A post shares text labeled “Oct 2019” suggesting a broader, furin-like cleavage signature for “S.”
A post quotes text labeled “Oct 2019” suggesting that “S” could be made with a broader, furin-like cleavage signature to enhance infectivity. The quoted text also speculates that more groups may converge on the idea.
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U.S. Right to Know reports that records released by the National Institutes of Health under the Freedom of Information Act include an Oct. 6, 2019 email from NIH virologist Vincent Munster to postdoctoral researcher Michael Letko. Munster proposed adding a furin-like cleavage-site motif to “S,” the coronavirus spike protein, to test whether it enhanced infectivity.
The proposal came as Letko was developing a platform for testing whether spikes from SARS-related bat coronaviruses could enter human cells, the outlet reports. The system used synthetic gene fragments and nonreplicating reporter particles rather than live viruses. Munster’s email followed a preprint showing that the enzyme trypsin could help certain coronavirus spikes enter cells they otherwise could not infect.
The report says the records do not show that Letko carried out the proposed furin-site experiment. It also says the motif Munster suggested differs from the cleavage site in SARS-CoV-2. The researchers’ eventual paper used trypsin and gave no sign that a furin site had been engineered into a spike.
Those limits matter because furin cleavage sites became central to arguments about COVID-19’s origin. The reported email shows that such an experiment was being discussed inside an NIH laboratory before the pandemic, but it does not establish that the lab created SARS-CoV-2 or possessed the virus or a close relative. The records also do not indicate that Munster or Letko communicated with Wuhan researchers while working on the project.
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