By JOHN RICHARD SCHROCK
Where did the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 come from? Several research biochemists conducted analyses trying to relate the gene sequences of this virus with the vast number of host genetic sequences that have been posted in online databanks.
But it was a surprise when, on Jan. 22, barely three weeks after China had reported the unusual pneumonia-like new infection to the WHO, and only 10 days after the genome of the virus had been released by China researchers, five co-authors published their analysis stating that the new virus had transferred from bats to humans through an intermediate animal: snakes! Their paper “Cross-species transmission of the newly identified coronavirus 2019-nCoV” was published in the Journal of Medical Virology. They based their conclusion on the coronavirus genetic information having the “most similar codon usage bias with snakes.” This conclusion was soon dismissed by the wider science community. These researchers may have been good at biochemistry but apparently knew little about snakes.
On April 14, in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, a researcher from the University of Ottawa in Canada published his own investigation and claimed dogs were the intermediate host. He had scanned the genetic code of SARS-CoV-2 for the number of times cytosine is followed by guanine and deduced that it contains fewer such sites, ultimately pointing towards dogs having been the likely intermediate animal that would place evolutionary pressure on the virus to shed these sites. However, only a few cases of this disease have appeared in dogs and they do not appear to be contagious to humans. Simply, the biology does not back up the molecular mathematics.
Meanwhile, a so-called “documentary” published by the Epoch Times (a paper that articulates Falun Gong views, used published papers on coronavirus genomes to locate one similarity related to SARS and used this to charge that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was a biowarfare facility. But one molecular similarity proves nothing, you don’t publish bioweaponry in international journals open to all to read, and Western virology researchers were continually visiting and working in that lab. This was nonsense.
But the first two cases reveal today’s science problem of both overspecialization and problems in journal peer review.
As a new professor long ago, I sat among faculty at our regular seminars where guest scientists presented new research. This speaker elaborated a newfound metabolic pathway for a process in the liver. During the question session, I asked “What animal was this liver from?”
“I don’t know. Some sort of bird, maybe,” he replied.
I glanced at my faculty colleagues who likewise were raising their eyebrows. They also knew that it can make a big difference which critter you are working with. Livers and their pathways may differ for a human, a bird, a snake or a dog. He was a “biochemist” but there was not much biology in his chemistry. He should have either been trained broader, or partnered with a biologist. And this is the problem with the snake and dog papers above that made claims beyond their evidence. Because such work can cause unnecessary worry among pet communities and also fuel conspiracy theories, China is imposing more review of such origin-of-virus research. Although the West characterizes it as censorship, it is really a matter of better peer review.
Did those first two papers undergo adequate peer review? How were they able to make their assertions about snakes or dogs being intermediate hosts of this new virus when they lacked actual direct support by research in those animals? There are “predatory journals” where peer review does not exist, or journals that accept the suggestions of the author(s) for peer reviewers. But these are legitimate journals. Were their biochemist reviewers all-chemistry-and-no-biology?
I recently read an article on monarch butterflies in the respected journal Science that had absolutely no data to support its speculations. Where was the adequate peer review.
Unfortunately, across the Western world, some “biology” departments lack zoologists, botanists and other organismic biologists; their faculty are mostly chemists. Maybe getting butterfly biology wrong is no big deal. But getting the intermediate host of this coronavirus wrong—is a big deal.