A forthcoming Australian scientific study concludes that the coronavirus causing the global pandemic contains unique properties suggesting it was manipulated in a Chinese laboratory and was not the result of a natural occurrence.<\/p>\n

Five scientists who conducted the study discovered an unusual ability of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, as the pathogen behind COVID-19 is called, to easily infect humans.<\/p>\n

The scientists said there is no sign so far that the virus can be found in other animals, including bats or the exotic wildlife sold for fresh meat at a market in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the virus was first identified and where China maintains a major laboratory studying such viruses.<\/p>\n

The preliminary report of the study, which is now being peer-reviewed, is based on computer modeling of the virus\u2019 ability to infect various animals, including humans. It was published May 13 on the Cornell University website arXiv.org, which is used for discussion of pre-publication papers.<\/p>\n

Nikolai Petrovsky, the lead researcher, said his team suspects human manipulation in Wuhan because of the unmatched ability of the virus\u2019 protruding spike to infect human cells.<\/p>\n

The virus\u2019 binding strength for human cells \u201cfar exceeds\u201d similar properties for infecting other animals, he said in a statement on the forthcoming report.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis, plus the fact that no corresponding virus has been found to exist in nature, leads to the possibility that COVID-19 is a human-created virus,\u201d said Mr. Petrovsky, a professor at the College of Medicine and Public Health at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is therefore entirely plausible that the virus was created in the biosecurity facility in Wuhan by selection on cells expressing human ACE2, a laboratory that was known to be cultivating exotic bat coronaviruses at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

ACE2 is the acronym for angiotensin-converting enzyme 2, which is on cell surfaces. The enzyme is the entry point the coronavirus uses to infect organisms and spread.<\/p>\n

Human lung cells contain ACE2 receptors that have been shown to be key targets of the SARS-CoV-2.<\/p>\n

A laboratory-treated coronavirus also could have escaped the facility through an accidental infection of a staff member who then visited the Wuhan wild animal market, Mr. Petrovsky said. Other potential sources include inappropriate disposal of medical waste at a Wuhan laboratory or transmission from a cat or other animal that came into contact with infected waste.<\/p>\n

Mr. Petrovsky said the research team believes the quick evolution of the coronavirus and its unique ability to infect humans are either \u201ca remarkable coincidence or a sign of human intervention.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying denied again this month that the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which houses China\u2019s high-security laboratory studying pathogens, was the source of the outbreak. The head of the Wuhan laboratory has also said she is convinced after a review that her lab played no role in the virus\u2019 spread.<\/p>\n

Another Chinese Foreign Ministry official, Zhao Lijian, suggested that the U.S. Army brought the virus to China. President Trump and other top officials angrily denied that accusation.<\/p>\n

The Australian study contradicts other scientists\u2019 assertions that there is no evidence the virus originated in a Chinese laboratory or that it is the result of laboratory bioengineering.<\/p>\n

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a key adviser to Mr. Trump on the pandemic, has dismissed any suggestion that the virus came from a Chinese laboratory.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and what\u2019s out there now, [the scientific evidence] is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated,\u201d he told National Geographic this month.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Highly adapted\u2019 pathogen<\/p>\n

The forthcoming study, however, concludes that the binding energy of the virus\u2019 \u201cspike\u201d protein \u2014 the crownlike protrusions surrounding the surface of the round microbe \u2014 is highest for humans and greater than all other species tested, including bats, which have been widely targeted as the likely original source.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis indicates that SARS-CoV-2 is a highly adapted human pathogen,\u201d the Australian report said.<\/p>\n

The team analyzed spike protein binding of the virus on a range of other animals, including pangolins, civets, mice, hamsters, cats, dogs, snakes, horses, tigers and cows.<\/p>\n

\u201cOverall, the data indicates that SARS-CoV-2 is uniquely adapted to infect humans, raising important questions as to whether it arose in nature by a rare chance event or whether its origins might lie elsewhere,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n

Jonathan J. Couey, a research assistant professor of neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh, said he agrees with the Australian findings.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnderstanding the exact origin of this virus is vital to ensure that all scientific and medical data are interpreted correctly by policymakers and health care professionals alike,\u201d Mr. Couey said.<\/p>\n

