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SARS - A Lab Accident?
From Patricia Doyle, PhD
dr_p_doyle@hotmail.com
5-24-3


Hello, Jeff - I found this VERY interesting...dated July, 2002: research for vaccine regarding
feline infectious peritonitis which is a feline coronavirus. If the research was ongoing in Europe, it is quite possible that China was also studying feline coronavirus.
 
It appears that SARS first infected the medical community...and then the public. I believe that SARS was caused by a lab accident.
 
The Chinese are admitting that SARS agent might have originated in civet cats, but have not gone as far as stating that the agent got loose as part of research. Quite possibly these cats were used in research. The research below uses mouse models.
 
I, however, do not think that SARS agent jumped from cat to man. I think it is possible that man infected cat. Although, at this time, it would be premature for me to make emphatic statements regarding either scenerio.
 
If they experiment with coronaviruses in Europe, there is no reason to doubt that China would be researching coronaviruses as well.
 
WHAT IS INFECTIOUS PERITONITIS?
 
Feline infectious peritonitis (FIP) is a disease caused by a coronavirus infection. Many different strains of coronavirus are capable of infecting cats, but most do not produce serious disease. FIP-producing strains are distinguished by their ability to invade and grow in certain white blood cells. The infected cells transport the virus throughout the cat's body. An intense inflammatory reaction occurs in the tissues where these virus-infected cells locate. It is this interaction between the body's own immune system and the virus that is responsible for the disease.
 
Infected cats shed coronavirus in their saliva and feces. Most cats become infected by inhaling or ingesting the virus, either by direct contact with an infected cat, or by contact with virus-contaminated surfaces like clothing, bedding, feeding bowls, or toys.
 
Although the virus can survive for a number of weeks in the environment, it is rapidly inactivated by most household detergents and disinfectants. An inexpensive and effective disinfectant is one part of household bleach in thirty-two parts of water (4 ounces of bleach per gallon of water).
 
Patricia
 
http://www.vet.uu.nl/english/research/programmes/microbiology/development
 
Subprogramme 1
 
The study of positive-stranded RNA viruses will focus mainly on two lines. The virus assembly line will continue to work out the details of the interactions between viral components, but will in addition initiate studies on the 3-D structure of these components and on the manipulation of the viral particles, particularly of the spike, with the aim of redesigning the targeting function and developing coronaviruses into vectors for (tumor) therapy. In the feline coronavirus line the main aims will be to generate an infectious cDNA clone and to set up an RNA recombination system for the convenient manipulation of the viral genome. These tools will open a wealth of possibilities a.o. the study of viral virulence, the functions of certain genes, and the development of a vaccine.
 
Subprogramme 3
 
The programme will continue to focus on the pathogenesis, diagnosis and vaccine development in
companion animal virus infections, particularly feline infectious peritonitis. Efforts will be made to establish immune correlates of protection against the fatal condition using e.g. CTL, lymphocyte stimulation, ELISPOT assays and ELISAs to analyse cytokine expression by T-cells. New vaccination challenge experiments using improved DNA vectors will be conducted. A collaborative project with ID-DLO will start in 1999 that aims at the development of an assay to specifically diagnose FIP-causing coronaviruses against the background of the innocuous virus quasi-species. Studies on the role of cytokines in pathogenesis and protection will be continued in mouse models and in FIPV infection in cats, with support by VIRBAC (Carros, France). In collaboration with INTERVET (Boxmeer, the Netherlands) studies will be conducted on the early (non-specific) immune response on viral infection using transgenic mouse models. The zoonotic potential of toroviruses will be assessed in collaboration with the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM, Bilthoven, the Netherlands) and the Biomedical Primate Research Center (BPRC Rijswijk, the Netherlands).
 
Subprogramme 4
 
As stated before, a number of social and scientific developments have influenced the direction in which this programme will develop in the future. The search for virulence factors will be stopped and our efforts will be concentrated on host-pathogen interactions. Studies on the possibility to use glycosyl transferases from various bacteria for the production of semi-synthetic vaccines will be continued, and more input will be given in the study of intracellular bacteria and the cross-talk between these bacteria and their host cells. It is expected that - apart from Cowdria ruminantium - Lawsonia intracellularis, a pig pathogen, will soon be included in our research programme. Development of new diagnostic tools and a further change to more veterinary relevant projects are continued.
 
