The new accused in the Corona murder case; Now the raccoon dogs from the Wuhan market in China are the prime suspects

In February 2022, Chinese scientists published a report on their study of similar samples collected from Huanan market, which found that the tested samples contained the coronavirus; But infected humans and not the animals that were traded there were the source of the spread of the virus.

This group of Chinese researchers, some of whom were affiliated with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, at one point in time sent GISAID raw data about swabs around the market. GISAID is an international repository of genetic sequences of viruses. The New York Times reports that efforts to reach the group of Chinese scientists on Thursday were unsuccessful.

On March 4, 2022, Florence Debar, an evolutionary biologist from the French Center for Scientific Research, noticed the excessive sequence of these data. After this incident, Debar first thought that the mentioned data were new and discarded them; But a week later, after logging back in, he realized they only had a set of raw data.

Since February 2022, after Chinese scientists confirmed the existence of such a virus in their report, virology experts have been waiting for that sequence of raw data from Huanan market. Dr. Debard says he had previously warned other scientists that the new virus may have originated from the Huanan market in Wuhan, China.

Last week, an international team began extracting new genetic data. Michael Werubyan evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona and Christian Andersena virologist at the Scripps Research Institute of California and Edward Holmesa biologist from the University of Sydney, are among the founding members of this team.

One of the samples examined in this study attracted the attention of scientists more than other samples. In 2014, Dr. Holmes took this sample from one of the special stalls in Huanan market. Holmes found that in this stall cages containing raccoon dogs were kept right above the bird cages; That is, in a very suitable environment for the transmission of new viruses.

After examining samples taken from a cart in early 2020, the research team found that the samples contained the genetic material of the virus and a raccoon dog. Stephen Goldstein, a virologist at the University of Utah, worked on the new analysis. He says about this issue: “Relatively quickly, we were able to understand that at least in one of the samples, there are large amounts of raccoon nucleic acid along with the nucleic acid of the virus.” Nucleic acids are the building blocks of genetic information.

Scientists involved in the latest review say that after the international team stumbled upon the new data, they contacted the Chinese researchers who had uploaded the files. This call was made to offer cooperation and to comply with the rules of the online repository; But immediately after that, the mentioned sequences disappeared from the GISAID database. It is not yet clear why these sequences were removed or what was the reason for their removal.

Emphasizing the important point that there is much more data from this market, much of which has never been made public, Dr. Debbar says that the research team sought this data.

Another important issue that scientists point out about the recent analysis is that some of the existing samples contained genetic material from other animals and humans. Angela RasmussenVirologist of the Vaccine and Infectious Diseases Organization of the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, in explaining this issue, says that due to the presence of people in the Huanan market and even the existence of human cases of Covid in this market, it should be expected that human genetic materials are also present in the data.

Dr. Goldstein believes that due to the fact that no infected animals have been discovered so far, it cannot be definitely proved that infected animals were kept in the said stall. According to him, the stability of the genetic material of this virus is so high that it is not known exactly when these materials were deposited in the market.