One of such studies that was brought to the notice of Fauci was a research paper by some scientists from India. In January last year, researchers from Kusuma School of Biological Sciences in IIT Delhi and Acharya Narendra Dev College under Delhi University had published a paper, where they had found that the spike glycoprotein (S) of SARS-CoV-2 had four insertions which are not found in any other Coronavirus, and the insertions are similar to those found in HIV virus. The study had raised that possibility that SARS-CoV-2 may have been bio-engineered using the existing Coronavirus and HIV virus.

https://www.opindia.com/2021/06/indian-scientists-had-found-unique-insertions-in-covid-19-virus-genome/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

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As this splitting of the glycoprotein in SARS-CoV-2 is unique to it, the Indian researchers wanted to study how this evolution happened. To do this study, they compared the spike glycoprotein sequences of the SARS-CoV-2 with SARS-CoV, and analysed the difference in them. On careful examination of the sequence alignment, they found that the SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein contained 4 insertions, or 4 segments that are not found in the earlier less infectious forms of Coronavirus.

The four insertions found in the study are, GTNGTKR, HKNNKS, GDSSSG and QTNSPRRA.

After finding this, they then studied all available full-length sequences of the virus found in human bodies, and they found that the insertions were present in all of them. But most importantly, the found that these segments were not there in the spike glycoprotein sequence of the same virus found in bats.

When they further analysed these 4 segments to know its possible origin, they found that all four them match with segments in Human immunodeficiency Virus-1 (HIV-1) proteins. The first 3 segments match with segments of amino acid residues in HIV-1 gp120, while the fourth segment matches with HIV-1 Gag. Among the four, the first two are 100% matches, while the rest two have some gaps. These proteins are critical for the viruses to identify and latch on to their host cells and for assembly of new viruses.

According to the researchers, such matches of proteins in both SARS-CoV-2 and HIV-1 viruses can’t be random. They also say that as the segments were not there in the same virus found in bats or all other forms of Coronavirus, it is very startling, as it is quite unlikely for a virus to have acquired such unique changes naturally in a short duration of time. It may be noted that it is claimed that the virus jumped to humans from bats, either directly or through an intermediary animal.