zlacker

>>BellLa+(OP)
1. There is no viral backbone anyone knows of which would have been used in this research

2. There is no spike protein anyone knows of which would have been used in this research

3. The PRRAR furin cleavage site is not one humans would have tried it is unlike any other known furin cleavage sites in coronaviruses

4. There are now many known related sarbecoviruses which have been found with furin cleavage sites

5. Furin cleavage sites have independently evolved in multiple different branches of coronaviruses, probably a dozen times that we know of now.

6. The furin cleavage site is short and can easily happen through recombination with another virus due to coinfection.

7. This is very likely what happened due to infection with the SARS-CoV-2 ancestor and an HKU9-like virus.

It is not particularly suspicious that the thing which we were worried about happening and causing a zoonotic spillover event is the thing which actually happened.

>>lamont+A51
There's nothing in that list that argues against SARS-CoV-2—and its spike protein and furin cleavage site in particular—being produced by serial passage through any of a variety of cell lines expressing human ACE-2.

It does seem unlikely that the SARS-CoV-2 genome, or spike protein, or even just a small segment including the furin cleavage site, was synthesized. Although without knowing what protein folding modeling capabilities and synthesis capabilities the WIV had, who knows for sure?