Researchers have Discovered a Piece of DNA in the SARS-CoV-2 Virus that Matches the Genetic Sequence Patented by Moderna Three Years Before the Pandemic Began: Smoking Gun Evidence! By Brian Simpson
There has been support given to the Covid lab leak hypothesis by research indicating that a segment of DNA in the virus that matches the genetic sequence patented by Moderna three years before the pandemic began. That could be taken as smoking gun evidence of a lab construction, as the odds of this sequence occurring naturally are about one in 3 trillion. Critics have said that these sorts of interesting sequences arise all the time, but I for one, do not believed them. Today, in a post-truth world, scientists are assumed guilty until proved innocent.
https://www.wnd.com/2022/02/virus-dna-matches-code-patented-moderna-3-years-pandemic/
“Fueling suspicion that SARS-CoV-2 originated in a lab in China, researchers have discovered a tiny piece of DNA in the virus that matches the genetic sequence patented by Moderna three years before the pandemic began.
The odds of Moderna's sequence occurring naturally are about one in 3 trillion, according to the researchers.
The code was discovered in SARS-CoV-2's unique furin cleavage site, the part of the virus that binds to human cells, allowing it to cause infection, London's MailOnline reported.
Many scientists have been saying for some time that the furin cleavage structure could not have developed naturally.
In the new study, published in Frontiers in Virology, the researchers compared the 30,000 letters of genetic code carrying the information needed to spread SARS-CoV-2 with millions of sequenced proteins in an online database.
Earlier this month, The Telegraph of London reported Hungarian researchers discovered an early version of SARS-CoV-2 that appears to have been grown in a laboratory.
The lab-leak theory gained traction in May 2021 when former New York Times science writer Nicholas Wade published a nearly 11,000-word analysis concluding the circumstantial evidence clearly points to a lab leak. The Wall Street Journal later reported three researchers at the Wuhan lab were hospitalized with possible COVID symptoms in November 2019, when the outbreak in the city of 11 million began.
Patented sequence
MailOnline reported the researchers conducting the latest study, led by Dr. Balamurali Ambati of the University of Oregon, found SARS-CoV-2 shares a sequence of 19 specific letters with a genetic section owned by Moderna
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The pharmaceutical giant filed the patent for the sequencing in February 2016 as part of its cancer research division, according to records.
SARS-CoV-2 is the only coronavirus of its type to carry 12 unique letters that enable the spike protein to spread easily between human cells.
The British news site quoted Professor Lawrence Young, a virologist at Warwick University, contending the find was not significant enough to suggest lab manipulation.
"We're talking about a very, very, very small piece made up of 19 nucleotides," he said. "So it doesn't mean very much to be frank, if you do these types of searches you can always find matches."
He said it's a "quirky observation, but I wouldn't call it a smoking gun because it's too small."
From 'conspiracy' to plausible
Earlier this month, independent investigative journalists Matt Taibbi and Matt Orfalea produced a nine-minute video that documents the shift in the establishment narrative from ridiculing anyone who posed the lab-leak theory to accepting it as plausible.
Facebook famously teamed up with Dr. Anthony Fauci to censor the lab-leak theory, including a report by WND. It's now known that Fauci was told early in 2020 by a trusted scientist that the novel coronavirus likely came from a lab and was genetically modified.
Last month, the former New York Times science writer, Wade, spotlighted a Jan. 31, 2020, email Fauci received from four top virologists that shows there was strong evidence the virus was engineered in a lab. But after a teleconference the next day with Fauci to discuss the virologists' conclusion, the lead virologist began dismissing the lab-leak possibility as among "crackpot theories" that "relate to this virus being somehow engineered with intent and that is demonstrably not the case."
The virologists then published a March 17, 2020, article in the journal Nature Medicine that stated, "Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus."
It mirrored an earlier article published in February 2020 in the British medical journal The Lancet written by zoologist Peter Daszak, known for his work with the "bat lady" Zhi Shengli on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The articles persuaded mainstream media not to investigate lab-leak theories and "froze into silence any dissenting voices from the scientific community."
“From conspiracy to truth! Fresh suspicion that Covid may have been tinkered with in a lab emerged today after scientists found genetic material owned by Moderna in the virus’s spike protein.
They identified a tiny snippet of code that is identical to part of a gene patented by the vaccine maker three years before the pandemic.
It was discovered in SARS-CoV-2’s unique furin cleavage site, the part that makes it so good at infecting people and separates it from other coronaviruses.
The structure has been one of the focal points of debate about the virus’s origin, with some scientists claiming it could not have been acquired naturally.
The international team of researchers suggest the virus may have mutated to have a furin cleavage site during experiments on human cells in a lab.
They claim there is a one-in-three-trillion chance Moderna’s sequence randomly appeared through natural evolution.
But there is some debate about whether the match is as rare as the study claims, with other experts describing it as a ‘quirky’ coincidence rather than a ‘smoking gun’.
SARS-CoV-2, which causes Covid, carries all the information needed for it to spread in around 30,000 letters of genetic code, known as RNA. The virus shares a sequence of 19 specific letters with a genetic section owned by Moderna. Twelve of the shared letters make up the structure of Covid’s furin cleavage site, with the rest being a match with nucleotides on a nearby part of the genome.
