As COVID-19 has been walking throughout the planet to cause lockdowns, pneumonia, and fear, scientists struggle with the source of SARS-CoV-2.
While all the answers – if it originated from an animal reservoir – are not yet available, a new study has certainly revived the conspiracies that suggest it is a laboratory-made disease.
The research provides some fascinating possibilities with respect to the origins of the latest coronavirus. One example suggests that the virus could have gone harmlessly through humans for a long time before it became the pandemic that has stopped the world.
The study claimed that “it is conceivable that an SRAS-CoV-2 progenitor jumped into humanity and acquired through adaptation in the process of undetected human-to-human transmission.”
The researchers analyzed genome data available from SARS-CoV-2. Other related coronaviruses, showing that the receptor-binding domain (RBD) parts of SARS-CoV-2 Spike proteins. They were so efficient when interacting with human cells that they had to be triggered by natural selection. “By obtaining such additive effects, the disease will take off and produce a fairly wide number of cases”.
“Two characteristics of the virus, the RBD-portion mutations of the spike protein and its distinct backbone, preclude laboratory handling of SARS-CoV-2 as a possible source.” The team has tested two plausible theories by disrupting ‘laboratory experiment gone wrong.’ Next, natural selection took place before the virus was passed on to humans in an animal host. The team explains that while studies of coronaviruses have shown similar genomes in bats and pangolins, none of them still match perfectly.
While there has been no discovery of animal coronaviruses which are sufficiently close to SARS-CoV- 2’s direct progenitor, the widespread coronaviruses in bats and other animals are significantly undersampled, “researchers claim.” The second possibility is that natural selection is occurring in humans-after the transfer of the virus from the animal host.