Wuhan Institute of Virology
>The Wuhan Institute of Virology… is a research institute on virology administered by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)… it opened mainland China's first biosafety level 4 (BSL–4) laboratory in 2015.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology
Zhengli Shi
>Prof. Shi is the director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Her group has discovered diverse novel viruses/virus antibodies in bats, including SARS-like coronaviruses
http://archive.md/htH44
Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) proteins of different bat species confer variable susceptibility to SARS-CoV entry.
>Zhengli Shi
>Here, we extended our previous study to ACE2 molecules from seven additional bat species and tested their interactions with human SARS-CoV spike protein using both HIV-based pseudotype and live SARS-CoV infection assays.
http://archive.md/fPAVF
Isolation and characterization of a bat SARS-like coronavirus that uses the ACE2 receptor
>Zheng-Li Shi
>Chinese horseshoe bats are natural reservoirs of SARS-CoV, and that intermediate hosts may not be necessary for direct human infection by some bat SL-CoVs.
http://archive.md/DMlCO
A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence
>Zheng-Li Shi
>Here we examine the disease potential of a SARS-like virus, SHC014-CoV, which is currently circulating in Chinese horseshoe bat populations… we generated and characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone. The results indicate that… a wild-type backbone can efficiently use multiple orthologs of the SARS receptor human angiotensin converting enzyme II (ACE2), replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells and achieve in vitro titers equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV.
http://archive.md/tklSO
Engineered bat virus stirs debate over risky research
>An experiment that created a hybrid version of a bat coronavirus — one related to the virus that causes SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) — has triggered renewed debate over whether engineering lab variants of viruses with possible pandemic potential is worth the risks.
>The researchers created a chimaeric virus, made up of… the backbone of a SARS virus that had been adapted to grow in mice and to mimic human disease. The chimaera infected human airway cells
>“If the virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory,”
http://archive.md/SReX0
A pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin
>Zheng-Li Shi
>we report the identification and characterization of a new coronavirus (2019-nCoV), which caused an epidemic of acute respiratory syndrome in humans in Wuhan, China.
>The sequences are almost identical and share 79.6% sequence identity to SARS-CoV… we show that 2019-nCoV is 96% identical at the whole-genome level to a bat coronavirus.
>Notably, we confirmed that 2019-nCoV uses the same cell entry …(ACE2)—as SARS-CoV.
http://archive.md/A1PEP
Documentary that lays this out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gdd7dtDaYmM