I've been doing a little checking up on the research being done on bat viruses. I ran across this technical paper written in 2015.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985
I wanted to summarize this paper to show what kind of bat virus "gain of function" (making the virus worse) scientific research has been going on in the past.
You can see from the authors that this was a joint effort by scientist from,
Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens and Biosafety, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China
Department of Epidemiology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA
Institute for Research in Biomedicine, Bellinzona Institute of Microbiology, Zurich, Switzerland
and some other locations that you can find in the link.
NOW, this kind of "gain of function" research was stopped in the USA in Oct. 2014. due to possible human pandemic concerns. It resumed in Dec. 2017. So "gain of function" research is on going and is being funded.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(18)30006-9/fulltext
From the paper abstract,
"Here we examine the disease potential of a SARS-like virus, SHC014-CoV, which is currently circulating in Chinese horseshoe bat populations[1]. Using the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system[2], we generated and characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone."
chimeric = new hybrid microorganism created by joining nucleic acid fragments from two or more different microorganisms in which each of at least two of the fragments contain essential genes necessary for replication
SHC014-CoV = Natural bat virus
SHC0-CoV-MA15 = A man made "engineered" chimeric virus designed to infect from bat to mice
spike = the bad protein that allows the virus to enter and kill cells
So, these guys were engineering new viruses to cross species from bats to mice to humans. They used the natural bat virus as a starting point.
Results from the abstract
"The results indicate that group 2b viruses encoding the SHC014 spike in a wild-type backbone can efficiently use multiple orthologs of the SARS receptor human angiotensin converting enzyme II (ACE2), replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells and achieve in vitro titers equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV."
orthologs = genes in different species evolved from a common ancestral gene
angiotensin (ACE2) = the human lung cells receptor
vitro = outside the living body and in an artificial environment. In petri dish.
In human language, viruses (man made or natural) that have the bad spike protein from the natural bat virus can efficiently infect human lung tissue equivalent to the epidemic strains of SARS-CoV from 2003.
"Additionally, in vivo experiments demonstrate replication of the chimeric virus in mouse lung with notable pathogenesis. Evaluation of available SARS-based immune-therapeutic and prophylactic modalities revealed poor efficacy; both monoclonal antibody and vaccine approaches failed to neutralize and protect from infection with CoVs using the novel spike protein."
They killed a bunch of mice with their engineered virus. Existing drugs did nothing to help the mice with the new bat virus spike protein.
"On the basis of these findings, we synthetically re-derived an infectious full-length SHC014 recombinant virus and demonstrate robust viral replication both in vitro and in vivo. Our work suggests a potential risk of SARS-CoV re-emergence from viruses currently circulating in bat populations."
They made a deadly virus, killed some mice with it, it grew and it infected human lung tissue in a perti dish. They proved it can jump to humans and existing drugs can do nothing to stop it.
I'm hoping people can forward this information to let people know this kind of research is going on.
There is a reason "gain of function" research should be closely monitored and transparent. Maybe we should just leave nature alone. Do we really need to be creating more deadly viruses?
"Our work suggests a potential risk of SARS-CoV re-emergence from viruses currently circulating in bat populations."
and possibly released from a lab where these viruses are studied.
