Wuhan Institute of Viology does not have RaTG13 in the viral genome of SARS-CoV-2 which is "not natural"

Report by : Gan Yung Chyan

                  / KUCINTA SETIA

Image : Wang Yanyi officially confirmed to China Communist media CGTN that Shi Zhengli's team does not have the RaTG13 virus, thus creating another controversy over Shi Zhengli's team study on the sequencing of the viral genome of SARS-CoV-2.

A netizen by the name of himalaya_hawk edited a research article by another netizen by the name of NerdHasPower on Guo Media on 2 May 2020, attempting to unveil the true origin of the Wuhan coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2, 2019nCoV).  

NerdHasPower, who is a Twitter account holder, and not related to Guo Media, and himalaya_hawk have deduced that one of the virus in the viral genome of SARS-CoV-2, RaTG13, is not a "nature- borne" virus as Shi Zhengli did not obtain the virus from Yunnan in her seven years of research on bat feces and coronaviruses. Their deductions have just officially been confirmed by Wang Yanyi, the Director of the Wuhan Institute of Viology.

himalaya_hawk wrote, "RaTG13 looks like a “close cousin” of the Wuhan coronavirus – the two are 96% identical throughout the whole sequence of the viral genome. If RaTG13 is a nature- borne virus, one can comfortably conclude that the Wuhan coronavirus must very likely also come from nature and must share a recent common ancestor with RaTG13.   But here is the problem: this RaTG13 virus isn’t real. The evidence of its existence, its sequence, was fabricated."

The sequence of RaTG13 was reported by Shi Zhengli, the Director of the Wuhan P4 laboratory of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. According to Wang Yanyi, Shi Zhengli's principal, Zhengli's team research targets at identifying bat coronaviruses that have the potential of crossing-over to infect humans and thereby helping the public avoid SARS-like disasters in the future.

Since the very beginning of the pandemic, Zhengli and her team including Zhou Peng have been singled out as the suspects, for probably creating the Wuhan coronavirus and, in doing so, causing the Wuhan virus outbreak. Interestingly, on 23 January 2020, Zhengli's team published a paper in Nature (1), where she compared the freshly obtained sequence of the Wuhan coronavirus with those of other coronaviruses and thus delineated an evolutionary path of SARS-CoV-2. In this publication, all of a sudden and out of nowhere, Shi Zhengli reported this bat coronavirus, RaTG13, seemingly helped shape consensus in the field that the Wuhan coronavirus comes from wild bats. 

Because of Shi Zhengli's answer, the Chinese Center for Disease Prevention and Control initially blamed the cause of the Wuhan virus outbreak on wild bats. However, there are no wild bats in Wuhan and the Wuhan people do not have the habit of eating wild bats.

According to Shi Zhengli, RaTG13 was discovered in Yunnan, China, in 2013. However, she has admitted to several individuals in her research field that she does not have a physical sample of this RaTG13 virus. Her laboratory team allegedly collected some bat feces in 2013 and analyzed these samples for possible presence of coronaviruses based on genetic evidence. In short, she has no physical proof for the existence of this RaTG13 virus.

If RaTG13 truly exists, it should have never been neglected for seven years.

Since the sequence of RaTG13 is highly alarming, it clearly shows a potential of the virus to infect humans and Shi Zhengli should not have neglected collecting this virus from the cave that she claimed she found in her seven years of bat feces hunting activities.

In 2013, Shi Zhengli submitted to the journal Nature a study on two bat coronaviruses (Rs3367 and SHC014), which share considerable sequence similarity with SARS in the RBD region (2). This work, for the first time, proved a bat origin of SARS. In the following years, her team continued to publish articles, featuring additional bat coronaviruses that share these important sequence motifs (3, 4).

himalaya_hawk lets people see what an RBD sequence looks like. Figure 1 is the sequence comparison between SARS RBD and the RBDs of the bat coronaviruses that Shi Zhengli published in high- profile journals (2-4). Comparing to SARS (top), many bat coronaviruses (most of the ones in the bottom half) had substantial deletions in their RBDs and are thus likely defective in targeting humans. In contrast, some bat coronaviruses (upper half) not only resemble SARS in the completeness of the RBD sequences but also contain amino acids similar to their SARS counterparts at some of the five locations known to be critical for binding human ACE2 receptor. This group of viruses, with these dazzling features, were perceived by Zhengli's field as breakthroughs.

