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An Subject: Matters Arising regarding your Nature paper Dear Zhengli, I hope you're well. I'm afraid we've been contacted by a scientist who has submitted a Matters Arising to the journal, regarding your 2020 Nature paper. I've attached the MA here. One of the points raised is something we already discussed, which is why there is a difference in sequence identity between SARS-CoV and RaTG13 and SARS-CoV and the virus labelled Ra4991-Yunnan in the thesis which appeared online. You already responded to a journalist's query about this, and told us that the difference was due to different bioinformatics approaches. The other concerns seem to be points that have not been raised with us before. The author notes that the original Nature paper did not contain any information about how the RaTG13 genome was assembled and has some concerns regarding the timeline of the sequencing and assembly as well as missing methods (e.g. primer sequences). The addendum touched on the timing of the sequencing, but not the methods, and the author has some concerns regarding the timeline and asks for further details to clarify how the full RaTG13 sequence was obtained. Would you please be able to send us a response to these new concerns so that we can discuss how to proceed? If you could return a response within one week that would be greatly appreciated. With best wishes, Clare Clare Thomas Senior Editor Nature