproteins and their interaction with receptors (2017)

30. Sino-US collaboration

"Receptor usage & cell entry of bat coronavirus HKU4 provide insight into bat-to-human transmission of MERS coronavirus"

Ralph Baric, Fang Li, Shibo Jiang, Lanying Du

New York Blood Centre + Fudan University + UNC

31.Comparison of Structural Proteins

SARS1, MERS, SARS-COV2

32. Bill Gallaher - Prophet of Doom

(proposed SARS-COV-2 and MERS recombination inside a Middle East Patient)

33. IFN sensitivity via @AntGDuarte

Despite using different receptors, MERS & SARS-CoV-2 both undergo S-cleavage for cell entry.

34. MERS Cleavage via @AntGDuarte

35. The horrible coincidence" via @scanpemovia

36. Interesting graphic via @ico_dna

37. Discussion of humanised mice research at WIV involving SARS, MERS, etc, via @KhaledATalaat

1.

2.

3.
38. WIV scrubs a MERS Vaccine Paper



Try finding it here:

39. Mutation speed counter argument

SARS & MERS in vitro experiments showed significant mutations after only a few passages.

After 600 passages there already was 2% difference in genomic sequences of spike proteins between original strain & progeny.

40. Institut Pasteur in 2017 via @bouche_bee

- transfer from korea #MERS virus not declared
(scientist brought tubes with him)

Virus trafficking: the Institut Pasteur targeted by an investigation

liberation.fr/france/2017/03…
and
leparisien.fr/faits-divers/c…

41. Kawaoka & MERS
I learned of Kawaoka's reckless violations from Robert Finnegan, former editor of Jakarta Post, who was tracking theft of MERS & other viruses from NAMRU-2 by a senior lab technician who smuggled the dangerous materials to Wisconsin Uni
42.NAMRU 2 Indonesia

(where Kawaoka organised theft of viruses, including MERS)

43. Kawaoka Email Dumps (not MERS related)

1. Kobe University (1) - Yoshihiro Kawaoka PhD student confesses to creating H1N1-H5N1 "novel" viruses

justpaste.it/48z0r

2. More Smoking Gun Emails From Kobe University Virologist Teridah Ernala Ginting

justpaste.it/4w1m6
44. @Daoyu15 MERS (May 2020)

45. Chinese MERS experiments via @TheSeeker268



Paper:

The characteristics of hDPP4 transgenic mice subjected to aerosol MERS coronavirus infection via an animal nose‐only exposure device (2019)

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/artic…
46. Results and Conclusion from above paper
47. @daoyu15 May 2020

Passaged Furin sites in coronaviruses are mutated furin sites. Like MERS. Not this kind of inserted furin site.

48 @daoyu15 DPP4 Receptor

Lineage C coronaviruses like HKU5 MERS and HKU4 uses the DPP4 receptor. the furin site of HKU5 is ancestral (not "acquired") and MERS obtained it via 2 snp changing a HKU4 serine into an arginine.

49. MERS 2013

50. Creative BioMart

51. @Ayjchan (May 10th 2020)


2 papers:
Furin cleavage site in the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus glycoprotein (racaniello @profvrr )
virology.ws/2020/02/13/fur…
Host cell entry of MERS after 2 step, furin-mediated activation of spike protein
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/artic…
52. Furin Cleavage, MERS & George Gao (May 2020)

53. The Dutch Connections

1. Wentao Li studied with such experts in furin cleavage of spike proteins as Wicht, Rottier & Bosch


2. Bosch is an expert in MERS, SARS, spike proteins & worked with Wentao Li on this paper

54. Baric, Denison & Menachery (Tweets 37 to 40)

MERS and BtCoV HKU5

55. Genetic Study on Bats at Lugar Center, Georgia

Exposed by @dgaytandzhieva

Project G-2101: Pentagon biolab discovered MERS and SARS-like coronaviruses in bats

dilyana.bg/project-g-2101…
56. Coronaviruses in Georgian bats

Anyone able to read Georgian?

Lela Urishadze, Zoonotic pathogens and their molecular epidemiological characteristics in Georgian bats, Dissertation, Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia, 2018)

eprints.iliauni.edu.ge/8640/1/%E1%83%…
57. Transport of Pathogens via Embassies & Consulates

58. Zheng LI Shi (2018) & proposed infectious clones

MERS

59. Two mutations were critical for bat-to-human transmission of MERS coronavirus (2015)

Feb 12th 2020

60. Finish with a Tweet on February 7th 2020

No Likes from the Virologists ;)

How much recombination occurs between diverse clade Coronaviruses?

