This is so ignorant. Not “gain of function research”. Here is the actual article:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1995820X22000414
Oh now you did it. You can’t expect FR to actually read the materials do you. Actual science is verboten only hysterical politics is allowed here sir.
Thank you for the actual paper it looks like they were using DNA fragments to tune a PCR test for monkeypox which has been a plague waiting in the wings after smallpox was wiped out. Evolution has a proven track record of filling niches once one is vacated.
Typical China “research”. Learn a technology someone else developed - that most grade school kids could do with a little instruction, and then use it to do something unimaginative, without a novel hypothesis, but with significant negative implications (e.g. altering the genome of a pathogenic virus), and then stick your chest out at meetings: “Look at what I did! I published this! I run an institute!”