https://www.scientificamerican.com/...wn-viruses-from-sars-to-the-new-coronavirus1/
How China’s ‘Bat Woman’ Hunted Down Viruses from SARS to the New Coronavirus
Wuhan-based virologist Shi Zhengli has identified dozens of deadly SARS-like viruses in bat caves, and she warns there are more out there
The mysterious patient samples arrived at the Wuhan Institute of Virology at 7 P.M. on December 30, 2019. Moments later Shi Zhengli’s cell phone rang. It was her boss, the institute’s director. The Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention had detected a novel coronavirus in two hospital patients with atypical pneumonia, and it wanted Shi’s renowned laboratory to investigate. If the finding was confirmed, the new pathogen could pose a serious public health threat—because it belonged to the same family of viruses as the one that caused severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), a disease that plagued 8,100 people and killed nearly 800 of them between 2002 and 2003. “Drop whatever you are doing and deal with it now,” she recalls the director saying.
Shi, a virologist who is often called China’s “bat woman” by her colleagues because of her virus-hunting expeditions in bat caves over the past 16 years, walked out of the conference she was attending in Shanghai and hopped on the next train back to Wuhan. “I wondered if [the municipal health authority] got it wrong,” she says. “I had never expected this kind of thing to happen in Wuhan, in central China.” Her studies had shown that the southern, subtropical provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Yunnan have the greatest risk of coronaviruses jumping to humans from animals—particularly bats, a known reservoir. If coronaviruses were the culprit, she remembers thinking, “Could they have come from our lab?”
https://www.reddit.com/r/China_Flu/...s_bat_woman_zhengli_shi_seeking_asylum_in_us/
China’s “bat woman” Zhengli SHI, seeking asylum in US embassy in France. CCP likely done if this is true.
There was a twitter rumor going around in the last 48 hours that Zhengli SHI the chief scientist from the Wuhan institute of virology who used to study the different bat coronavirus, that she escaped China and is currently in Europe, specifically in France with her family seeking asylum and protection in the us consulate there. The same rumor also mentions that she has thousands of documents with her showing that the virus in need come from the lab (though she herself publicly denied this couple of months back when the lab leak runour started spreading likely due to CCP pressure). Since all this is rumor we have to take it with a grain of salt, however if this were true and she essentially becomes and whistleblower and defector from China with information that can prove the criminal negligence (or intentional) by the CCP, this can lead to the fall of the CCP as we know it and radical change to CCP vs the world relations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shi_Zhengli
Shi Zhengli (
simplified Chinese: 石正丽;
traditional Chinese: 石正麗; born 26 May 1964) is a Chinese
virologist who researches
SARS-like coronaviruses of bat origin. Shi directs the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the
Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), a
biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) laboratory located in
Jiangxia District,
Wuhan. In 2017, Shi and her colleague Cui Jie discovered that the
SARS coronavirus likely originated in a population of
bats in a remote region of the
Yunnan.
[1] Shi came to prominence in the popular press as "bat woman" during the
COVID-19 pandemic for her work with bat coronaviruses.
[2] Shi is a member of the Virology Committee of the Chinese Society for Microbiology. She is an editor of the Board of
Virologica Sinica,
[3] the
Chinese Journal of Virology, and the
Journal of Fishery Sciences of China.
Research
In 2005, Shi Zhengli and colleagues found that bats are the natural reservoir of SARS-like coronaviruses.
[7][8][9] To determine the mechanism by which SARS may have spilled over into humans, Shi led a research team that studied binding of
spike proteins of both natural and chimaeric SARS-like coronaviruses to
ACE2 receptors in human, civet and horseshoe bat cells.
[10][11] In 2014, Shi Zhengli collaborated on additional
gain-of-function experiments led by Ralph S. Baric of the
University of North Carolina, which showed that two critical mutations that the
MERS coronavirus possesses allow it to bind to the human ACE2 receptor,
[12] and that SARS had the potential to re-emerge from coronaviruses circulating in bat populations in the wild.
[13] In 2014, the US
National Institutes of Health placed a moratorium on SARS, MERS, and influenza gain-of-function studies, due to concerns about the risks vs. benefits of such research,
[14][15] lifting this moratorium in 2017 after the creation of a new regulatory framework.
[16] Shi Zhengli and her colleague Cui Jie led a team that sampled thousands of
horseshoe bats throughout China. In 2017, they published their findings, indicating that all the genetic components of the
SARS coronavirus existed in a bat population in a cave in Yunnan province.
[1] According to their study, while no single bat harbored the exact strain of virus that caused the
2002-2004 SARS outbreak, genetic analysis showed that different strains often mix, suggesting that the human version likely emerged from a combination of the strains present in the bat population.
[1]
During the
COVID-19 pandemic, Shi and other Institute scientists formed an expert group to research
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).
[17][18] In February 2020, researchers led by Shi Zhengli published an article in
Nature titled, "A pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin", finding that SARS-CoV-2 is in the same family as SARS, and that it has 96.2%
genome overlap with the most closely related known coronavirus.
[19] In February 2020, her team published a paper in
Cell Research showing that
remdesivir and
chloroquine inhibited the virus
in vitro, and applied for a patent for the drug in China on behalf of the WIV.
