Detangling "gain of function"

Its interesting that this site has no "Covid 19" section. ..


I found this page to explain what research was going on in Wuhan covid lab.

www.factcheck.org...

The authors “speculate that the direct ancestor” of the SARS virus may have been a result of recombination — or the natural combining of genetic material — of precursors of these bat coronaviruses. And the authors found that the bat coronaviruses had the potential for direct transmission to humans.

A few of their experiments combined different elements of viruses to better understand what’s required to infect human cells. Specifically, the 2017 research used the backbone of WIV1, a bat SARS-like virus reported in 2013, and swapped in the spike protein of two newly identified bat coronaviruses to see if they, like WIV1, can use the human ACE2 receptor to enter human cells. The researchers found that both chimeric viruses could use ACE2 to infect and replicate in human cells in culture. (The researchers attempted to make six other chimeric viruses, but when put into monkey cells the viral constructs did not replicate.)

Is that gain-of-function? Again, there are different definitions and opinions on that. We reached out to the NIH asking for a more detailed explanation of why the 2017 paper didn’t meet its definition, and we’ll update this story if we get a response.

As you can see, in one of their experiments they most certainly did create a chimera disease that included a gain of function. Although it was not their primary goal. It was just testing a hypothesis about what they thought might happen somewhere in nature.


And of course I don't entirely trust these people to tell the whole truth here. But I think they are arguing that, since it wasn't the goal of the research, that it therefore wasn't "what was funded". Some kind of splitting hairs going on here.


Elsewhere they mention that the disease the created was deliberately weakened.


Now my personal speculation is that, with such a good receptor interaction (ACE2 receptor interaction is what makes Covid so infective), it wouldn't matter that it was weakened, because it would be strong enough to survive long enough to evolve.

On the other hand, if one of those 2 specific strains got out, it seems like it would be easy to identify them. But I wouldn't put it past them to have created a third one, and destroyed the records after it escaped, to avoid culpability. We're being asked to extend them quite a lot of trust.

a reply to: bloodymarvelous

Fauci did fund gain of function research after it was banned. He will never admit that fact. What he is doing is standing behind a wall of government agencies denying the truth. A main tenet of a communist regime is to admit nothing and crush opposition and truth.

I posted this in response to your similar comment in another thread:

If you notice, they cite their own research from 2013, which was the very strain that the UNC used to create a chimeric virus.

But in the study cited in the article you cited, no GoF activity was actually performed:

journals.plos.org.../journal.ppat.1006698#sec011

In the current study, we successfully cultured an additional novel SARSr-CoV Rs4874 from a single fecal sample using an optimized protocol and Vero E6 cells [17]. Its S protein shared 99.9% aa sequence identity with that of previously isolated WIV16 and it was identical to WIV16 in RBD. Using the reverse genetics technique we previously developed for WIV1 [23], we constructed a group of infectious bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) clones with the backbone of WIV1 and variants of S genes from 8 different bat SARSr-CoVs. Only the infectious clones for Rs4231 and Rs7327 led to cytopathic effects in Vero E6 cells after transfection (S7 Fig). The other six strains with deletions in the RBD region, Rf4075, Rs4081, Rs4085, Rs4235, As6526 and Rp3 (S1 Fig) failed to be rescued, as no cytopathic effects was observed and viral replication cannot be detected by immunofluorescence assay in Vero E6 cells (S7 Fig). In contrast, when Vero E6 cells were respectively infected with the two successfully rescued chimeric SARSr-CoVs, WIV1-Rs4231S and WIV1-Rs7327S, and the newly isolated Rs4874, efficient virus replication was detected in all infections (Fig 7). To assess whether the three novel SARSr-CoVs can use human ACE2 as a cellular entry receptor, we conducted virus infectivity studies using HeLa cells with or without the expression of human ACE2. All viruses replicated efficiently in the human ACE2-expressing cells. The results were further confirmed by quantification of viral RNA using real-time RT-PCR (Fig 8).

This SOUNDS troubling, but is actually not gain-of-function. Using bacteria to infect with parts of a naturally-occurring virus to detect virility does not constitute gain-of-function because nothing was gained. They merely sequenced the backbone (much like the vaccine mfg did with the spike protein) and used something to infect certain cells to determine whether it acts upon certain receptors, etc.

This is really no different from adenovirus vaccines, or mRNA vaccines. It's similar to using a chemical process to determine whether something will react to it. There was no change or gain of function with any of the viruses.

