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To: yesthatjallen
They show that US researchers seeking funding for work to engineer 'spike proteins' – making it easier for the bat viruses to infect human cells – misled the authorities about the risks of the experiments in order to maximise the chance of receiving grants.

And what were the experiments actually showing?

The researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology used a human coronavirus and exchanged its spike proteins for spike proteins from bat coronaviruses. The purpose of this was to determine whether bat coronaviruses have the potential to infect humans. If the human virus still functioned with a bat virus spike protein, that means the bat virus the spike came from could potentially infect humans.

There is no "gain-of-function" here. Taking a virus that infects humans and seeing if it will still infect humans if one of its proteins has been exchanged for a protein from an animal virus is not "gain-of-function."

I see the term "gain-of-function" thrown around a lot by conspiracy theorists. I wonder if any of them can actually explain, scientifically, what "gain-of-function" research is? In the words of Inigo Montoya, "You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means."

14 posted on 01/06/2024 9:22:38 PM PST by exDemMom (Dr. exDemMom, infectious disease and vaccines research specialist.)
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To: exDemMom

Then what did that term mean when Anthonyt Fauci invented it and used it, in that same context?


19 posted on 01/07/2024 1:25:50 PM PST by OKSooner ("You won't like what comes after America." - Leonard Cohen.)
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