by Damjan Tutarkov
LaCorte News
A top infectious disease researcher and genomicist warned Dr. Anthony Fauci that SARS-CoV-2 the coronavirus pathogen responsible for the global pandemic may have been partially “engineered.”
Kristian G. Andersen, a professor at the Scripps Research Institute’s Department of Integrative Structural and Computational Biology, wrote to Fauci on Jan. 31 that while only a “really small part,” some “features” of the virus’ genetic structure “(potentially) look engineered.”
“Hi Tony,” Andersen wrote in an email to Fauci, “Thanks for sharing. Yes, I saw this earlier today and both Eddie and myself are actually quoted in it. It’s a great article, but the problem is that our phylogenetic analyses aren’t able to answer whether the sequences are unusual at individual residues, except if they are completely off.”
“On a phylogenetic tree the virus looks totally normal and the close clustering with bats suggest that bats serve as the reservoir,” the email read. “The unusual features of the virus make up a really small part of the genome (<0.1%) so one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered.” Continue Reading at LaCorteNews.com…