The presence of raccoon dogs in a Wuhan market has been confirmed

Annoying. For months, evolutionary biologist Florence Debare (CNRS, Sorbonne University) has been scouring various genetic databases for clues to samples taken from Huanan Market in Wuhan in early 2020, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

These models are specified A non-peer-reviewed study (Preprint) Uploaded by Team China on February 22, 2022. George Gao, former director of the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDC), and his colleagues concluded that the popular market was not the epitome of an epidemic, but was one. “Booster” Due to the large number of visitors.

Florence Deborah was never convinced by these results, especially since her interpretation was not provided by a figure studded with gray spots. It was these gray spots that helped her express herself. Her observation led her to get her hands on an unprecedented amount of metagenomic data on samples positive for SARS-CoV-2 — taken from stalls, cages, carts, blood on the floor, wastewater, frozen products. , etc. – sometimes featured mammalian DNA. Some, such as the raccoon dog or civet, which can transmit the virus, may have acted as intermediate hosts between the bat, its natural reservoir, and humans.

600 gigabytes of new data

On March 4, Florence Debare found new entries based on Gisaid (Global Initiative for Sharing Avian Influenza Data), a foundation run in Germany. This data, submitted by Pei Pei Liu (CCDC) in June 2022, was unavailable to users until January 30. Florence Debare understood on March 9 that these entries provide access to the downloadable raw data referenced in Gao and his colleagues’ manuscript. He immediately contacted virologists, many of whom had co-authored studies — often controversial — disputing the laboratory spill thesis in favor of a so-called “zoonotic” origin. They will immediately download 600 gigabytes of new data to keep them talking.

This bioinformatics work will capture the presence of several animals, including a raccoon dog, in specimens photographed in a cage in 2014 by virologist Edward Holmes (University of Sydney). The original suspect.

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