Moderna filed the patent in February 2016 as part of its cancer research division, records show. The patented sequence is part of a gene called MSH3 that is known to affect how damaged cells repair themselves in the body. It was approved on March 7 the following year.
In the latest study, researchers compared Covid’s makeup to millions of sequenced proteins on an online database.
The virus is made up of 30,000 letters of genetic code that carry the information it needs to spread, known as nucleotides.
It is the only coronavirus of its type to carry 12 unique letters that allow its spike protein to be activated by a common enzyme called furin, allowing it to spread between human cells with ease.
Analysis of the original Covid genome found the virus shares a sequence of 19 specific letters with a genetic section owned by Moderna, which has a total of 3,300 nucleotides.
The US-based pharmaceutical firm filed the patent in February 2016 as part of its cancer research division, records show.
The patented sequence is part of a gene called MSH3 that is known to affect how damaged cells repair themselves in the body.
Scientists have highlighted this pathway as a potential target for new cancer treatments.
Twelve of the shared letters make up the structure of Covid’s furin cleavage site, with the rest being a match with nucleotides on a nearby part of the genome.
Writing in the paper, led by Dr Balamurali Ambati, from the University of Oregon, the researchers said the matching code may have originally been introduced to the Covid genome through infected human cells expressing the MSH3 gene.
Professor Lawrence Young, a virologist at Warwick University, admitted the latest finding was interesting but claimed it was not significant enough to suggest lab manipulation.
He told MailOnline:
‘We’re talking about a very, very, very small piece made up of 19 nucleotides.
‘So it doesn’t mean very much to be frank, if you do these types of searches you can always find matches.
‘Sometimes these things happen fortuitously, sometimes it’s the result of convergent evolution (when organisms evolve independently to have similar traits to adapt to their environment).
‘It’s a quirky observation but I wouldn’t call it a smoking gun because it’s too small.
He added:
‘It doesn’t get us any further with the debate about whether Covid was engineered.’
Dr Simon Clarke, a microbiologist at Reading University, questioned whether the find was as rare as the study claims.
He told MailOnline:
‘There can only be a certain number of [genetic combinations within] furin cleavage sites.
‘They function like a lock and key in the cell, and the two only fit together in a limited number of combinations.
‘So it’s an interesting coincidence but this is surely entirely coincidental.’
MailOnline has approached Moderna for comment.
Circumstantial evidence has long raised questions about the origin of Covid and its link to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The facility was known to be conducting experiments on bat coronavirus strains similar to the one responsible for the pandemic.
China insisted early and often that the virus did not leak from the lab, claiming that crossover to humans must have occurred at a ‘wet market’ in Wuhan that sold live animals.
Perhaps driven by animosity for then-US President Donald Trump, who embraced the lab leak theory early on, mainstream media and academics in the West heaped scorn on the possibility, calling it an unhinged conspiracy theory.
But leaked emails showed that top scientists advising the UK and US Governments expressed concerns about the official narrative privately.
A study earlier this month found traces of Covid samples that contained genetical material from humans, hamsters and monkeys and may have predated the official pandemic timeline.
Sir Jeremy Farrar, an eminent British expert who publicly denounced the theory as a ‘conspiracy’, admitted in a private email in February 2020 that a ‘likely explanation’ was that the virus was man-made.
The then-UK Government adviser said at the time he was ’70:30 or 60:40′ in favour of an accidental release versus natural origin.
In the email, sent to American health chiefs Dr Anthony Fauci and Dr Francis Collins, Sir Jeremy said it was possible Covid had been evolved from a Sars-like virus in the lab.
He went on that this seemingly benign process may have ‘accidentally created a virus primed for rapid transmission between humans’.
But the British scientist was shut down by his counterparts in the US who warned further debate about the origins of the virus could damage ‘international harmony’. [DM]
It seems that another conspiracy theory is actually truth…”
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fviro.2022.834808/full
“PERSPECTIVE article
Front.Virol., 21 February 2022 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fviro.2022.834808
MSH3 Homology and Potential Recombination Link to SARS-CoV-2 Furin Cleavage Site
Balamurali K. Ambati1, Akhil Varshney2, Kenneth Lundstrom3*, Giorgio Palú4, Bruce D. Uhal5, Vladimir N. Uversky6 and Adam M. Brufsky7
Among numerous point mutation differences between the SARS-CoV-2 and the bat RaTG13 coronavirus, only the 12-nucleotide furin cleavage site (FCS) exceeds 3 nucleotides. A BLAST search revealed that a 19 nucleotide portion of the SARS.Cov2 genome encompassing the furing cleavage site is a 100% complementary match to a codon-optimized proprietary sequence that is the reverse complement of the human mutS homolog (MSH3). The reverse complement sequence present in SARS-CoV-2 may occur randomly but other possibilities must be considered. Recombination in an intermediate host is an unlikely explanation. Single stranded RNA viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 utilize negative strand RNA templates in infected cells, which might lead through copy choice recombination with a negative sense SARS-CoV-2 RNA to the integration of the MSH3 negative strand, including the FCS, into the viral genome. In any case, the presence of the 19-nucleotide long RNA sequence including the FCS with 100% identity to the reverse complement of the MSH3 mRNA is highly unusual and requires further investigations.”
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