Andersen, K.G., Rambaut, A., Lipkin, W.I., Holmes, E.C. and Garry, R.F. (2020). The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2. Nature Medicine, [online] 26(450–452). Available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9.
Abstract: SARS-CoV-2 is the seventh coronavirus known to infect humans; SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 can cause severe disease, whereas HKU1, NL63, OC43 and 229E are associated with mild symptoms6. Here we review what can be deduced about the origin of SARS-CoAn analysis of public genome sequence data from SARS-CoV-2 and related viruses found no evidence that the virus was made in a laboratory or otherwise engineered.V-2 from comparative analysis of genomic data. We offer a perspective on the notable features of the SARS-CoV-2 genome and discuss scenarios by which they could have arisen. Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.