"Vincent, Dick, and Alan chat about reconstruction of a bat SARS-like coronavirus"
The paper they discuss is here on PNAS: "Synthetic recombinant bat SARS-like coronavirus is infectious in cultured cells and in mice"" Here, we report the design, synthesis, and recovery of the largest synthetic replicating life form, a 29.7-kb bat severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-like coronavirus (Bat-SCoV), a likely progenitor to the SARS-CoV epidemic. To test a possible route of emergence from the noncultivable Bat-SCoV to human SARS-CoV, we designed a consensus Bat-SCoV genome and replaced the Bat-SCoV Spike receptor-binding domain (RBD) with the SARS-CoV RBD (Bat-SRBD). Bat-SRBD was infectious in cell culture and in mice and was efficiently neutralized by antibodies specific for both bat and human CoV Spike proteins. Rational design, synthesis, and recovery of hypothetical recombinant viruses can be used to investigate mechanisms of transspecies movement of zoonoses and has great potential to aid in rapid public health responses to known or predicted emerging microbial threats."
November 26, 2008
Hmm... Weird. Also one of the authors is Ralph Baric - the author of such later papers as the "A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence"(published Oct 2015) co-authored with Dr. Zhengli-Li Shi.
- From their 2015 paper linked above:
"Author Contributions: V.D.M. designed, coordinated and performed experiments, completed analysis and wrote the manuscript. B.L.Y. designed the infectious clone and recovered chimeric viruses; S.A. completed neutralization assays; L.E.G. helped perform mouse experiments; T.S. and J.A.P. completed mouse experiments and plaque assays; X.-Y.G. performed pseudotyping experiments; K.D. generated structural figures and predictions; E.F.D. generated phylogenetic analysis; R.L.G. completed RNA analysis; S.H.R. provided primary HAE cultures; A.L. and W.A.M. provided critical monoclonal antibody reagents; and Z.-L.S. [Zhengli-Li Shi] provided SHC014 spike sequences and plasmids. R.S.B. [RALPH S BARIC] designed experiments and wrote manuscript."
Also here's an excerpt from a November 2008 Wired article: https://www.wired.com/2008/11/synthetic-virus/"In the case of SARS, which killed nearly 800 people before being contained, scientists think it came from bats, but have been unable to keep the bat version alive in laboratory cell cultures. Denison's team used the genetic sequence of bat SARS to build the virus. Bat SARS doesn't normally infect people, but the researchers added a critical tweak: a gene present only in the human version of the virus. The new version flourished in human cell cultures, suggesting that a mutation in the gene, known as Bat-SRBD, was responsible for SARS' lethal spread. The new virus did not kill mice, however. Other genetic differences between the synthetic and natural strains can now be studied to learn what makes SARS so virulent, said Denison, and the technique applied to other viruses similar to SARS. These include the Ebola, Hanta, Nipah and Chikunguya viruses, all of which originated in animals and are lethal to people.
"You could get to a point where, within a couple weeks of an epidemic being identified, you've already grown and generated viruses for the study of immune response," said Denison.