61. This thread was trip back in time from November 2021 to February 2020, looking at MERS related information (on my timeline anyway).

unroll MERS related tweets @threadreaderapp

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More from @BillyBostickson

Billy Bostickson 🏴👁&👁 🆓 Profile picture
7 Nov
1. From @humblesci MERS contamination summary:

"While reverse genetics system used by WIV for the NIH funded EHA project utilized a MERS-CoV backbone & swapped in HKU4r-CoV components

WIV seems to have been simultaneously using a HKU4r-CoV backbone for independent research"
2. WIV Spike Gene Swaps?

"Potentially the WIV may have been attempting to swap in the MERS-CoV spike gene using targeted RNA recombination (Masters and Rottier, 2005) or perhaps experimenting with a pseudotyped MERS-CoV spike vector"
3. That is a significant claim

"the WIV appears to have been simultaneously using a HKU4r-CoV backbone for independent research"

So while doing EHA NIH funded work, at the same time they were "experimenting" with the reverse!
Read 7 tweets
Billy Bostickson 🏴👁&👁 🆓 Profile picture
6 Nov
1. Document Trail (EHA)

From the Intercept's FOIA release:

Understanding-Risk-Bat-Coronavirus-Emergence-Grant-Notice

documentcloud.org/documents/2105…
2. Page 526

"Viral isolates will remain at the Wuhan Institute of Virology initially. Isolates, reagents and any other
products, will be made available to other NIH-funded researchers via applicable WIV and EHA Material Transfer Agreements and/or icensing agreements"
3. Cells (Page 203)

• Records are maintained for each of the cell lines regarding
1. the origin of the cell lines
2. when they were resuscitated
3. number of passages
4. all test results
5. any unique distinguishing growth behavior
6. any known genetic features.
Read 12 tweets
Billy Bostickson 🏴👁&👁 🆓 Profile picture
6 Nov
1. Biosafety Experts agree:

Reporting all biosafety errors could improve labs worldwide and increase public trust in biological research

phys.org/news/2021-10-b… via @physorg_com
2. we believe a more transparent and comprehensive system of reporting biological incidents to a neutral third party would help reduce the number of laboratory incidents
3. it could be broadened to include all kinds of incident data. In our opinion, an international version of such a reporting system would also help reduce the number and severity of laboratory incidents, both locally and worldwide
Read 4 tweets
Billy Bostickson 🏴👁&👁 🆓 Profile picture
4 Nov
1. Another #DARPA character - Jean Paul Chretien

Biological Technologies Office (BTO) Program Manager

He joined DARPA as a program manager in 2020.

His interests include disease and injury prevention, operational medicine & biothreat countermeasures.

darpa.mil/staff/cdr-jean… ImageImageImage
2. LinkedIn Profile - Jean Paul Chretien

"JP Chretien is a Navy doctor & Program Manager at the DARPA, in the Biological Technologies Office. Previously, JP led the Pandemic Warning mission in the Department of Defense"

linkedin.com/in/jpchretien/
2. LinkedIn Profile Screenshots ImageImageImageImage
Read 16 tweets
Billy Bostickson 🏴👁&👁 🆓 Profile picture
4 Nov
1. Introducing Darkcides

The database contains information for geographical distribution, ecological status, species traits, and parasites and hyperparasites for 679 bat species known to occur in caves or use caves in their life histories.

darkcides.org
2. DarkCideS 1.0, a global database for bats in karsts and caves

The database contains 6746 georeferenced occurrences for 402 cave-dwelling bat species from 2002 cave sites in 46 countries and 12 terrestrial biomes.

authorea.com/doi/full/10.22…
3. Authors include @AliceCHughes
Read 5 tweets
Billy Bostickson 🏴👁&👁 🆓 Profile picture
3 Nov
Recent @WhiteCoatWaste FOIA release

Laos to WIV, 2018!

"LAOS PI or Co-Investigators to conduct field
trip to assess markets, identify wildlife in them & arrange for shipment of bats and other high-risk host species to WIV Laboratory in China"

scribd.com/document/53702…
All Roads & Bats lead to the Wuhan institute of Death
If PD won't tell us, then these people need to be asked some questions about exactly aht samples they sent to WIV.
Read 17 tweets

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