Covid-19, Sars and Bats Coronaviruses Genomes Peculiar Homologous Rna Sequences

Abstract

We are facing the worldwide invasion of a new coronavirus. This follows several limited outbreaks of related viruses in various locations in a recent past (SARS, MERS). Although the main current objective of researchers is to bring efficient therapeutic and preventive solutions to the global population, we need also to better understand the origin of the newly coronavirus-induced epidemic in order to avoid future outbreaks. The present molecular appraisal is to study by a bio-infomatic approach the facts relating to the virus and itsprecursors. This article shows how 16 fragments (Env Pol and Integrase genes) from different strains, both diversified and very recent, of the HIV1, HIV2 and SIV retroviruses have high percentage of homology into parts of the genome of COVID_19. Moreover each of these elements is made of 18 or more nucleotides and therefore may have a function. They are called Exogenous Informative Elements (EIE).. Among these EIE, 12 are concentrated in a very small region of the COVID-19 genome, length less than 900 bases, i.e. less than 3% of the total length of this genome. In addition, these EIE are positioned in two functional genes of COVID-19: the orf1ab and S spike genes. Here are the two main facts which contribute to our hypothesis of a partially synthetic genome: A contiguous region representing 2.49% of the whole COVID-19 genome of which 40.99% is made up of 12 diverse fragments originating from various strains of HIV SIV retroviruses. Some of these 12 EIE appear concatenated. Notably, the retroviral part of these regions, which consists of 8 elements from various strainsof HIV1, HIV2 and SIV covers a length of 275 contiguous bases of COVID-19. The cumulative length of these 8 HIV/SIV elements represents 200 bases. Consequently, the HIV SIV density rate of this region of COVID-19 is 200/275 = 72.73%.

Understanding the origin of COVID-19 requires to change the paradigm on zoonotic emergence from the spillover to the circulation model

“…The origin of SARS-Cov-2 is still passionately debated since it makes ground for geopolitical confrontations and conspiracy theories besides scientific ones. The first hypothesis is that of a man-made virus raised first by Pradhan and colleagues who claimed to have observed the presence of HIV sequences in SARS-CoV-2, before retraction of the manuscript and then by Perez and Montagnier (2020) . This hypothesis was rebutted by bioinformatic analyses showing that the similarity of those short putative HIV insertions was insufficient to support a common ancestral origin of the sequences ( Liu et al, 2020c ; Xiao et al, 2020b ).…”

LOCO: The 88-million-word language of conspiracy corpus

“…The perceived credibility of epistemic sources is also a function of belief in CTs (Imhoff et al, 2018 ). This makes epistemic authority difficult to evaluate, especially when conspiratorial narratives are promoted by political leaders (Barkun, 2017 ), by scholars in prestigious journals (Wakefield et al, 1998 ), and by Nobel Prize winners (Perez & Montagnier, 2020 ).…”

SARS-CoV-2 and the Missing Link of Intermediate Hosts in Viral Emergence - What We Can Learn From Other Betacoronaviruses

“…The existence of a major virology laboratory (Wuhan Institute of Virology) with a program studying coronaviruses in the city where SARS-CoV-2 was first identified proved to be too large a coincidence for some, subsequently birthing several lab origin hypotheses (14). The first claim is of the virus being of manmade origin involves the observation of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) sequences in the SARS-CoV-2 genome in a now retracted article by Pradhan et al and again in another article (111). These findings were quickly refuted through bioinformatic analyses demonstrating the four short sequences occurred at different times and independent of each other and are insufficient evidence for a common ancestor (112,113).…”