(IF YOU REMEMBER, DR. ROBERT LEE DID MENTION FINDING BACTERIA IN THE GENOME SEQUENCE OF THE SARS AGENT.)
 
Patricia A. Doyle, PhD
Please visit my "Emerging Diseases" message board at: http://www.clickitnews.com/ubbthreads/postlist.php?Cat=&Board=emergingdiseases
Zhan le Devlesa tai sastimasa
Go with God and in Good Health
 
 
Comment
 
From Dr. Robert E. Lee
rboblee@mchsi.com
5-25-3
If the civet cat coronavirus is a feline infectious peritonitis virus, it is not like any feline infectious peritonitis virus that is on PubMed Central database as none of these are very close to SARS coronavirus.
There are several studies that discuss the use of cats as a "mixing vessel" to use to create hybrid coronaviruses so to cross species lines with modified coronaviruses that come out of cat and this might be what happened... but that would involve coinfection to produce a hybrid human-attacking coronavirus out of a cat, i.e., there would have had to likely be someone involved in doing that coinfection with the intent of creating hybrid coronaviruses.
Other studies exist, significantly, that show cats can be infected by human coronaviruses naturally but humans cannot be infected by cat coronaviruses unless there is some tinkering done in the lab to the human aminopeptidase-N receptors (CD13 receptors).
Therefore,
(a) if it came out of civet cat, it is likely that the civet cat was used as a "mixing vessel" by someone -- that means it is a bio-engineered agent. I would suppose the likely suspect would be a Chinese bioengineering project mistake.
or
(b) if the cat has a coronavirus almost exactly like SARS coronavirus, then the cat caught it from human and we are back to square one regarding origin.
There are plenty of civet cats that live all over Asia and even in Africa... if a wild civet cat from someplace-in-the-middle-of-nowhere Tibet shows a SARS-like coronavirus, then I will consider that maybe it is possible that the SARS agent came from a civet cat -- but if that is so, then someone is going to have to do a lot of explaining about how a civet cat coronavirus that is so easily transmitted to humans and kills people with at least an 8% mortality has not killed humans before now.
I suspect that once it dawns on the researchers that humans cannot be naturally be infected by cat coronaviruses (because the aminopeptidase-N receptors of humans do not allow that infection) and they then find that in order for that to happen it would have been a bio-engineering project for someone, then they will fall back on the "cats can be infected by human coronaviruses and this is probably the case in the civet cat, i.e., the civet cat caught somebody's SARS coronavirus, and we're sorry we confused the situation with the idea that civet cats infected humans and we'll just have to keep on looking for another animal" conclusion because cats can naturally catch human coronaviruses, e.g., HuCov-229E.
The short story here is, and I'll wager a dollar, that eventually the civet cat will be claimed to have been infected by a human with SARS coronavirus (and then there will not be the sticky-wicket of a bioengineering project mistake).
My 2 cents... :-)
Bob Lee
Some references of interest below:
Adv Exp Med Biol 1998;440:69-75 <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed&cmd=
Display&dopt=pubmed_pubmed&from_uid=9782266>Related Articles, <javascript:PopUpMenu2_Set(Menu9782266,'','','','','');>Links
 
 
Feline aminopeptidase N is a receptor for all group I coronaviruses.
 
Tresnan DB, Holmes KV.
 
Department of Microbiology, University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Denver 80262, USA.
 
Human coronavirus HCV-229E and porcine transmissible gastroenteritis virus (TGEV), both members of coronavirus group I, use aminopeptidase N (APN) as their cellular receptors. These viruses show marked species specificity in receptor utilization as they can only use APN of their respective species to initiate virus infection. Feline and canine coronaviruses are also group I coronaviruses. To determine whether feline APN could serve as a receptor for feline coronaviruses (FCoVs), we cloned the cDNA encoding feline APN (fAPN) by PCR from feline cells and stably expressed it in FCoV-resistant mouse or hamster cells. These became susceptible to infection with either of several biotypes of FCoVs. The expression of recombinant fAPN also made hamster and mouse cells susceptible to infection with other group I coronaviruses, including several canine coronavirus strains, transmissible gastroenteritis virus (TGEV), and human coronavirus HCV-229E. Thus, fAPN served as a functional receptor for each of these coronaviruses in group I. As expected, fAPN could not serve as a receptor for mouse hepatitis virus (MHV), a group II coronavirus which uses murine biliary glycoproteins as receptors. Thus, fAPN acts as a common receptor for coronaviruses in group I, in marked contrast to human and porcine APN glycoproteins which serve as receptors only for human and porcine coronaviruses, respectively. These observations suggest that cats could serve as a "mixing vessel" in which simultaneous infection with several group I coronaviruses could lead to recombination of viral genomes.
 
