Lifeboat Foundation

“The furin cleavage site consists of four amino acids PRRA, which are encoded by 12 inserted nucleotides in the S gene. A characteristic feature of this site is an arginine doublet. This insertion could have occurred by random insertion mutation, recombination or by laboratory insertion. The researchers say the possibility of random insertion is too low to explain the origin of this motif. Surprisingly, the CGGCGG codons encoding the two arginines of the doublet in SARS-CoV-2 are not found in any of the furin sites in other viral proteins expressed by a wide range of viruses. Even within the SARS-CoV-2, where arginine is encoded by six codons, only a minority of arginine residues are encoded by the CGG codon. Again, only two of the 42 arginines in the SARS-CoV-2 spike are encoded by this codon — and these are in the PRRA motif. For recombination to occur, there must be a donor, from another furin site and probably from another virus. In the absence of a known virus containing this arginine doublet encoded by the CGGCGG codons, the researchers discount the recombination theory as the mechanism underlying the emergence of PRRA in SARS-CoV-2.”

The ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has largely defied attempts to contain its spread by non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). With the massive loss of life and economic damage, the only way out, in the absence of specific antiviral therapeutics, has been the development of vaccines to achieve population immunity.

A new study on the Preprints server discusses the origin of the furin cleavage site on the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, which is responsible for the virus’s relatively high infectivity compared to relatives in the betacoronavirus subgenus.

Continue reading “The origin of SARS-CoV-2 furin cleavage site remains a mystery” »

Substantial transmission of SARS-CoV-2 infection occurred in the population of Wuhan in December 2019 with most cases reported in the second half of that month. Many early reported cases were associated with Huanan Market, indicating that it was one of the focus of the transmission. Nevertheless, transmission was also occurring elsewhere in Wuhan at the same time.

It is not possible on the basis of the current epidemiological information to determine how the SARS-CoV-2 was introduced into the Huanan Market. Substantial transmission of SARS-CoV-2 infection occurred among the population of Wuhan in December 2019.

While some of the early cases had an association with the Huanan Seafood Market, others were associated with other markets and other cases have no market association at all. It is likely that Huanan Seafood Market acted as a focus for transmission of the virus, but there are also transmissions appearing to have the occurrence elsewhere in Wuhan at the same time. This is our basic judgment. It is not possible on the basis of the current information to determine how SARS-CoV-2 was introduced into the Huanan Market.

The third part of my introduction will be the research of the animal environment group, the third group of our joint mission. Coronaviruses that phylogenetically relate to SARS-CoV-2 have been identified in different animals, including horseshoe bats and pangolins. Sampling of bats in Hubei Province, however, has failed to identify evidence of SARS-CoV-2-related viruses and sampling of wildlife in different places in China has so far failed to identify the presence of SARS-CoV-2.

Continue reading “COVID-19 Virtual Press conference transcript” »

April 2020…

Daszak says the China bat sampling project has already racked up quite a number of successes. The team and its collaborators at the Wuhan Institute of Virology have collected about 15000 samples from bats. From these they have already identified about 400 wholly new coronaviruses. About 50 of those fall into a category that caused the 2002 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, and, now, the COVID-19 pandemic.

The researchers were also able to demonstrate that at least some of the new bat coronaviruses they have found are capable of infecting a human cell in a petri dish. Then the team sampled the blood of people in China who live near various bat caves. They found evidence that for some time now, these bat coronaviruses have been spilling over into the human population.

Continue reading “Why The U.S. Government Stopped Funding A Research Project On Bats And Coronaviruses” »

Biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey, who’s Chief Science Officer of the SENS Research Foundation, is now predicting a 50% chance that people will begin retaining their youthful state via advanced science and technologies by the year 2036.

This is roughly around the same timeline that The Last Generation to Die is based on. Nailed it (hopefully)!

who’s Chief Science Officer of the SENS Research Foundation, is now predicting a 50% chance that people will begin retaining their youthful state via advanced science and technologies by the year 2036.

This is roughly around the same timeline that The Last Generation to Die is based on. Nailed it (hopefully)!

A UCLA-led research team has identified a chemical cocktail that enables the production of large numbers of muscle stem cells, which can self-renew and give rise to all types of skeletal muscle cells.

High-precision delivery of microrobots at the whole-body scale is of considerable importance for efforts toward targeted therapeutic intervention. However, vision-based control of microrobots, to deep and narrow spaces inside the body, remains a challenge. Here, we report a soft and resilient magnetic cell microrobot with high biocompatibility that can interface with the human body and adapt to the complex surroundings while navigating inside the body. We achieve time-efficient delivery of soft microrobots using an integrated platform called endoscopy-assisted magnetic actuation with dual imaging system (EMADIS).

Wiesendanger points out that unlike SARS and MERS, no intermediate host between bats and humans has been found more than a year since the start of the pandemic. Thus far, there is no evidence for the zoonotic theory to explain the outbreak.

Indeed, during the joint China-WHO report issued on Feb. 9, Liang Wannian, head of the Chinese National Health Commission’s Expert Panel of COVID-19 Response, stated that 50000 samples of wild animals from 300 different species (including bats) as well as 11000 farm animals in 31 Chinese provinces — taken between November 2019 and March 2020 — had all tested negative for SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19.

Continue reading “German scientist says 99.9% chance coronavirus leaked from Wuhan lab” »

Summary: A new technique which involves fusing human and chimpanzee skin cells that have been modified to act like stem cells, allowed researchers to identify two novel genetic differences between humans and chimps.

Source: Stanford University.

One of the best ways to study human evolution is by comparing us with nonhuman species that, evolutionarily speaking, are closely related to us. That closeness can help scientists narrow down precisely what makes us human, but that scope is so narrow it can also be extremely hard to define. To address this complication, researchers from Stanford University have developed a new technique for comparing genetic differences.