Research reveals missing genetic sequences in a shared database, hinting at differences in early COVID-19 variants
Jesse Bloom, a prominent scientist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, has discovered that genetic sequences from early coronavirus cases in China were removed from a U.S. National Institutes of Health database. According to Bloom’s recent paper, these early sequences, submitted by a Chinese researcher, were deleted from the shared database, though he managed to retrieve them from cloud storage.
The findings reveal that some of the early cases in Wuhan, China, exhibit genetic variations distinct from the strains that eventually spread worldwide, possibly shedding light on the virus’s evolution at the outset of the pandemic.