There is not enough there to say "yes he lied" because it's a debate of semantics (or as you said, splitting hairs) at this point, which is not enough to charge Fauci with perjury.

a reply to: bloodymarvelous


a reply to: bloodymarvelous

He should have got permission to proceed with the funding from a higher source. The line is very blurry. He did not and for that alone he is wrong. It would have never got approved that's why he did it anyway.

originally posted by: Stupidsecrets
He should have got permission to proceed with the funding from a higher source. The line is very blurry. He did not and for that alone he is wrong. It would have never got approved that's why he did it anyway.

He probably did get approval from a higher source. Fauci's lab is under the National Institutes of Health (NIH). NIH is run by Dr. Francis Collins, and NIH would have to set the policies for approval of funded projects.

originally posted by: 1947boomer

originally posted by: Stupidsecrets
He should have got permission to proceed with the funding from a higher source. The line is very blurry. He did not and for that alone he is wrong. It would have never got approved that's why he did it anyway.

He probably did get approval from a higher source. Fauci's lab is under the National Institutes of Health (NIH). NIH is run by Dr. Francis Collins, and NIH would have to set the policies for approval of funded projects.

The virus was released to create the opportunity for mass mail in voting. The only people that benefited from the virus were China, Democrats and their crony capitalists donors. Everyone else lost. They attacked small businesses and religions. BLM and antifa riots were permitted. Big box stores allowed to remain open.

originally posted by: BatSars
I posted this in response to your similar comment in another thread:

Yeah. I thought it was better to discuss in a thread of its own.

This SOUNDS troubling, but is actually not gain-of-function. Using bacteria to infect with parts of a naturally-occurring virus to detect virility does not constitute gain-of-function because nothing was gained. They merely sequenced the backbone (much like the vaccine mfg did with the spike protein) and used something to infect certain cells to determine whether it acts upon certain receptors, etc.

Also the part you cited mentions that they used "the backbone of WIV1" and attached the S genes to it.

There was an article written by Kristian G Anderson. He's the guy in the Fauci emails who tells Fauci he thinks he's seeing signs of genetic tampering in Covid, but then a few days later published a paper saying he was now confident it had a natural origin.

In his paper one of the reasons he cites for being so sure it is natural was :

It is improbable that SARS-CoV-2 emerged through laboratory manipulation of a related SARS-CoV-like coronavirus. As noted above, the RBD of SARS-CoV-2 is optimized for binding to human ACE2 with an efficient solution different from those previously predicted7,11. Furthermore, if genetic manipulation had been performed, one of the several reverse-genetic systems available for betacoronaviruses would probably have been used19.However, the genetic data irrefutably show that SARS-CoV-2 is not derived from any previously used virus backbone20. Instead, we propose two scenarios that can plausibly explain the origin of SARS-CoV-2: (i) natural selection in an animal host before zoonotic transfer; and (ii) natural selection in humans following zoonotic transfer. We also discuss whether selection during passage could have given rise to SARS-CoV-2.

www.nature.com...

So he was able to rule out the Corona virus being based on any known "backbone".

Which means the "gain of function" they did in the paper you are citing can't really be what actually escaped from the lab.

This is really no different from adenovirus vaccines, or mRNA vaccines. It's similar to using a chemical process to determine whether something will react to it. There was no change or gain of function with any of the viruses.

There is not enough there to say "yes he lied" because it's a debate of semantics (or as you said, splitting hairs) at this point, which is not enough to charge Fauci with perjury.

a reply to: bloodymarvelous


a reply to: bloodymarvelous

People who devote their lives to the pure pursuit of knowledge often have neither the disposition, nor the training, to periodically stop and ask themselves what others will do with their research.

Although they didn't actually create a gain of function in this particular experiment, they did lay out a good blueprint that somebody else could follow in order to do it.

As grateful as I am to have this information available to me, I don't think that paper should ever have been published. It should have been classified top secret, and never made available to anyone.

A bad actor, like say the Chinese government itself, could hire some small biotech firm to paste together a chimera, using a similar process to that described.

If they were to do so, then Wuhan would be the ideal place to deliberately release it, because it's a location where two other plausible culprits reside (both a wet market, and a lab devoted to Corona virus research.) Doing it there would cast suspicion in multiple directions.

But only somebody with an understanding of Chinese culture would have foreseen the effect of "Chinese New Year" on travel to and from China well enough to time a pandemic around it. Without the "Chinese New Year" covid would have spread to the rest of the world much more slowly, giving world health systems lots of time to prepare a response.

I'm leaning toward China, although Russia is also a possibility, as is private enterprise, and (God help us) my own government (if they were desperate enough to hold onto power).

a reply to: bloodymarvelous

I have no reason to trust your source for one. I have no reason to trust it was not their primary goal. My evidence? Covid-19, locks downs and the ever growing mandates.

You’re welcome to trust entities that exist to lie for corporations and governments, but you misunderstand their role.

The goal is not safety.