On June 22, 2010, Shi Zhengli from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China along with other authors including two from Australia’s CSIRO in Geelong, Victoria, published the study “Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) proteins of different bat species confer variable susceptibility to SARS-CoV entry” which called for the “continuation and expansion of field surveillance studies among different bat populations” as “bats could be the natural reservoir of SARS-CoV” with 2 species in particular.
They looked at 7 additional bat species and “tested their interactions with human SARS-CoV spike protein using both HIV-based pseudotype and live SARS-CoV infection assays. …Further, the alteration of several key residues either decreased or enhanced bat ACE2 receptor efficiency.”
It was stated “[c]himeric ACE2 was constructed by combining the N-terminal region of bat ACE2 with the C-terminal portion of human ACE2″… to see if SARS-CoV that infects human cells could infect bat cells via ACE2 receptors.
The 2019 SARS-CoV-2 genome was said to have HIV insertions. Could this have resulted from continuation of this chimeric work? [1, 2]