PMID: 9782266
J Virol 1996 Dec;70(12):8669-74 <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed&cmd=
Display&dopt=pubmed_pubmed&from_uid=8970993>Related Articles, <javascript:PopUpMenu2_Set(Menu8970993,'','','','','');>Links
 
<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/utils/fref.fcgi?http://jvi.asm.org/cgi/pmidlookup?view=reprint&pmid=8970993> 
Feline aminopeptidase N serves as a receptor for feline, canine, porcine, and human coronaviruses in serogroup I.
 
Tresnan DB, Levis R, Holmes KV.
 
Department of Microbiology, University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Denver 80262, USA. Dina.Tresnan@UCHSC.edu
 
Two members of coronavirus serogroup I, human respiratory coronavirus HCV-229E and porcine transmissible gastroenteritis virus (TGEV), use aminopeptidase N (APN) as their cellular receptors. These viruses show marked species specificity in receptor utilization, as HCV-229E can utilize human but not porcine APN, while TGEV can utilize porcine but not human APN. To determine whether feline APN could serve as a receptor for two feline coronaviruses in serogroup I, feline infectious peritonitis virus (FIPV) and feline enteric coronavirus (FeCV), we cloned the cDNA encoding feline APN (fAPN) by PCR from cDNA isolated from a feline cell line and stably expressed it in FIPV- and FeCV-resistant mouse and hamster cells. The predicted amino acid sequence of fAPN shows 78 and 77% identity with human and porcine APN, respectively. When inoculated with either of two biologically different strains of FIPV or with FeCV, fAPN-transfected mouse and hamster cells became infected and viral antigens developed in the cytoplasm. Infectious FIPV was released from hamster cells stably transfected with fAPN. The fAPN-transfected mouse and hamster cells were challenged with other coronaviruses in serogroup I including canine coronavirus, porcine coronavirus TGEV, and human coronavirus HCV-229E. In addition to serving as a receptor for the feline coronaviruses, fAPN also served as a functional receptor for each of these serogroup I coronaviruses as shown by development of viral antigens in the cytoplasm of infected mouse or hamster cells stably transfected with fAPN. In contrast, fAPN did not serve as a functional receptor for mouse hepatitis virus (MHV-A59), which is in serogroup II and utilizes mouse biliary glycoprotein receptors unrelated to APN. Thus, fAPN serves as a receptor for a much broader range of group I coronaviruses than human and porcine APNs. The human, porcine, and canine coronaviruses in serogroup I that are able to use fAPN as a receptor have previously been shown to infect cats without causing disease. Therefore, host factors in addition to receptor specificity apparently affect the virulence and transmissibility of nonfeline serogroup I coronaviruses in the cat.
 
PMID: 8970993
J Gen Virol 1998 Jun;79 ( Pt 6):1387-91 <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed&cmd=
Display&dopt=pubmed_pubmed&from_uid=9634079>Related Articles, <javascript:PopUpMenu2_Set(Menu9634079,'','','','','');>Links
 
<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/utils/fref.fcgi?http://vir.sgmjournals.org/cgi/
pmidlookup?view=reprint&pmid=9634079> 
Characterization of determinants involved in the feline infectious peritonitis virus receptor function of feline aminopeptidase N.
 
Hegyi A, Kolb AF.
 
Institute of Virology and Immunology, University of Wurzburg, Germany.
 
Feline aminopeptidase N (fAPN) is a major cell surface receptor for feline infectious peritonitis virus (FIPV), transmissible gastroenteritis virus (TGEV), human coronavirus 229E (HCV 229E) and canine coronavirus (CCV). By using chimeric molecules assembled from porcine, human and feline APN we have analysed the determinants involved in the coronavirus receptor function of fAPN. Our results show that amino acids 670-840 of fAPN are critically involved in its FIPV and TGEV receptor function whereas amino acids 135-297 are essential for the HCV 229E receptor function. We also demonstrate that a chimeric molecule assembled from human and porcine APN is able to act as a receptor for FIPV. This is surprising as neither human nor porcine APN by themselves mediate FIPV infection. These results suggest that different determinants in the APN protein are involved in mediating the coronavirus receptor function.
 
PMID: 9634079


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