Perusing the archive, Bloom figured out that many of the sequences were stored as files on Google Cloud. The papers included no explanation as to why the sequences had been uploaded to the Sequence Read Archive, only to disappear later. Instead, they only published some mutations in the viruses.īut a number of clues indicated to Bloom that the samples were the source of the 241 missing sequences. The researchers did not publish the actual sequences of the genes they fished out of the samples. In that study, the scientists wrote that they had looked at 45 samples from nasal swabs taken “from outpatients with suspected COVID-19 early in the epidemic.” They then searched for a portion of SARS-CoV-2’s genetic material in the swabs. The Chinese scientists published it in a scientific journal three months later Searching medical literature, Bloom eventually found another study posted online in March 2020 by Fu and colleagues, describing a new experimental test for SARS-CoV-2. It indicated that the 241 sequences had been collected by a scientist named Aisi Fu at Renmin Hospital in Wuhan. Puzzled, he went back to the spreadsheet for any further clues. government’s National Library of Medicine.īut when Bloom looked for the Wuhan sequences in the database earlier this month, his only result was “no item found.” The spreadsheet indicated that the scientists had uploaded the sequences to an online database called the Sequence Read Archive, managed by the U.S. Most precious of all are sequences from early in the pandemic, because they take scientists closer to the original spillover event.Īs Bloom was reviewing what genetic data had been published by various research groups, he came across a March 2020 study with a spreadsheet that included information on 241 genetic sequences collected by scientists at Wuhan University. The genetic sequences of viral samples hold crucial clues about how SARS-CoV-2 shifted to our species from another animal, most likely a bat. In a letter published in May, they complained that there was not enough information to determine whether it was more likely that a lab leak spread the coronavirus, or that it leapt to humans from contact with an infected animal outside of a lab. It “seems likely that the sequences were deleted to obscure their existence,” he wrote in the paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal.īloom and Worobey belong to an outspoken group of scientists who have called for more research into how the pandemic began. Jesse Bloom, a virus expert at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center who wrote the new report, called the deletion of these sequences suspicious. “This is a great piece of sleuth work for sure, and it significantly advances efforts to understand the origin of SARS-CoV-2,” said Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona who was not involved in the study. But it does raise questions about why original sequences were deleted, and suggests that there may be more revelations to recover from the far corners of the internet. The new analysis, contradicting earlier suggestions that a variety of coronaviruses may have been circulating in Wuhan before the initial outbreaks linked to animal and seafood markets in December 2019.Īs the Biden administration investigates the contested origins of the virus, known as SARS-CoV-2, the study neither strengthens nor discounts the hypothesis that the pathogen leaked out of a famous Wuhan lab. Now, by rooting through files stored on Google Cloud, a researcher in Seattle reports that he has recovered 13 of those original sequences - intriguing new information for discerning when and how the virus may have spilled over from a bat or another animal into humans. About a year ago, genetic sequences from more than 200 virus samples from early cases of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, disappeared from an online scientific database.
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