Dr. Anthony Fauci has received plenty of vitriol, some of which is at least uncharitable (even wrong-headed). However, this article did a disservice in not addr

Dr. Anthony Fauci has received plenty of vitriol, some of which is at least uncharitable (even wrong-headed). However, this article did a disservice in not addressing the exchange fully either. According to the accounting of another news outlet, Paul cited a specific paper (https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1006698#abstract0 https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...) that discusses experiments within WIV: > In this study, we confirmed the use of human ACE2 as receptor of two novel SARSr-CoVs by using chimeric viruses with the WIV1 backbone replaced with the S gene of the newly identified SARSr-CoVs. Rs7327’s S protein varied from that of WIV1 and WIV16 at three aa residues in the receptor-binding motif, including one contact residue (aa 484) with human ACE2. This difference did not seem to affect its entry and replication efficiency in human ACE2-expressing cells. A previous study using the SARS-CoV infectious clone showed that the RsSHC014 S protein could efficiently utilize human ACE2 [33], despite being distinct from SARS-CoV and WIV1 in the RBD (S1 Fig). We examined the infectivity of Rs4231, which shared similar RBD sequence with RsSHC014 but had a distinct NTD sequence, and found the chimeric virus WIV1-Rs4231S also readily replicated in HeLa cells expressing human ACE2 molecule. The novel live SARSr-CoV we isolated in the current study (Rs4874) has an S gene almost identical to that of WIV16. As expected, it is also capable of utilizing human ACE2. These results indicate that diverse variants of SARSr-CoV S protein without deletions in their RBD are able to use human ACE2. So, I'm not a biologist but I have read biology papers before. The way I read that is that they are doing local changes to binding sites, not simply taking spike proteins and putting them on an experimental backbone. All the opinions and politics aside: is that the right reading of this passage from the article? Seems like that should be an objective-to-answer question, and for my own education I'd appreciate someone explaining to me.