Scientists find critical evidence that COVID-19 originated from a lab, new reports say

Two expert scientists said on Sunday that there is "damning" evidence that COVID-19 is a man made virus that originated from a lab. Dr. Steven Quay and Richard Muller detailed their findings in a piece for the The Wall Street Journal.

Dr. Steven Quay is the founder of Atossa Therapeutics and Richard Muller, a former top scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, teaches physics at the University of California Berkely.

According to the two scientists, key evidence relates to gain-of-function research. During lab research, microbiologists alter viruses by tweaking its genome; to make it more lethal or more transmissible.

There are 36 genome pairings that can consecutively produce two arginine amino acids, which boosts the lethality of a virus. The most common pairing used in gain-of-function research is CGG-CGG, or double CGG, Quay and Muller report. "The insertion sequence of choice is the double CGG," the scientists wrote.

"That’s because it is readily available and convenient, and scientists have a great deal of experience inserting it," they wrote. "An additional advantage of the double CGG sequence compared with the other 35 possible choices: It creates a useful beacon that permits the scientists to track the insertion in the laboratory."

In the report, Quay and Muller noted that the double CGG sequence has not been found naturally among coronavirus strains. However, the double CGG sequence was found in CoV-2; which causes COVID-19.

Because the genome sequence was found for this first time in Cov-2, Quay and Muller said it’s a "damning fact" that the virus escaped from a laboratory.

"Proponents of zoonotic origin must explain why the novel coronavirus, when it mutated or recombined, happened to pick its least favorite combination, the double CGG,” they added. "Why did it replicate the choice the lab’s gain-of-function researchers would have made?"

"At the minimum, this fact — that the coronavirus, with all its random possibilities, took the rare and unnatural combination used by human researchers — implies that the leading theory for the origin of the coronavirus must be laboratory escape."

Quay and Muller detailed the most compelling evidence, "is the dramatic differences in the genetic diversity of CoV-2, compared with the coronaviruses responsible for SARS and MERS."

The two noted that SARS and MERS, "evolved rapidly as they spread through the human population, until the most contagious forms dominated."

However, COVID-19 was highly contagious upon detection unlike SARS and MERS which originated from natural causes.

"Such early optimization is unprecedented, and it suggests a long period of adaptation that predated its public spread," wrote Quay and Muller. "Science knows of only one way that could be achieved: simulated natural evolution, growing the virus on human cells until the optimum is achieved. That is precisely what is done in gain-of-function research."

According to Quay and Muller, reports that COVID-19 was engineered and released from a lab is a credible theory that should be taken seriously.

"The presence of the double CGG sequence is strong evidence of gene splicing, and the absence of diversity in the public outbreak suggests gain-of-function acceleration," they wrote. "The scientific evidence points to the conclusion that the virus was developed in a laboratory."