What went on inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid erupted

Re:What went on inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid erupted by dekhn on Monday June 12, 2023 @04:33PM (#36300623)

While many people define gain-of-function in virology as "enhancing existing attributes which would promote virulence", molecular biologists in general are more open to the idea that other functions, such as gene therapy, would also qualify as gain-of-function.

Either way my point was that we actively use a known highly transmissible virus, with some parts removed, under the general assumption that it's safe, and it's been demonstrated to not cause large issues (compared to other problems in gene therapy). I think people should be aware of that and in some sense I am surprised there isn't more attention placed on this practice.

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Re:What went on inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid erupted by tripletao on Monday June 12, 2023 @06:57PM (#36302530)

There's a recording from 2014 where David Relman and Ralph Baric talk about that distinction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw-nR6-4kQQ&t=2466s

I said "gain of function research of concern", which is vague but seems to have become the standard phrase to convey that narrower sense. There's definitely some grey, but the WIV's work was pretty deep in the black.

I'm reading more about lentiviral vectors now, and not totally comforted to see all the ways the earlier generations could regain replication competence. That still seems much less frightening to me than GOFROC, which is deliberately just one containment failure away from a novel pandemic.

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