The Reemergent 1977 H1N1 Strain and the Gain-of-Function Debate (2015)

https://mbio.asm.org/content/6/4/e01013-15

by medymed • 6 years ago

76 25 6 years ago

mbio.asm.org

nairboon• 6 years ago

An interesting relevant precedent for this argument: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23875758

api• 6 years ago

I think there is enough evidence to suggest the possibility of a human role, but given the fact that a much more virulent virus could easily have been made I think if there was a human role it was an accident.

That and the fact that this harmed China both economically and in terms of reputation. Biological warfare is like using a grenade as a handgun. Yes it will harm the enemy, but...

cryptonector• 6 years ago

The fact that it harmed China is not evidence that it wasn't a gain-of-function engineering result. It's evidence that if it was then its leaking was accidental.

medymed3• 6 years ago

While there isn’t too much clamorous mainstream debate about the current strain (SARS-CoV-2), the first SARS escaped the lab several times:

“SARS has not re-emerged naturally, but there have been six escapes from virology labs: one each in Singapore and Taiwan, and four separate escapes at the same laboratory in Beijing.”

https://www.google.com/amp/s/nationalpost.com/news/a-brief-t...

svd4anything3• 6 years ago

Exactly so clearly if you even are willing to consider the possibility that SARS-Cov-2 escaped, you are crazy and a right wing nut ok. See how that works.

sradman2• 6 years ago

Relevant July 24th Science Mag interview of Shi Zhengli:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/trump-owes-us-apolog...

drocer88• 6 years ago

"Shi’s answers were coordinated with public information staffers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, of which WIV is part, and it took her 2 months to prepare them. Evolutionary biologist Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research says he suspects Shi’s answers were “carefully vetted” by the Chinese government."

newacct5832• 6 years ago

Good grief. The contention here is that in 1977 the Russians were culturing samples of an existing strain of H1N1 that was known to researchers from an outbreak 26 years previous, but which had dropped out of circulation. And they oopsed, and it got out. That seems not totally improbable, and I'll believe the sequencing results.

I don't know how you get from there to (sigh) "Covid is human-engineered", at all. Can you explain how this is relevant at all, except in the way both hypotheses invoke evil foreign laboratories in totalitarian states?

svd4anything3• 6 years ago

I’m curious if you have done any research at all into Covid’s origin? For me it would be very surprising to find someone who has now expressing your implied distain for those who are considering the possibility it originated in the Wuhan lab. This isn’t a political topic or at least shouldn’t be.

Voliokis2• 6 years ago

Every expert I've read about thinks the "evidence" is too flimsy to even consider Covid19 being man-made. That post isn't interesting at all. It's just clickbait fodder that appeals to smart people who like to think they've figured shit out as opposed to the experts, even if it's a field that's totally outside their wheelhouse.

svd4anything3• 6 years ago

New account and I’m guessing you just haven’t read too many experts actually.

https://youtu.be/pRCzZp1J0v0

1:54:50

mwcampbell• 6 years ago

Reminds me of Rob Reid's 2017 novel After On, which included a subplot featuring a man-made virus.

cgb223• 6 years ago

As someone who had the 2009 H1N1 strain I wish the authors would have spoken more about whether that strain as well could have come from a lab accident or was just natural.

Has anyone heard anything to that end or was it just random probability that caused it?

medymed3• 6 years ago

H1N1 in 2009 may fit well with the ‘antigenic shift’ paradigm of influenza, where there is a reassortment of genes from different types of flu (which might both infect the same animal at once) that create a new hybrid to which there is little pre-existing immunity and which can be markedly virulent. This is classically in contrast with year to year ‘antigenic drift’ of the flu featuring small accumulated mutations that have tended to be less virulent. Both of these fit well with the random probability idea to some extent, but are very different mechanisms. I don’t know if people have tried to induce antigenic shift in a lab; probably not the safest idea.

SpicyLemonZest• 6 years ago

It's pretty much known to have been natural; researchers were able to trace out a likely history in the pig populations it's believed to have come from. (https://www.nature.com/articles/nature08182)

fastaguy884• 6 years ago

This is a spectacularly misleading paper in a non-biological journal that assumes, without any explanation, that somehow scientists thawed out a 1950 H1N1 strain and somehow, through some gain of function process, made the 1977 version.

The obvious question is, How?

In 1977 (or 1976, to produce something that would have infected people in 1977), recombinant DNA technology was new; cloning had just begun. There were very few restriction enzymes, oligonucleotide synthesis was done by hand (literally) and PCR had not been invented yet. Today, GOF studies are easy because we can synthesize virtually any piece of DNA. But in 1977, graduate students got rich because they could synthesize a dozen-ish residues of DNA and sell them (for stock) to Genentech.

What people were not doing was engineering new forms of flu virus.

medymed3• 6 years ago

I don’t think you parsed the paper quite accurately. It was just the same virus as the 50s. There was no gain of function. The mention of gain of function regards debated policy issues in 2015 when the paper was published.

fastaguy884• 6 years ago

The paper says that the 1977 H1N1 is not identical to the 1950's strains, but very similar, and that a tree build from sequences suggests the 1977 strain is most closely related to the 1950's strains. So there are differences, and the question is, are they natural or synthetic. I do not think the technology was available to make synthetic changes.

burfog2• 6 years ago

No fancy technology is required. Long before that, we created the dog and the apple. The USSR even recreated the wolf-to-dog transition with foxes. Doing something similar with viruses is much easier because the generations are shorter and because exposure to UV is easy.

fastaguy884• 6 years ago

Yes, we know how to breed animals and plants. But do we know how to breed flu viruses? Animals and plants are outbred, and provide great genetic diversity for selecting desired traits. But these viruses were virtually identical (no diversity), and it is completely unclear how one would "select" for a virus with the desired properties.

The Reemergent 1977 H1N1 Strain and the Gain-of-Function Debate (2015)

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