US scientist recovered 13 of 200 coronavirus sequences found in Wuhan that had been “suspiciously” deleted

A American researcher assured that while searching for files stored in Google cloud, it was successful recover up to 13 coronavirus sequences that mysteriously disappeared from the database last year.

According to the newspaper The New York Times, About a year ago, the genetic sequences of more than 200 virus samples from the first cases of COVID-19 in Wuhan (China) have disappeared from a scientific database on the internet.

Now when connecting files stored in Google cloud, a researcher from Seattle (US) said he recovered 13 of these original sequences, which adds data to discern when and how the virus could have spread from a bat or other animal to the man, according to the New York Times.

The new analysis, released on Tuesday, strengthens theories that a variety of coronavirus may have circulated in Wuhan before the first outbreaks linked to animal and seafood markets in December 2019.

While US President Joe Biden’s administration investigates controversial origins of virus, known as SARS-CoV-2, This study neither reinforces nor excludes, for the moment, the hypothesis of a leak of the pathogen from a famous laboratory in Wuhan.

But it raises questions about why the original footage was deleted and suggests that there may be more revelations that can be salvaged from “the far corners” of the internet, specifies the New York Times.

“It is undoubtedly excellent detective work, and it greatly advances efforts to understand the origin of SARS-CoV-2.“He told the American newspaper Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist from the University of Arizona, who was not involved in this study.

Jesse bloom, the virologist from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center who developed this report, called deleting these sequences mistrustful.

“It seems likely that the footage was deleted to hide its existence”he wrote in his report, which has yet to be peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal, according to the journal.

Bloom and Worobey belong to an independent group of scientists who have called for more research into the start of the pandemic.

In a letter published in May, they both complained that there was not enough data to determine whether the virus was more likely to spread from a laboratory or to pass to humans following contact with an infected animal outside that installation.

As Bloom was examining the genetic data for the coronavirus that had been released by various research groups, he came across a March 2020 study in a spreadsheet with information on 241 genetic sequences collected by scientists at Wuhan University.

This spreadsheet had been uploaded to an online database called Sequence Playback Archive, administered by the US government’s National Library of Medicine.

But when Bloom searched the database for the Wuhan footage earlier this month, already did not “find an article”.

Puzzled, he returned to the spreadsheet for more clues and threw up a abundant research, quotes the New York newspaper, and found no answer as to why the footage was uploaded to the sequence playback archive and then disappeared.

However, the expert managed to recover 13 of these lost sequences in the cloud and, after combining them with others released from the first coronaviruses, remains hopeful of advancing the construction of the SARS-CoV-2 family tree.

(With information from the EFE)

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