I'm not aware of every paper in the field, but I know the high points. We're still a long way off from the day when niche groups can generate novel viruses with

I'm not aware of every paper in the field, but I know the high points. We're still a long way off from the day when niche groups can generate novel viruses with specific infective properties. We're still basically just tinkering with the existing viruses in labs to figure out what the parts do. Depending on how you define "novel", it could indeed be a "grad student project", or it could be a paper that deserves a Nobel. But it still falls firmly in the "improbable as a weapon" category of threats. I'm still far more scared of XDR TB than hypothetical synthetic viruses.