Ralph Baric, an infectious-disease researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, published a study on his team’s efforts to engineer a virus with the surface protein of the SHC014 coronavirus, found in horseshoe bats in China, and the backbone of one that causes human-like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in mice.
The hybrid virus could infect human airway cells and caused disease in mice, according to the team’s results, which were published in Nature Medicine.
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/lab-made-coronavirus-triggers-debate-34502