Six dangerous viruses created in the laboratory

There is no evidence that the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 either escaped from a lab in Wuhan. But several ultra-secure laboratories actually handle dangerous viruses, and even go so far as to create them voluntarily for their scientific experiments. Experiments that are debated because of the risk of bioterrorism or escape in nature but which, according to their authors, are on the contrary necessary to anticipate the next epidemics.

But all virus are not harmful to mankind: some are used in vaccines, fight cancer cells or kill dangerous bacteria.

A deadly hybrid of the bird flu virus

In 2013, Chinese doctors announced in the journal Science to have made a hybrid virus from virus strains H5N1 and H1N1. The first, responsible for avian flu, is very dangerous for humans but not very transmissible to humans. The second, on the other hand very contagious, is at the origin of the devastating flu pandemic of 2009-2010. In other words, the mixture is potentially explosive. The team’s objective, however, started from a laudable intention, supposed to prevent the next global pandemics by detecting future viruses likely to emerge. But this approach also arouses the fears of the scientific community. In 2011, researchers from the laboratory at the Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam (Netherlands) had given up publicly publishing their article explaining how they had created an H5N1 virus.

The poliomyelitis virus reconstructed by genetics

It is one of the first synthetic viruses reconstructed by scientists: in 2002, researchers at New York University made the virus from poliomyelitis from scratch, assembling sequences genetic gleaned from data base freely accessible, then converting theDNA in RNA thanks to a enzyme. An applicable method to any virus “, had then explained Diane Griffin, main author of the study published in the journal Science. The infectious agent proved to be just as lethal to human cells as the original virus. The poliovirus is however one of the least complex at the genetic level, which explains why it was one of the first to be synthesized.

Smallpox virus for $100,000

Canadian virologists succeeded in 2017 in reconstructing an orthopoxvirus close to that of smallpox, a disease that humanity has taken decades to eradicate and which has caused more than 300 million deaths in the 20th century alone.^and century. All they needed was $100,000 and a few ingredients ordered on Internet to succeed in creating a strain of this virus that fortunately only affects horses. Corn, according to scientists, it would be quite possible to recreate the real smallpox virus with the same means. The research, which was intended to improve the current vaccine against smallpox, had however raised concern in the scientific community about the risks of bioterrorism associated with the creation of this new virus.

SARS 2.0, an ultra-resistant hybrid of SARS 2003

Thirteen years after theemergence of SARS in 2003, a team of scientists published in NatureMedicine, how to use a virus chimerical called CoV-SHC014, adapted from a virus from bat to infect human cells. Ralph Baric, professor of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina and lead author of the study, then said that this mutant strain was able ” resist all vaccines and immunotherapy “. “ If this virus escaped, no one could predict the trajectory “, was then worried in Nature Simon Wain-Hobson, virologist at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. Ironically, the researchers’ goal was to help develop a vaccine against ” as yet unidentified viruses “. Eventually, another version of SARS will cause the pandemic unprecedented of 2020.

A highly pathogenic bovine virus

First detected in England in 2012, the Schmallenberg virus (SBV) affects ruminants (cattle and sheep) and results in fever, a diarrhea severe and spontaneous abortions. In 2013, it actively circulated in most European countries, causing significant losses in farms. This RNA virus of the family Orthobunyavirus does not infect humans, but other viruses of the same genus, such as Umber virus, it is transmissible to humans and can cause encephalitis. In 2013, researchers at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, made several synthetic versions of the SBV more or less virulent by manipulating its genetic code, in order to study its characteristics to produce a vaccine. However, there is a risk with such experiments of producing a mutation that would allow the virus to cross the barrier ofspecies.

A synthetic virus that kills bacteria

An artificial virus perfectly similar to a natural virus was created in 2018 by a team ofUniversity College from London, who published his instructions for use in the journal NatureCommunications. The virus, which only attacks bacteria, attaches itself to the cell and pierces small holes in its membrane, causing the loss of the cell’s contents, then the death of the bacteria “in a few seconds”. A research aimed at fight antibiotic resistant bacteria, the researchers said. These particularly aggressive viruses could also be used as a tool for gene editing in human cells, given that they have the ability to enter them like natural viruses. It would still be necessary to study its precise effects, because certain bacteria are vital for our organism.