[20][21][22] The granting of this patent by China raised concerns about
intellectual property rights in an international context.
[23] Shi co-authored a paper labelling the virus as the first
Disease X.
[24]
In February 2020, the
South China Morning Post reported that Shi's decade-long work to build up one of the world's largest databases of bat-related viruses gave the scientific community a "head start" in understanding the virus.
[25] The
SCMP also reported that Shi was the focus of personal attacks in Chinese social media who claimed the WIV was the source of the virus, leading Shi to post: "I swear with my life, [the virus] has nothing to do with the lab", and when asked by the
SCMP to comment on the attacks, Shi responded: "My time must be spent on more important matters".
[25] In a March 2020 interview with
Scientific American, where she was called China's "Bat Woman", Shi said "Bat-borne coronaviruses will cause more outbreaks", and "We must find them before they find us."
[2] According to an April 2020 opinion column by
Josh Rogin in the
Washington Post, U.S. officials sent to the WIV in 2018 had dispatched two
diplomatic cables back to Washington which "warned about safety and management weaknesses at the WIV lab" and "also warn[ed] that the lab's work on bat coronaviruses and their potential human transmission represented a risk of a new SARS-like
pandemic," noting that they had met with Shi Zhengli.
[26] Leading virologists have disputed the idea of SARS-CoV-2 leaking from a lab.
[27][28] Peter Daszak of the
EcoHealth Alliance, which studies emerging infectious diseases, has noted estimates that 1–7 million people in Southeast Asia who live or work in proximity to bats are infected each year with bat coronaviruses.
[27][28] In an interview with
Vox, Daszak comments, "There are probably half a dozen people that do work in those labs. So let's compare 1 million to 7 million people a year to half a dozen people; it's just not logical."
[28]
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...-not-be-source-novel-virus-spreading-globally
http://www.whiov.cas.cn/105341/201911/t20191118_5438006.html
Postdoctoral Recruitment Notice of Zhou Peng Discipline Group of Wuhan Virus Research Institute
Source: Published: 2019-11-18 【Font Size: Tai Zhong small ]
First, Job Status: Postdoctoral 1-2 name ( research direction: the unique bat innate immune mechanisms )
Second, job requirements:
· (1) Has obtained or is about to obtain a doctorate in life science / biomedical related fields;
· (2) Practical and rigorous style, strong independent scientific research ability and teamwork spirit;
· (3) Strong English communication and writing skills, and published research papers in international mainstream academic journals;
· (4) Those with relevant experience in cell biology, immunology, genomics, etc. are preferred;
3. Salary and benefits:
· (A) annual salary postdoctoral 18-25 Wan (pre-tax); while a provident fund and social security accounts.
· (2) According to the performance of postdoctoral personnel during the station, enjoy the scientific research rewards of the research group and the research institute. Those who have obtained support from relevant levels of funds, " Boxin Plan " and " Joint Funding " may be implemented according to regulations.
· (3) The personnel, salary, insurance, and welfare of the hired personnel shall be implemented with reference to the relevant regulations of the State and the Chinese Academy of Sciences on institutions, and the rules and regulations formulated by me.
4. Career development:
Wuhan Virus Research Institute attaches great importance to the professional development of post-doctoral talents. Postdoctoral personnel can apply for the identification of job titles during the station (refer to the relevant regulations of the personnel department for specific implementation), and outstanding postdoctoral personnel can directly apply for associate research fellows and other scientific research positions. Discipline groups and research institutes / national key laboratories will provide postdoctoral scholars with sufficient domestic and international academic exchange and training opportunities, support the application of various funds and talent projects, support career development, and help grow into excellent young scientific research talents.
5. Material requirements:
Qualified applicants are requested to send materials such as personal resumes, electronic texts of representative papers, research / work ideas, and academic certificates to:
Teacher Zhou in the subject group,
peng.zhou @ wh.iov.cn; Teacher Gao in the Organization and Personnel Department,
[email protected] . In the subject line of the email, please indicate " Apply for Zhou Peng Group XXX " . From the date of this recruitment announcement, anyone who meets the job requirements can sign up and recruit until the candidates are suitable.
PI Introduction:
Zhou Peng, Ph.D., is a researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the team leader of bat virus infection and immunity. In 2010 , he obtained a Ph.D. from Wuhan Virus Research Institute, and later worked on bat virus and immunology research in Australia and Singapore. In 2009 , it was the first in the world to start the study of the immune mechanism of long-term bat carrying and spreading viruses. So far , more than 30 SCI articles have been published , including the first and corresponding authors of Nature , Cell Host Microbe and PNAS . At present, the bat virus and immunology research continues to be carried out, and has received support from the National "Youqing" fund, the Chinese Academy of Sciences pilot project, and the Ministry of Science and Technology major project.
The main research directions of the research group:
Taking bat as the research object, answer the molecular mechanism that can coexist with Ebola and SARS- related coronavirus for a long time without disease, and its relationship with flight and longevity. Virology, immunology, cell biology and various omics are used to compare the differences between humans and other mammals.
https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?as_q=&num=10&btnG=Search+Scholar&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_occt=any&as_sauthors="Xing-Yi+Ge"&as_publication=&as_ylo=&as_yhi=&as_allsubj=all&hl=en
Coincidence?
