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US study finds gene from SARS-CoV-2 may reduce bat coronavirus's infectivity: report

Xinhua | Updated: 2020-07-28 09:49
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Dr Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), holds up a model of SARS-CoV-2, known as the novel coronavirus, during a US Senate Appropriations Subcommittee Hearing on the plan to research, manufacture and distribute a coronavirus vaccine, known as Operation Warp Speed on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, US, July 2, 2020. [Photo/Agencies]

HONG KONG - A gene which helps the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in humans "appears to reduce the infectivity of a similar bat virus," the South China Morning Post has reported, citing a new US government study.

According to the report, Dr Tony Wang and colleagues at the US Food and Drug Administration's vector-borne viral diseases laboratory in Maryland gave raTG13, the closest known relative to SARS-CoV-2, a spike similar to that of Sars-CoV-2. Spikes are proteins that bind the virus to a host cell.

"The most striking finding of this study is that insertion of PRRA into the raTG13 spike protein altered the ability of relevant pseudovirus to utilize ACE2 of three species to gain entry," the researchers said in their paper published as a pre-print on the website BioRxiv.

"Structural and biochemical studies have suggested that SARS-CoV-2 may have been well adapted in human before the outbreak in Wuhan, China," they added in the paper.

The new study "may cast doubt on a theory that the virus originated in a Chinese laboratory," the South China Morning Post reported.

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