Image courtesy : himalaya_hawk

RaTG13 rivals with the best ones in its completeness of the RBD sequence as well as in the conservation of critical amino acids. 

Importantly, RaTG13 preserves the binding motifs more and better than any other bat coronavirus in Zhengli’s list. At position 442, RaTG13 has a “L”, which beats most, if not all, bat coronaviruses in resembling the “Y” in SARS RBD (“L” and “Y” both mediate hydrophobic interactions). At position 472, RaTG13 is the only bat coronavirus that has the residue “L”, which is identical to SARS. Although the amino acids at the other three positions are not identical to their counterparts in SARS, they are all conservative mutations, which may not negatively impact the protein’s function. Therefore, RaTG13 RBD gene used in this work was synthesized.

Zhengli must have peeked at the sequence of RaTG13’s RBD and immediately realized this virus closely resembles SARS in its RBD and has a clear potential of infecting humans. If her public statement is true and she indeed intends to discover bat coronaviruses with a potential to cross-over to humans, how could she possibly overlook this extremely interesting virus find?

If this RaTG13 was discovered in 2013, why did Shi not publish this astonishing find earlier? Why did she decide to publish such a sequence involving RaTG13 at the time of the Wuhan virus outbreak and people started questioning the origin of SARS-CoV-2, when she does not even keep and see the RaTG-13 sample in her laboratory?

himalaya_hawk concludes, "Zhengli Shi either was directly involved in the creation of this virus/bioweapon, or helped cover it up, or both.  Of course, these facts also add to the claim that RaTG13 is a fake virus – it exists on Nature (the journal) but not in nature."

Wuhan Institute of Viology confirms the Wuhan P4 laboratory does not have RaTG13

The above deduction is confirmed by Wang Yanyi, the Director of Wuhan Institute of Virology, during a filmed interview on 13 May 2020 with a China Communist Party (CCP) media reporter on 23 May 2020.

In the evening of 23 May 2020, CCP media CGTN broadcasts the interview with Wang Yanyi on television followed by its Facebook version on 24 May 2020. 

Wang Yanyi has admitted that the Wuhan P4 laboratory has no live virus sample of RaTG13.  She suggests the human error (Shi Zhengli's error) in the sequencing of the viral genome of SARS-CoV-2.

Wang Yanyi pointed out Shi Zhengli and her team "did not pay attention to such virus which are less similar to SARS. They didn't try to isolate and obtain RaTG13, since its genome is only 79%  similar to SARS. One of them has the highest similarity of 96% to SARS, but their highest similarity to SARS-CoV-2 only reaches 79.8%."

Without obtaining a virus sample of RaTG13, why did Shi Zhengli add RaTG13 to the viral genome sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 and lie to the publications that SARS-CoV-2 is "natural"? Science does not lie since facts must be backed up by physical evidence. Scientists have the moral responsibility not to mislead the world especially in the understanding of the origin of SARS-CoV-2.

Wang Yanyi told the interviewer that the experts of Wuhan Institute of Virology have not identified and are unable to identify the intermediate host of SARS-CoV-2. All experts have ruled out Malayan pangolins as the intermediate host of SARS-CoV-2.

In the absence of the intermediate host, the expert team of Zhan Shing Hei from the Department of Zoology & Biodiversity Research Centre of the University of British Columbia commented, "SARS-CoV-2 appeared in late 2019, suggesting that there was a single introduction of the human-adapted form of the virus into the human population. " They warned, "This has important implications regarding the risk of SARS-CoV-2 re-emergence in the near future and the severity of its consequences".

Reactions to Wang Wanyi's latest statements

Several netizens reacted on Facebook to Wang Wanyi's statements that Wuhan Institute of Viology did not obtain the live virus of RaTG13 and thus has no RaTG13. It has only three live bat coronavirus strains.

Fariha Khurshid reacted, "the Wuhan virology lab (that was accused of being not compliant) has 3 different live coronavirus strains from bats, & apparently they have only a 79% match with the CoViD-19 affecting the world, indicating, in their defence, that he CoViD-19 didn't originate from there. Oh please, they are exposing themselves more & more in this way, the 20% difference could possibly account for sinister human intervention from their part. You really want to believe that a virus from inferior mammals like bats evolved overnight & became so infectious that it beats the complex immunological response of human bodies? Viruses aren't that smart, but scientists are. This sort of silent killing & destruction of innocent humans & so many countries' economies is worse than any kind of (biological or not) war." 

