Coronavirus as an infection has already succeeded in affecting the entire globe. Realising its future prospects, various countries are now busy tracing its origin. Controversy exists regarding its origin as to whether it is due to a lab leak incident or just a natural infection.
Shi Zhengli, the head of China’s Wuhan virology lab, also known as the ‘batwoman’, and an expert from the University of North Carolina in the US, in a paper published in 2015 already indicated the dangers of their gain-of-function experiment on a novel coronavirus that could infect human cells, sources mentioned. They did a research where they use mice as a subject and inserted protein from Chinese rufous horseshoe bat into the molecular structure of the SARS virus from 2002 for creating a new infectious pathogen and findings of this research were also published in Scientific journal Nature Medicine.
Now while searching the origin of coronavirus, attention has again shifted to the Batwoman Shi Zhengli. Her research on another virus RaTG13 based on samples from bat cave in 2012 has been seen as significant to inquest the origin of SARS-COV-2- the reason behind Covid-19.
With a “Master Thesis”, the Pune based Indian scientist couple, Dr Manali Rahalkar and Dr Rahul Bahulikar, also tried to show what might be going on at Wuhan Institute of Virology and to establish why the lab leak theory might be true. They acknowledged RaTG13, found by Shi Zhengli, to be 96% similar to that of SARS-COV-2. In her research Dr Rahalkar came to know about an incident at Mojiang Province of china where in 2012 a group of miners worked in a bat cave, out of whom 3 died and all of them showed symptoms similar to what covid patients are showing today. The incident is associated with Zhengli’s research that tries to establish a close relation between RaTG13 and SARS-COV-2.
As the origin of SARS-COV-2 has become controversial, the proper origin to SARS-COV-2 will be noticeable in upcoming days.
