4 ms·

This is not true. Ralph Baric developed (and patented) a seamless technique to assemble coronaviruses in 2002 [1]. Baric was a close collaborator of the Coron

This is not true. Ralph Baric developed (and patented) a seamless technique to assemble coronaviruses in 2002 [1]. Baric was a close collaborator of the Coronavirus group at WIV. Since then there has been even more progress. Since 2015 or so it's been possible to "print" DNA of any sequence. In fact as COVID started to spread in China and the sequence was released, a Swiss lab used this technology to print the genome of SARS2, inject it into some yeast cells, and voila, you have the virus. They wrote this up in Nature [2]. If you wanted to change a naturally sampled virus using this technique, say, to insert a Furin site, swap out an RBD, whatever, you can literally do it with a text editor and copy and paste. [1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US7279327B2/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US7279327B2/en [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2294-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2294-9

byecomputer 4y ago
> insert a Furin site, swap out an RBD, whatever, you can literally do it with a text editor and copy and paste. Saved a lot of money this year making Covid-19 at home using the SARS viruses I already have. Takes like 2 seconds
- trasz 4y ago
  Now we need someone to implement an LLVM backend to emit RNA.
  - logicchains 4y ago
    And a Rust frontend! That way the viruses can't leak.
brippalcharrid 4y ago
Yes, Seamless Ligation ("No See'm" technology) has been written about since at least 2006 for its potential to be used in creating biological agents that lack signs of laboratory manipulation. https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/39652 https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/39652 Suffice it to say, this has been a very active area of research (and DoD/NIH/NIAID funding) for many years. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7120940/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7120940/ In light of this, people that are confidently dismissing or playing down the possibility of a lab l̶e̶a̶k̶ origin at this point seem to be exhibiting some kind of ideological commitment.

byecomputer 4y ago

> insert a Furin site, swap out an RBD, whatever, you can literally do it with a text editor and copy and paste. Saved a lot of money this year making Covid-19 at home using the SARS viruses I already have. Takes like 2 seconds

trasz 4y ago
Now we need someone to implement an LLVM backend to emit RNA.
- logicchains 4y ago
  And a Rust frontend! That way the viruses can't leak.

brippalcharrid 4y ago

Yes, Seamless Ligation ("No See'm" technology) has been written about since at least 2006 for its potential to be used in creating biological agents that lack signs of laboratory manipulation. https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/39652 https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/39652 Suffice it to say, this has been a very active area of research (and DoD/NIH/NIAID funding) for many years. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7120940/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7120940/ In light of this, people that are confidently dismissing or playing down the possibility of a lab l̶e̶a̶k̶ origin at this point seem to be exhibiting some kind of ideological commitment.