David Tan Hock San, referred to the absence of RaTG13, said, "All samples cleared".

Other netizens came up with the so-called theory that the United States has type A strain of SARS-CoV-2 which causes the predominent type B strain in Wuhan, attempting to cover up the virus origin in PRC.

Sian Ein Teo commented, "No need to check also know it came from US. US have mostly strain A and China strain B. Strain A creates strain B." 

Leon V DS countered Ein Teo, "what nonsense, type A was also found in Wuhan and Americans already living there in Wuhan. When Americans evacuated their citizens, they brought type A back to America." 

Jiun Ting Yong brought up a Japanese covid case. He remarked, "I will be questioning Zhao Lijian and his arrogant colleagues even the CCTV in YouTube as my mother said 'a Japanese guy got back from China in Novenber and he fell sick. He tried manyy medication and it doesn't work.' My dad said 'of course, it is the American' - For me, oh that's so funny. By the way, that's what we call enlightenment thinking that supported the closed mindedness of the PRC and the CCP that they always seems right and don't stand out from the crowd to being different and challenge the status quo." 

According to Peter Forster, he has four type A strains of SARS-CoV-2 from Shenzhen, three type A strains from Japan, two type A strains of the virus from Wuhan and two type A strains of the virus equal from the United States. He mentioned that there could be more type A strains in Guangdong. Further investigation is needed to verify if the virus came from Guangdong rather than Wuhan. Guangdong is the original epic centre of the SARS outbreak in 2003.

However, Zhang Wenhong has mentioned earlier that the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak started in Wuhan and spread to other parts of China and the world.  

Shi Zhengli's team studies are aimed at trying to convince people that SARS-like coronaviruses came from wild bats. They forgot the step of identifying intermediate hosts. Other scientists will criticize Shi Zhengli's team for fabricating when sequencing the viral genome of SARS-CoV-2 at so short a time as they never have nor obtained the live virus of RaTG13. Who gives them the authority to add that in when they never see and never study on that virus? Their research misleads everybody.

Wang Wanyi quoted Edward Holmes as saying that it takes a natural virus "50 years" to make the change of transmission to humans. If SARS-CoV-2 is natural, why did it emerge only after SARS which is only less than 50 years from the Wuhan virus outbreak? Therefore, the Fort Detrick laboratory theory from the Crimson Contagion Exercise and the "natural origin" theory of SARS-CoV-2 do not stand.

The probability of human intervention in creating SARS-CoV-2 and leaking it out from the laboratory is higher now and it could happen in PRC before October 2019 for the virus to make the first step of transmission to patient zero.

Refs :     

1. Zhou P, Yang XL, Wang XG, Hu B, Zhang L, Zhang W, et al. A pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin, Nature. 2020.

2. Ge XY, Li JL, Yang XL, Chmura AA, Zhu G, Epstein JH, et al. Isolation and characterization of a bat SARS-like coronavirus that uses the ACE2 receptor. Nature. 2013;503(7477):535-8.

3. Zeng LP, Gao YT, Ge XY, Zhang Q, Peng C, Yang XL, et al. Bat Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Like Coronavirus WIV1 Encodes an Extra Accessory Protein, ORFX, Involved in Modulation of the Host Immune Response, J Virol. 2016;90(14):6573- 82.

4. Hu B, Zeng LP, Yang XL, Ge XY, Zhang W, Li B, et al. Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus, PLoS Pathog. 2017;13(11):e1006698.

5. NerdHasPower, Scientific evidence and logic behind the claim that the Wuhan coronavirus is man-made, https://nerdhaspower.weebly.com/

6. himalaya_hawk, RaTG13- the Undeniable Evidence That The Wuhan Coronavirus Is Man-Made, Bobby ed., Guo Media, https://gnews.org/192144/

7. Wuhan lab had three live bat coronaviruses, Channel News Asia, https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/wuhan-lab-three-live-bat-coronaviruses-chinese-state-media-12765184?cid=FBcna&fbclid=IwAR062NCuBVpSb2Zssr7S1TIt2LLBUIK91JEWRbqV0UdQkD1JvwuGZp_G0Us

8. Zhan Shing Hei etal., SARS-CoV-2 is well adapted for humans. What does this mean for re-emergence?, bioRxiv, https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.01.073262; https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.01.073262v1.full.pdf

9. CGTN, Expert : difference between COVID-19 and the virus from bats, https://www.facebook.com/ChinaGlobalTVNetwork/videos/244917723263873