- China's top genomics institute discovered that the Sars
virus was mutating rapidly when it independently sequenced its genetic
blueprint, raising new fears about developing a vaccine to combat it. Advertisement
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- "A few nucleotide differences among individual genomes
were detected, as the virus is expected to mutate very fast and easily,"
said the Beijing Genomics Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
in a statement on the internet.
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- The institute says the mutations will need to be studied
further to find an accurate diagnostic test and effective treatment for
the fast-spreading and sometimes lethal viral infection.
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- Chinese health and propaganda authorities, which have
tightly controlled all information about Sars, initially refused to allow
the institute to make a public announcement of its findings when it completed
the sequencing on April 16.
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- The institute, one of China's most respected research
bodies, circumvented the restriction by posting its findings without fanfare
on an academic website.
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- Similar institutes in Canada and the US that have also
sequenced samples of the Sars virus in the last fortnight had won praise
from their governments.
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- But the tide turned against the health and political
establishment in China with the dismissal of senior officials on Sunday
over their handling of the crisis, and in favour of experts such as the
scientists at the institute.
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- The institute has now received official backing from
Hu Jintao, China's president, who visited researchers at the weekend to
compliment them on their work.
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- The institute collaborated with the Institute of Microbiology
and Epidemiology of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences in Beijing
to decipher the code of two viruses collected from samples in China.
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- One was isolated from a lung autopsy in Guangzhou, southern
China, near to where the virus is believed to have originated. The second
was from a mixture of autopsy tissues from the liver and lymph nodes of
a Sars victim in Beijing, according to the web posting.
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- The sequencing allowed the development of a much-needed
diagnostic test which can detect the presence of the Sars virus within
one hour, the Chinese media reported on Monday.
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- The test detects the presence of an antibody produced
by the body in response to infection with the virus.
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- The Beijing Genomics Institute is best known for recently
sequencing the DNA of the rice genome and is also involved in the international
human genome project.
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- Web postings about the Sars virus can be found at: www.gpbjournal.org/sars.jsp
(English) and www.genomics.org.cn (Chinese).
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