However, he said, debate on the laboratory origin of the virus has been stymied by scientists opposed to even considering the possibility.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeveral scientists with obvious conflicts of interest have been permitted to go on the record denying that it would be possible to generate such a virus in a laboratory and stating specifically that the sequence of SARS-CoV-2 would never have been chosen by any \u2018gene jockey,\u2019\u201d he said in an email.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth of these denials are not genuine scientific rebuttals, but rather semantic pseudo-denials formulated by some of those most closely tied to the funding of these [gain of function] research lines.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGain-of-function research\u201d is laboratory work to increase the ability of pathogens to cause disease. It is carried out to study pandemics and how to respond to them.<\/p>\n

U.S. investigation<\/p>\n

Research institutions and U.S. intelligence agencies are investigating the origin of the virus, which has now infected nearly 5 million people worldwide and is blamed for at least 323,000 deaths. The 106,000 new cases of infections recorded Tuesday was the most in a single day since the outbreak began, World Health Organization officials said in Geneva.<\/p>\n

U.S. intelligence agencies say they agree with a \u201cwide scientific consensus\u201d that the virus was not man-made or genetically modified, according to an April 30 statement by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. But public and private researchers have said it is impossible to dismiss the possibility of an accidental leak from the Wuhan laboratory of what became the COVID-19 strain.<\/p>\n

The spy agencies are studying emerging information and intelligence \u201cto determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals, or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan,\u201d the ODNI said in an unusual public statement.<\/p>\n

Knowing the origin of the virus could prove critical to finding vaccines and treatments and responding to future outbreaks, researchers say.<\/p>\n

The Australian study is the second scientific paper to suggest laboratory manipulation played a part.<\/p>\n

A group of Indian scientists published a paper on Jan. 31 that found the new coronavirus contained four insertions to the spike protein that are unique to SARS-CoV-2 and not found in other coronaviruses. The features, they said, are similar to those found in the virus known as HIV.<\/p>\n

Those scientists concluded that similar structures are \u201cunlikely to be fortuitous in nature.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Indian paper was withdrawn under pressure from China, but the scientists involved refused to repudiate their research and promised to publish their findings eventually.<\/p>\n

Mr. Petrovsky, who is also research director for Vaxine Pty Ltd., a biotechnology company based in Bedford Park, South Australia, said the source of the virus remains a vitally important question.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile COVID-19 has close similarities to SARS and other bat viruses, no natural virus matching to COVID-19 has been found in nature despite an intensive search to find its origins,\u201d he said. \u201cThis raises the very legitimate question of whether the COVID-19 virus might be the result of human intervention.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like other scientists who studied the virus, the Australian team did not find easily recognizable artificial gene inserts that would signal virus engineering. Mr. Petrovsky said there are ways to manipulate viruses without such inserts.<\/p>\n

For example, laboratory technicians could take a bat coronavirus that is not infectious to humans and force its evolution by culturing the virus with cells that have the human receptor.<\/p>\n

That process was used to culture SARS coronaviruses in laboratories.<\/p>\n

The result would be that \u201cyou can force the bat virus to adapt to infect human cells via mutations in its spike protein,\u201d Mr. Petrovsky said.<\/p>\n

Laboratory development of viruses also can create other random mutations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe result of these experiments is a virus that is highly virulent in humans but is sufficiently different that it no longer resembles the original bat virus,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Since those mutations would be acquired randomly in a laboratory, there would be no signature of bioengineering \u201cbut this is clearly a virus still created by human intervention.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Chinese government initially said the virus appeared to originate in the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan but later changed its official version to say the origin is something for scientists to study.<\/p>\n

Beijing initially opposed international calls for an investigation into how the disease outbreak began but this week said it would support an independent WHO probe of the handling of the disease outbreak at an unspecified date.<\/p>\n

Critics say Chinese secrecy has prevented scientists from learning about the virus.<\/p>\n

However, \u201cthe nature of this event and its proximity to a high-risk biosecurity facility at the epicenter of the outbreak demands a full and independent international inquiry to ascertain whether a virus of this kind of COVID-19 was being cultured in the facility and might have been accidentally released,\u201d Mr. Petrovsky said.<\/p>\n