Coronavirus: Key Genetic Sequence for Furin Cleavage Site Patented by Moderna in 2016

In a strange twist in the investigation into the origins of the virus, it has been discovered that a key genetic sequence in the virus – one which codes for the unique furin cleavage site, which helps make the virus highly transmissible in humans – was patented by Moderna in 2016, though for an unrelated purpose. MailOnline has the story.

Fresh suspicion that Covid may have been tinkered with in a lab emerged today after scientists found genetic material owned by Moderna in the virus’s spike protein.

They identified a tiny snippet of code that is identical to part of a gene patented by the vaccine maker three years before the pandemic.   

It was discovered in SARS-CoV-2’s unique furin cleavage site, the part that makes it so good at infecting people and separates it from other coronaviruses.

The structure has been one of the focal points of debate about the virus’s origin, with some scientists claiming it could not have been acquired naturally.  

The international team of researchers suggest[s] the virus may have mutated to have a furin cleavage site during experiments on human cells in a lab.

They claim there is a one-in-three-trillion chance Moderna’s sequence randomly appeared through natural evolution. 

But there is some debate about whether the match is as rare as the study claims, with other experts describing it as a “quirky” coincidence rather than a “smoking gun”. 

SARS-CoV-2 is the only coronavirus of its type with a furin cleavage site, which is coded by a sequence of 12 ‘letters’ and which allows its spike protein to be activated by a common enzyme called furin, improving its ability to spread between human cells. In the study in Frontiers in Virology, the researchers compared Covid’s genetic sequence to millions of sequenced proteins in an online database. They found that the virus shares a sequence of 19 ‘letters’, including the 12 for the furin cleavage site, with a genetic sequence owned by Covid mRNA vaccine-maker Moderna, which filed the patent in February 2016 as part of its cancer research division. The patented sequence is part of a gene called MSH3 that affects how damaged cells repair themselves in the body. 

The researchers, led by Dr. Balamurali Ambati from the University of Oregon, write that the matching code may have originally been introduced to the SARS-CoV-2 genome through infected human cells expressing the MSH3 gene.

This might seem to be a smoking gun for a lab origin. However, the Mail quotes Professor Lawrence Young, a virologist at Warwick University, who says the finding is interesting but not significant enough to suggest lab manipulation.

We’re talking about a very, very, very small piece made up of 19 nucleotides. Sometimes these things happen fortuitously, sometimes it’s the result of convergent evolution (when organisms evolve independently to have similar traits to adapt to their environment). It’s a quirky observation but I wouldn’t call it a smoking gun because it’s too small. It doesn’t get us any further with the debate about whether Covid was engineered.

Dr. Simon Clarke, a Microbiologist at Reading University, was likewise sceptical that the find was as rare as the study claims.

There can only be a certain number of [genetic combinations within] furin cleavage sites. They function like a lock and key in the cell, and the two only fit together in a limited number of combinations.  So it’s an interesting coincidence but this is surely entirely coincidental.

Back in December when the discovery first surfaced, Bioinformatics Consultant Moreno Colaiacovo explained on Twitter why he too thought it a coincidence.

Someone found in a Moderna patent from 2017 a short nucleotide sequence that is identical to the one encoding for the furin cleavage site in SARS-CoV-2. While this may seem suspicious at first sight, I’ll try to explain why there’s ‘nothing to see here’.

First of all, the nucleotide sequence is really there. It is located in sequence 11652 from patent US 9587003, position 2733-2751 (reverse strand). The Genbank ID is KH664781.

The Moderna patent covers “modified polynucleotides for the production of oncology-related proteins and peptides”. In other words, these are RNA molecules that are used in cancer therapy, and were modified in order to improve the efficacy of treatment.

Sequence 11652 is annotated as “artificial”, however if we analyse it using BlastX, we find an almost perfect full-length match with NP_002430.3 (MSH3), which is a human protein involved in DNA repair. Clearly it makes sense, since the patent deals with cancer therapy.

Moreover, if we translate the sequence using a tool like ExPASy translate, we notice that the short sequence does not encode for PRRAR in this protein, but rather YVPAE (which is not a furin cleavage site). (The translation is from 5′ to 3′ in frame 1.)

In conclusion, despite the name ‘Moderna’, this sequence has nothing to do with furin cleavage sites, vaccines or coronaviruses. It is just an RNA molecule encoding for a human protein that, by chance, has a short stretch of nucleotides identical to SARS-CoV-2.

Still, interesting coincidence…

The Mail piece is worth reading in full.