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There was an hour discussion, and certainly in part of that discussion is going to be discussion about whether or not it could be engineered. And the answer is, from a technical point of view, yes, it could be engineered. There are some key things that you have to have. The first and most important is a full20 length molecular clone of that virus.
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Both ends?
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What?
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Is it --
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2026-04-10 09:00
Ralph S. Baric
You have to have a full-length molecular clone of SARS coronavirus. If you have that and it doesn't DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com have a furin cleavage site, you could drop in a cleavage site, using that clone. So technically, it could be engineered, and it should be discussed.
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Do you have any reason to believe that they don't have that capability?
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There is no evidence that they had a molecular clone of that virus. They only had one molecular clone. They weren't very good at reverse genetics. And the molecular clone they had WIV1. And WIV1, they would take spike genes of other sarbecos and drop it into that clone because they had a difficult time making more clones. The problem with coronavirus is part of the genome sequence is really toxic in bacteria, so you have to come up with ways around that. And so best example of this is a virus emerged in southern China called SADS coronavirus, 2016 or so. It caused 100 percent or 99 percent mortality in piglets. It's related to a virus called HKU2. They were trying to make a molecular clone for that virus for three or four years. We started around 2019, made a clone, published it before them.
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And why were they trying to do that?
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I mean, they had a virus that caused 99 percent mortality in piglets that could destroy their swine industry, so obviously it was important for them to develop DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com the reagents that they could use to develop countermeasures and vaccinate swine. The other issue, just to go on on that, you know, it's hard to imagine a better reservoir species for emerging virus than a swine. And the swine population, they have billions of swine in China, so you have this massive reservoir. And you have a virus that drops into those, and that virus can use, although not very well, it can use the human receptor for entry.