Thread by @humblesci

Researchers at the WIV have been intensely researching SARSr-CoVs since 2005, gradually doing more advanced synthetic maipulation
2008- S protein contructs-swapped RBD of a bat SL-CoV with human SARS journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/jv…

2008 - using a full length infectious clone, replaced S, generated multiple recombinats ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

2010 - site directed mutagenesis of bat ACE2 pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20567988/

2010 -"we demonstrate that a 3 aa change from SHE (aa 40-42) to FYQ was sufficient to convert the bat ACE2 into a fully functional receptor for SARS-CoV" pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20335495/

2015 - generated “SHC014-MA15” chimera using the SHC014 spike and a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV back-bone. nature.com/articles/nm.39…

Note in acknowledgements "Experiments with the full-length and chimeric SHC014 recombinant viruses were initiated and performed before the GOF research funding pause and have since been reviewed and approved for continued study by the NIH."

Given the funding pause, presumably these experiments were continued at the WIV

2015 - introduced mutations in HKU4 spike "the reengineered hPPC and hECP motifs enabled HKU4 spike to be activated by human endogenous proteases" ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

"HKU4 spike needs only two single mutations at the S1/S2 boundary to gain the full capacity to mediate viral entry into human cells" NB "This work was supported by NIH grants..."

2016 - " In this study, we constructed a full-length cDNA clone of SL-CoV WIV1 (rWIV1), an ORFX deletion mutant (rWIV1-ΔX), and a green fluorescent protein (GFP)-expressing mutant (rWIV1-GFP-ΔX)" pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27170748/

"All experiments using live virus was conducted under biosafety level 2 (BSL2) conditions."🙈

2016 publication documenting a two year surveillance of bat CoVs from the Mojian mine pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26920708/

The mine was of intense interst given that six miners had previously contracted a "severve pneumonia caused by an unknown virus" independentsciencenews.org/commentaries/a…

frontiersin.org/articles/10.33…

2017 - more interest in Kunming cave extensive sampling over 5 years: chimeric CoV contruction using WIV1 backbone and variants of S genes from 8 different bat SARSr-CoVs pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29190287/

2017 - MERS-CoV infectious clone and chimera construction theintercept.com/2021/09/09/cov…

2018 - SARSr-CoV chimera in vivo experiments " only 2 of 8 mice infected with rWIV1-SHC014 S survived (25%). " theintercept.com/2021/09/06/new…

2018 - MERS-CoV full length infectious clone, replaced RBD with that from various HKU4r-CoV strain
documentcloud.org/documents/2108…

2018 - DEFUSE propsal "we will introduce appropriate human-specific cleavage sites and evaluate growth potential in Vero cells and HAE cultures." theintercept.com/2021/09/23/cor…

Note the budget for the proposal was dominantly for the WIV drasticresearch.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/wiv-bu…

2019 - SARSr-CoV chimeric constructs, in vitro and in vivo infectivity experiments

By sheer coincidence a SARSr-CoV just happens to appear Wuhan -which date of emergence estimated at Mid Sept-Early October 2019 ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

independentsciencenews.org/commentaries/w…

Yet we are now led to believe: the miners thesis was nonsense, the miners had a fungus nature.com/articles/s4158…

Other than published through 2017 no other SARSr-CoVs had been isolated or infectious clones constructed by WIV researchers, notwithstanding extensive (mostly unpublished post 2016) sampling and interest in doing do

All betacoronavirus research and all sequences have been published

Inserting a 12nt sequence at the S1/S2 junction into a SARSr-CoV is beyond the capability of Zhengli Shi

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