Exclusive: The Chinese Scientist Who Sequenced the First COVID-19 Genome Speaks Out About the Controversies Surrounding His Work

Over the past few years, Professor Zhang Yongzhen has made it his business to sequence thousands of previously unknown viruses. But he knew straight away that this one was particularly nasty. It was about 1:30 p.m. on Jan. 3 that a metal box arrived at the drab, beige buildings that house the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center. Inside was a test tube packed in dry ice that contained swabs from a patient suffering from a peculiar pneumonia sweeping China’s central city of Wuhan. But little did Zhang know that that box would also unleash a vicious squall of blame and geopolitical acrimony worthy of Pandora herself. Now, he is seeking to set the record straight. Zhang and his team set to work, analyzing the samples using the latest high-throughput sequencing technology for RNA, the viral genetic building blocks, which function similar to how DNA works in humans. By 2 a.m. on Jan. 5, after toiling through two nights straight, they had mapped the first complete genome of the virus that has now sickened 23 million and killed 810,000 across the globe: SARS-CoV-2. “It took us less than 40 hours, so very, very fast,” Zhang tells TIME in an exclusive interview. “Then I realized that this virus is closely related to SARS, probably 80%. So certainly, it was very dangerous.” The events that followed Zhang’s discovery have since become swathed in controversy. Crises beget scapegoats and the coronavirus is no different. The floundering U.S. response ...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 overnight Source Type: news