Via the South China Morning Post: Coronavirus: Chinese virologist Shi Zhengli publishes new paper on pathogen’s evolution.
Shi Zhengli, the Chinese virologist whose work has been the subject of controversial theories about the origin of the novel coronavirus, has published new research into Sars-related pathogens and their animal hosts.
The head of the centre for emerging infectious diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Shi said in a paper published on the preprint website Biorxiv.org on Thursday that the Chinese horseshoe bat was the natural host for Sars-related coronaviruses (SARSr-CoVs).
The research, which has not been peer-reviewed, said that the bat carried many coronaviruses with a high degree of genetic diversity, particularly in the spike protein, which suggested they had evolved over time to aid their transmission.
“All tested bat SARSr-CoV spike proteins had a higher binding affinity to human ACE2 than to bat ACE2, although they showed a 10-fold lower binding affinity to human ACE2 compared with their SARS-CoV counterpart,” the paper said.
The ACE2, or angiotensin-converting enzyme 2, is a protein that provides the entry point for the coronavirus to hook onto and infect human cells, while the spike protein is the part of the virus that binds to human cells.
Earlier laboratory research established a strong genetic link between the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 and one found in a horseshoe bat in southeastern China.
Shi has been the subject of intense speculation over her work at the institute, which includes the discovery of the natural bat reservoir for the Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome) pathogen that spread through southern China from 2002 to 2003.
US President Donald Trump last month said he had a high degree of confidence that the novel coronavirus was linked to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, even after US intelligence said that while it was “not man-made or genetically modified”, it was still examining information to determine if the outbreak began from infected animals or a lab accident.
Shi had weeks earlier denied the pathogen had somehow leaked from her lab.
“I guarantee with my life that the virus has nothing to do with my lab,” she said in a WeChat post in February.
She took to social media again this month to dismiss rumours that she had defected from China with her family and taken hundreds of confidential documents with her.
“No matter how difficult things are, there will not be a ‘defector’ situation as the rumours have said,” she wrote on WeChat.
On March 9, she took part in an online discussion about the novel coronavirus.
“I predicted in 2018 that the chances of cross-species infection of the bat Sars-related coronavirus were quite high,” she said.
“But I didn’t expect it to happen so soon … in the city where I live.”
