- A 2018 grant proposal sought to combine data from similar strains for new virus
- It was submitted by scientists from US, China and Singapore, but was rejected
- A genetics expert from the WHO told The Telegraph that such work could explain why a close ancestor for Covid-19 has yet to be found in nature
- The Wuhan Institute of Virology has consistently denied creating Covid-19
US and Chinese scientists were planning to create a new coronavirus before the pandemic erupted, leaked proposals show.
Last month, a grant application submitted to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) revealed that an international team of scientists had planned to mix genetic data of similar strains to create a new virus.
The grant application was made in 2018 and leaked to Drastic, the pandemic origins analysis group.
‘We will compile sequence/RNAseq data from a panel of closely related strains and compare full length genomes, scanning for unique SNPs representing sequencing errors.
‘Consensus candidate genomes will be synthesized commercially using established techniques and genome-length RNA and electroporation to recover recombinant viruses,’ the application states.
This would result in a virus which had no clear ancestor in nature, a World Health Organization (WHO) expert told The Telegraph.
The expert, who asked the paper not to publish their name, said that, if such a method had been carried out, it could explain why no close match has ever been found in nature for Sars-CoV-2.
The closest naturally occurring virus is the Banal-52 strain, reported in Laos last month. It shares 96.8 per cent of Covid-19’s genome.
No direct ancestor, which would be expected share around 99.98 per cent, has been found so far.
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