A group of independent international researchers has published a complete analysis of newly discovered metagenomic data collected by the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in January and February 2020. Data closely link SARS-CoV-2 to the genetic trajectory of wildlife. , especially raccoon dogs, are being sold at the Huanan Wholesale Seafood Market in Wuhan, China, the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, the group’s analysis said.
A full analysis provides additional compelling evidence that the pandemic coronavirus made the leap to humans through a natural spillover, with market wildlife acting as an intermediate host between the horseshoe crab’s natural reservoir of viruses and humans. It was written by 19 scientists led by Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona. Christian Andersen, a virologist at the Scripps Research Institute in California. and Florence Debarre, a theorist specializing in evolutionary biology at CNRS, the French national research institute.
Before the full analysis was released late Monday, information about the findings had been made public only through media reports and statements from the World Health Organization briefed on the analysis last week. Metagenome data for are not yet published. It was briefly posted to a public genetic database called the Global Initiative for Avian Influenza Data Sharing (GISAID) earlier this month and was available for download by international researchers during that time. However, the database administrator said it deleted the data shortly after its discovery and that the deletion was at the request of the submitter, a Chinese CDC researcher.
dark data
Since then, China CDC researchers have indicated to international researchers and WHO that they intend to share the data supporting scientific papers currently undergoing peer review in scientific journals. However, international researchers note that there is no timeline for publication of the data or stated plans if the manuscript is not accepted for publication.
Throughout the pandemic, efforts to investigate the origin of SARS-CoV-2 have been hampered by interference from China, which supports the unsupported hypothesis that the virus originated outside its borders.
In the opening remarks of the newly released analysis, the researchers noted that while they respected GISAID’s terms of use, it was a long time ago that this data was available to the public and scientific community. claim. They called on both GISAID and their colleagues in China to make it available.
“GISAID’s terms of use do not preclude public discussion of data as long as data creators are acknowledged and best efforts are made to work with contributors.” [China CDC] I have so far refused to cooperate with this. We respect the right of our colleagues at CCDC to be the first to publish a manuscript with their own data and do not plan to submit papers that compete with manuscripts currently under review. The database essentially gives the China CDC an embargo because it has not.
“Samples from the South China market were collected in January and February 2020, which we feel is an unfair time for this to pass given its importance in understanding the origins of the pandemic. ,” writes the researcher.
data context
They also emphasized that the metagenomic data briefly posted on GISAID is not the full range of genetic data that the China CDC has not shared with the international community. Metagenomic data from other market samplings are not yet publicly available, they note.
However, the data available to this group so far gives an almost perfect picture of how the devastating pandemic began. Metagenome data were obtained from approximately 50 data files listed in Appendix B of the analysis, but are not currently published. This data is metagenomic sequences from some of the swabs and wastewater samplings collected around the Huanan market by the China CDC after the market closed on January 1, 2020. These swabs have been previously reported. In February 2022, a China CDC researcher published a preprint study of his 1,380 environmental and animal samples taken from the market.
The preprint study was led by George Gao, then director of the China CDC. Environmental swabs were positive for SARS-CoV-2 and contained human genetic material, whereas swabs of market animals, including mainly rabbits, feral cats, snakes, and hedgehogs, were all negative. Gao and colleagues concluded that humans, not animals, brought the virus to the big market. This acted as an amplification of infection for the large number of people who visited the market each day. China had previously suggested the virus was brought into the country from imported frozen foods sold on the market.
Still, that preprint data indicated that SARS-CoV-2-positive samples were in the southwestern part of the market, where mostly live mammals are sold. Since then, other studies have found the same, including a joint WHO-China study and an analysis by Worobey et al., published in Science last July. In Figure 4 of the Science article, Worobey and his co-authors found that the southwestern corner of the market had the highest density of his SARS-CoV-2-positive environmental samples, and that illegally marketed wild mammals were farmed. I showed that it is also a place where it is broken. Among them are raccoon dogs, one of which was photographed in his 2014 by Sydney University biologist Edward Holmes, one of the study’s authors. The study also found that some of the early human cases of COVID-19 were concentrated in the western part of the market where live animals were raised.
