On Friday, Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and public health scientist who regularly posts on social media, shared a shocking discovery regarding emerging research being conducted on the deadly Coronavirus that is plaguing China and many other countries around the world.
Per update #16 from his Twitter thread:
16. UPDATE ON 🦠GENOME 🧬: a very intriguing new paper investigating the aforementioned mystery middle segment w/ “S” spike protein: likely origin from HIV. “Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag” from https://t.co/QAX3usr7vw pic.twitter.com/WeVA948xin
— Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) January 31, 2020
Feigl-Ding linked to website biorxiv.org where an article titled Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag was published:
“We are currently witnessing a major epidemic caused by the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019- nCoV). The evolution of 2019-nCoV remains elusive. We found 4 insertions in the spike glycoprotein (S) which are unique to the 2019-nCoV and are not present in other coronaviruses. Importantly, amino acid residues in all the 4 inserts have identity or similarity to those in the HIV-1 gp120 or HIV-1 Gag. Interestingly, despite the inserts being discontinuous on the primary amino acid sequence, 3D-modelling of the 2019-nCoV suggests that they converge to constitute the receptor binding site…”
The medical doctor continued his thread by pointing out how the authors of the research article mentioned the finding was “unexpectedly” related to genes from the HIV virus:
17. …WHOA- the authors said the finding was “Unexpectedly” related to genes from HIV virus. Notably there were 4 gene insertions (see figure in above post #16). And so, which HIV gene proteins were found in the new #coronarvirus? Gag protein and Gp120- key HIV proteins… pic.twitter.com/epN66WcObj
— Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) January 31, 2020
Next tweet:
18. Notably, in 🦠S 🧬, authors say for HIV🧬insertions: “Gag protein of HIV is involved in host membrane binding, packaging of the virus and for the formation of virus-like particles. Gp120 plays crucial role in recognizing the host cell by binding to the primary receptor CD4”
— Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) January 31, 2020
Feigl-Ding then added a disclaimer asking his readers to “not draw conclusions yet,” but added “evidence suggest(s) that 2 different HIV genes are present in the coronavirus”:
19. Again, these are new express published findings and not peer reviewed yet. Let’s not draw conclusions yet. But evidence suggest that 2 different HIV genes 🧬 are present in the #coronarvirus S gene region (that didn’t map to any other coronavirus, according to other studies).
— Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) January 31, 2020
RELATED: Coronavirus Contains “HIV Insertions”, Stoking Fears Over Artificially Created Bioweapon
Twitter thread link (scroll up to see all of his posts)
UPDATE #1: Popular news website ZeroHedge had its Twitter account suspended shortly after publishing an article about this topic –
UPDATE #2: ZeroHedge was apparently suspended for “harassment.” Read their explanation here.
UPDATE #3: New tweets from Dr. Feigl-Ding –
30) Dear friends, after learning that the original authors have formally retracted yesterday’s “uncanny” titled pre-print article, I believe it is prudent to delete the earlier posts 16-24 pertaining to it. Public health science has never been challenged by both such a fast…
— Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) February 2, 2020
31) …moving epidemic + combined with instant un-peer-reviewed pre-print open publishing of science before. Science is all about cross-checking each other’s experiments, analyses, calculations (nobody is perfect) until a stable theory is reached and we move further forward…
— Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) February 2, 2020
32) This is why it is important to never rush to conclusions and judgement on pre-print articles that aren’t peer reviewed. Even peer reviewed papers are sometimes flawed too, but hence why the need for replication of work by others to further confirm/refute. Normally all this…
— Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) February 2, 2020
33) …is done in the realm of universities and academic conferences. But with such a fast moving 🦠#coronavirus, the normal pace of science is suddenly upturned and the public thirst for information like the R0 or 🧬 of a virus outpaces the time to properly vet all studies.
— Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) February 2, 2020
Main Image Credit: iStock
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