Researchers mutated a coronavirus and developed a new virus, which proved lethal in the mice on which it was tested.
- A Chinese research team modified a coronavirus and developed a strain of the virus that was 100% lethal in mice.
- This virus, called GX_P2V, was administered to genetically modified mice.
- This study, which has not yet been published, worries the scientific community because of the risks of spreading this virus in the environment.
During recent work, Chinese researchers revealed that they had experimented with a mutant strain of coronavirus that proved 100% fatal in mice. News that shocked the scientific community, which fears that such a study could trigger a new pandemic.
Severe brain infection could be cause of death of mice
This virus, called GX_P2V, was administered to genetically modified mice. The rodents have been “humanized”, that is to say they have been modified to express a protein present in humans. The objective was to evaluate how this virus, resulting from a modified coronavirus, could react in humans. In total, eight of the mice infected with the pathogen died within eight days, which was called “surprisingly rapid” by the researchers.
High levels of viral load were also detected in the brains and eyes of mice. To scientists, this suggests that the virus, although related to Covid-19, multiplies and spreads in the body in a unique way, which explains why the mice quickly became ill. After inoculation with the virus, the subjects lost a lot of weight, could no longer move and their eyes turned white. “Severe brain infection during the later stages of infection may be the main cause of death in these mice”noted the Chinese team.
A study deemed “totally scientifically useless” and dangerous
Several members of the scientific community have called for research to be stopped due to the risks of the spread of such a virus in the environment. “This is a terrible study, totally useless scientifically. I don’t see anything interesting to be gained from the forced infection of a bizarre race of humanized mice with a random virus. Conversely, I can understand how can this kind of thing go wrong…”, Professor François Balloux, an infectious disease expert at University College London, pointed out on X.
An opinion shared by Professor Richard Ebright, chemist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick (United States). “The preprint does not specify the level of biosafety and biosafety precautions used for the research (…) The absence of this information raises the worrying possibility that some or all of this research, such as the research in Wuhan in 2016 -2019 which likely caused the Covid-19 pandemic, was carried out recklessly without the containment and minimum biosafety practices essential for research, with pathogens likely to cause a pandemic”he warned.
