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COVID spreads in China

Unexpected Elements

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Is This a Progenitor of SARS-CoV-2?

This virus is as close as the Laos-backed viruses to human SARS-CoV-2. It's not in other parts of the genome because it's got this hybrid recombinant history and some bits of it are SARS-1-like. But in that particular bit that it's very close, we're maybe talking, I don't know, maybe 10, five, 10 years of divergent still from SARS- CoV-2 itself. That receptor binding domain is basically out there in nature. These animal viruses are locked and loaded ready to go. They could infect human cells now.

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