16 out of 300+.

And they conveniently don't mention the level of homology between the few that grew and existing phages that infect the bacteria they were planning to use for their tests.

I dunno. I think this would be much more underwhelming if we knew the above information.

Possibility?

Possibility???

How 'bout, likelihood?

#5 | Posted by LampLighter

Why? It's a labor intensive, low success rate way of obtaining something we already have compliments of nature. AND, you'd be creating a paper trail.

There are numerous viruses one could isolate from nature and modify using existing methods if one wanted to get their hands on "dangerous pathogens."

Hell, I remember regulatory agencies s*&^ting their pants over GoF work in the 2010's where a US lab and a Danish (IIRC) lab passed avian H5N1 between ferrets (US lab) and a targeted random mutagenesis coupled with in vivo evolution approach (Danish lab) to force evolution of H5N1 strains that would bind to mammalian receptors and pass from ferret to ferret (standard model for influenza transmission studies). Their stated purpose was to characterize mutations that would allow H5N1 to become a pandemic-ready virus. Regulatory and oversight agencies saw it as a "terrorist cookbook" for creating bioweapons and there was a several year long moratorium on GoF research on select respiratory viral agents.

Both labs found multiple pathways to achieve the same goal.

SARS-CoV-2 also showed on naturally occurring viruses can readily adapt to humans courtesy of basic evolutionary biology.

This is just flashy nonsense where hot, trendy current buzzwords were slapped onto a process that's been effectively doable for decades simply because it would generate a headline.