More evidence that deliberate human intervention is not needed to explain the origin of the new human coronavirus

A new scientific report (pdf) has just emerged that provides insight on where the pandemic coronavirus strain came from.

The report is about scientific studies of viruses present in Malaysian pangolins (see figures below).

A virus isolated from Malaysian pangolins was found to possess almost identical biological tools as those used by the pandemic strain of human coronavirus for getting into living cells.

These biological tools are parts of a characteristic virus spike protein on the outside of the virus.

The part of the protein tool which does the job --the hook-- is the  portion of the spike that attaches to cells. Scientists refer to this hook as the receptor binding domain (RBD) of the spike protein.

This discovery reinforces a current scientific origin of human coronavirus theory that SARS Coronavirus 2 evolved naturally by the swapping of genetic material between a virus that infects bats and another virus that infects pangolins.

There is no need for a conspiracy theory invoking  deliberate lab experiments being used to start the current coronavirus pandemic.

A naturally occurring pangolin corona virus already has the capability to infect humans because its spike protein has the same hook.

The spike protein long been known to be the part of the virus that attaches to cell  receptors called ACE2 proteins --the latch-- that allow the virus to enter human or animal cells.

The receptor binding domain – RBD – is the hook on the spike protein that attaches to the cell receptor latch called ACE2.

The pangolin coronavirus hook on the spike protein described in this report is essentially identical  to the same hook on the human pandemic virus.

Other parts of these viruses are not identical in the different viruses. This shows that neither the pangolin virus nor the bat virus mentioned in these papers were  immediate precursors of the human outbreak virus strain.

But genetic recombination between viruses of these types can easily explain both the patchwork pattern of differences between the two strains and how the human pandemic virus strain could have evolved in nature.