Australian virus scientist Professor Nikolai Petrovsky said that coronavirus was better at attaching itself to human cells than to any other animal - based on his recent research. Coronavirus is so perfectly adapted to infect humans that theories on its origin in a viral lab in Wuhan cannot be ignored.
Petrovsky warned that the investigation into where the deadly virus came from should have started months ago as it is vital information in fighting the disease today. There are also beliefs that the virus could have been formed naturally by mixing bat and pangolin viruses, however, this seems unlikely.
On Sunday, the Mail first revealed the startling results of his research. Then his team gave the Daily Mail on Wednesday, fresh details about why the possibility of the virus escaped from a lab in Wuhan must be considered a possibility.
Almost Perfectly Human-adapted
A team of Australian researchers from Flinders University in Adelaide and Latrobe University in Melbourne conducted a study testing how well the SARS-CoV-2 infects other animals.
When the novel coronavirus enters the body, it uses its spikes to attach itself to the ACE2 receptor molecule found in the lung cells. The tighter it binds itself to the ACE2, the less likely it can be washed away, making the host sicker.
In doing the research, Professor Petrovsky initially expected to find an animal most susceptible to the virus, such as bats and pangolins, which were first reported as the likely source of the virus. However, the results shocked him and his team as humans came out on top.
Moreover, a typical virus tends to get better at infecting new species as they adapt over time. But it is not the case with SARS-CoV-2 as it started to 'completely optimize from day one without the need to evolve.'
Professor Petrovsky told the Daily Mail Australia that the virus is showing an extraordinarily high binding to human receptors, which is very surprising since it has never infected humans before. 'It is almost perfectly human-adapted, it couldn't do any better," said Petrovsky.
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How Did it Happen?
Scientists are left baffled by the findings. They have created possible explanations of how the virus originated. One possibility they are looking at is the likelihood that SARS-CoV-2 was created by a recombination event that occurred unintentionally or consciously in a laboratory handling the coronavirus. Then, it was accidentally released into the local human population.
Just a short trip from the city's wet markets, the Wuhan Institute of Virology is known to study several bat coronaviruses and is believed to be where it was created.
Meanwhile, many scientists also believe that the virus came from exotic animals in Wuhan's wet market and was not man-made. The Chinese laboratory has also denied the claims that it caused the outbreak of the deadly virus.
But Professor Petrovsky said that no one had adequately disproved this theory, and his research showed that there was just a little evidence for the virus to have occurred naturally. His study claims that the theory in which the virus came from the lab is a possibility that cannot be ignored.
The closest disease to COVID-19 is BatCoV RaTG1, which is 96% the same as the strain causing worldwide damage to humans. The virus that causes that disease is found in bats and has a spike protein that is less effective than COVID-19's, so it needs a significant adaptation to infect humans.
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