This virus would not have had to be created from the ground up. It's based on a comment model viral system about which we know an amazing amount. Particularly,

This virus would not have had to be created from the ground up. It's based on a comment model viral system about which we know an amazing amount. Particularly, it's a viral system that's apt to recombine, and whose organization and components thus by design support recombinant exploitation of the evolutionary space. It is very easy to build a novel organization of such parts. You build as many as you can manage (trillions+) and then screen for viable viruses. Then with a little selection pressure in different environments, you can optimize them and see how the novel variants evolve. Doing this at scale helps us understand the way viruses evolve. And if you think that genome synthesis is not possible, look up "DNA printer". But i don't think that's what you mean.