! Retrovirology - Unintended Spread of a Biosafety Level 2 Recombinant Retrovirus

[pictureofhealth]

Unintended Spread of a Biosafety Level 2 Recombinant Retrovirus -

This was published just over a year ago in Retrovirology in September 2009 by German authors.

http://www.retrovirology.com/content/6/1/86

It details the finding of a synthetic retrovirus (99% similarity) from the 1980's which was not found to be XMRV, but similiar.

From the text:
"We decided to further analyze the genomic sequence of the MuLV-like contaminant virus. Surprisingly it was neither identical to MuLV nor to the novel xenotropic MuLV related retrovirus (XMRV) but showed 99% identity to a synthetic retrovirus which was engineered in the 1980s.

From the Conclusion:
"The high degree of nucleotide identity suggests unintended spread of a biosafety level 2 recombinant virus, which could also affect the risk assessment of gene-modified organisms released from contaminated cell cultures."

Not sure where to post as highly relevant to XMRV and ME, but not technically the same as its a synthetic creation.

 

[Tia]

This is so interesting because wasn't AIDS discovered in the eighties? It's like things were spread in the eighties.. I smell a biological weapon!

 

[Desdinova]

A little funny isn't it. Lyme, Aids, Fibromyalgia, CFS a lot of things showed up or became prominent during the eighties. One can't help but wonder if these were test versions (nothing near the final product) that were supposed to be less aggressive and easily controlled and contained and in every case turned out to be more then they bargained for. But enough for the conspiracy ideas useless speculation.

 

[eric_s]

What would such a weapon be good for? It takes so long to kill or harm people in the cases of those illnesses and it can't be contained, so it will in the end spread and hurt your own side.
I think if you want to develop a biological weapon it should either work fast or then at least in some way not be able to spread uncontrolled.

 

[eric_s]

That does not mean it's not scary... The thought of synthetic viruses spreading uncontrolled is

 

[leela]

Additionally scary:

Why even make synthetic viruses?
Why does Dr. Lo have a patent from Dep of Army days on a strain of Mycoplasma?

Fashioning tin foil hat right now...

 

[floydguy]

Well, the unpleasant truth is that disabled people are more expensive and difficult to deal with than dead people. I am sure there is a scenario somewhere in the DOD where this has been analyzed. Remember that the US supposedly doesn't have offensive biological weapons but it doesn't mean that we don't do research and analyze biological weapons from a "defensive" perspective.

 

[markmc20001]

First impression=wow.

It is nearly impossible for me to read and understand the research paper though. ANybody know what "viral contaminations in cell lines" means??

Interesting point Floydguy about disabled people being more difficult to handle. Isn't that the truth. All the expenses and dysfuction what a way to screw up a countries population.

 

[pictureofhealth]

The research article title indicates that retroviruses can 'unintentionally' escape from labs.

Perhaps research monkeys and mice get fleas, mites, like any other mammal, that jump 'unintentionally' onto a researcher - I don't know how this happens as one would hope tight precautions are taken in experimental labs - gloves, head gear, goggles, jumpsuits, double 'door' entry systems - but apparently in this case not tight enough.

Also, it seems that this is not 'our' retrovirus (XMRV) but the researchers were able to establish with 99% accuracy what the virus was/likely to be. It even has a reference number in GenBank!

It shared 99% similarity with a synthetic retrovirus used by the FDA for research purposes, if I understand the text below correctly.

"... the 7.4 kbp sequence of the murine retrovirus was neither identical to one of the murine leukemia viruses nor to XMLV but showed an overall similarity score of 99% to pAMS [GenBank: AF010170], a plasmid carrying the proviral sequence of a recombinant hybrid virus. This construct was engineered in the 1980s and is composed of sequences from Moloney murine leukemia virus (MoMLV) and amphotropic mouse leukemia virus clone 4070A [7,8].

"In the current GenBank entry it is described as "... reference retrovirus for FDA validation of retrovirus vectors used for human gene therapy...".

" ..The present report extents (?extends) these studies by identifying for the first time a presumably synthetic chimeric retrovirus as a contaminant. This gene-modified organism seems to have replicated and spread intensely in a broad set of cell lines for several years without being noticed. This hybrid amphotropic/Moloney murine leukemia virus was engineered in the 1980s [7,8]

For further info, its worth checking out references 7 and 8 at the bottom of the article for additional research articles.

Presumably one engineers a retrovirus so one can create some kind of a 'control' or 'comparison' baseline. Only in this case, things got a bit out of control inadvertently.

 

[Cloud]

Hmmm, maybe Will Robinsons robot was right after all