We now have a new bat betacoronavirus with a furin cleavage site.

in covid •  2 years ago 

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https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1995820X23000470

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Here's the phylogenetic tree. This new bat betacoronavirus is a hibecovirus, which is adjacent to the sarbecovirus subgenus that SARS-COV-2 belongs to

Lab leak proponents make a big fuss about the furin cleavage site of SARS-COV-2 to argue it was man-made, but such a furin cleavage site can arise naturally.

This betacoronavirus came from a bat in Hainan province China. It is a distant relative of SARS-COV-2 sharing only 54% nucleotide identity. But it has a similar S1/S2 furin cleavage site and RBD. This new virus is part of the Hibecovirus subgenus. Bat Hp-betacoronavirus Zhejiang2013 is another Hibecovirus with a furin cleavage site. SARS-COV-2 belongs to the adjacent Sarbecovirus subgenus. SARS-COV-2 is the only known Sarbecovirus with a furin cleavage site.

Most coronaviruses have not been identified, so there is much virus diversity that remains unknown to us. It shows the limitations of basing arguments on virus features being rare when we only have a small sample to reference.

As noted CD35's furin cleavage site is canonical (R- X -R/K - R) in this case RAKR. SARS-COV-2's site on the other hand isn't canonical, it is RRAR. This is also why scientists believe SARS-COV-2's furin site is naturally occurring and not man-made. The logic is that it'd be canonical if you were trying to engineer the virus.

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