Baric Transcribed Interview (Redacted) — page 79

DC.Scheduling@LexitasLegal.com sequenced, and they had no other sequences of related viruses. There was a rumor that a pangolin virus existed with 100 percent identity, or close to 100 percent identity to SARS-2. That turned out not to be true, as the pangolin, called the pangolin GD strain, which was about 90 percent identical, I believe, is the virus they were talking about. It has a receptor binding domain that is almost identical, nearly identical to SARS-2, but it does have a couple point mutations in it. And the reason that's important is that that meant that there were natural isolates in nature that had that sequence, which means it's not engineered. MS. SALAZAR: Okay. DR. BARIC: It was later then found that the BANAL strains on the Cambodian-Thailand-Chinese border -- MS. SALAZAR: This is -- DR. BARIC: BANAL-52 and BANAL-1-something or another, also had receptor binding domains that were virtually identical to SARS-2. So there's two bad viruses and pangolin virus within the clade, within that branch of SARS-2 that had identical receptor binding domains, which means that it's not engineered. MS. SALAZAR: Would your opinion change if you knew that they WIV was conducting work on pangolin viruses around 2019, 2018?