After Covid-19 data removed, NIH reviews how its gene collection is controlled

The National Institutes of Health said it was reviewing the removal of genetic data about the Covid-19 virus from an agency-run archive after a scientist raised concerns about the episode earlier this summer.

The data—a range of gene sequences from coronavirus samples obtained from Covid-19 patients in Wuhan in January and February 2020—could provide clues about the origins of the pandemic. The sequences were removed from the Sequence Read Archive (SRA) last year at the request of one of the researchers at Wuhan University, who originally provided them – a move that three Republican US senators called in June by NIH Director Francis. Collins was questioned in a strongly worded letter. .

“Efforts by Chinese researchers to delete the data demand additional explanation,” said Senator Marsha Blackburn (R., Ten.), Charles E. Grassley (r., Iowa) and Roger Marshall (r., Kansas) wrote in the letter. In a June 23 Wall Street Journal article about the removal of the sequence, the senators explained the reason for their investigation.

In response to the senators on September 8, Dr. Collins said a review was underway to determine “whether appropriate steps were taken to assess this withdrawal request.” On Sunday an NIH spokesman said the review had been completed and NIH leaders would weigh the findings.

“Ever since the pandemic began, all the American people have had direct answers to basic questions that the Biden administration failed to give them,” three senators said in a statement after receiving Dr. Collins’ letter on Sunday. Is.” The NIH and its parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, “have failed to be completely transparent with Congress and the American people,” the senators said.

Aides for all three senators said they intended to get more clarity from the NIH on their decision to comply with the request and whether that request was handled appropriately.

An NIH spokesperson said the agency is withholding the names of the individuals involved in the deletion of the data to protect their privacy.

The exchange of letters comes as scientists and the federal government work to determine the origin of the pandemic while criticizing China, which may be helpful.

An international scientific team led by the World Health Organization reported in March that the pandemic virus, SARS-CoV-2, possibly spread to humans through contact with an unidentified animal that became infected with another animal, possibly a bat. Was. But that discovery has been sharply criticized in recent months, with some scientists saying there isn’t enough evidence to determine whether this hypothesis—or the other leading one—that the deadly virus began spreading to humans after escaping a laboratory – Correct .

US intelligence agencies recently submitted a report to President Biden that said a paucity of data made it difficult to reach a definitive conclusion on the origins of the pandemic.

Scientists routinely scrape gene sequences of the types removed from collections as a way of finding clues about the origin and evolution of viral pathogens. Gene sequences often mutate as a virus spreads from person to person, and studying the mutation can shed light on when, where and how pathogens such as the COVID-19 virus are introduced.

The controversy began in June, when a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Wash., reported in a paper posted online that he had discovered sequences had been removed from the NIH-run database, which is widely used. Scientists from all over the world are done. As a result, “no one knew that these sequences existed,” wrote the virologist, Jesse Bloom, in the paper, adding that the deletion “was a whole-hearted way to maximize information about viral sequences from the start of the Wuhan epidemic.” suggests less than effort.”

Two weeks after Dr. Bloom’s paper was posted, Chinese researchers uploaded the deleted sequences to a public database maintained by the China National Center for Bioinformation. The researchers published information about the sequences in a scientific journal in June 2020.

The researchers did not respond to an email requesting comment.

China’s National Health Commission said the removal request resulted from a misunderstanding between Chinese researchers and the journal that published the paper describing the sequences, according to an online post identified as an employee of the state-affiliated . Xinhua news agency. The Deputy Chairman of the Commission said that Dr. Bloom “created a conspiracy theory that it was a cover-up” and according to a translation in the post, the deleted sequences were of little value to trace the origins of the pandemic virus.

China’s National Health Commission did not respond to a request for comment.

Dr. Collins said in his letter that the researchers at Wuhan University requested retraction of the sequences because the updated data was being uploaded to another database and the researchers wanted to prevent confusion. Dr. Bloom said he later analyzed sequences in the Chinese database and found them similar to sequences deleted from the US database.

“To me anyway, it seems that policies may be abused to obscure the existence of these sequences,” said Dr. Bloom said.

It is unusual for data submitted to a sequence read archive to be subsequently deleted. From March 2020 to March 2021, the collection received approximately 2.4 million submissions of sequence data, according to a spokesperson for the National Center for Biotechnology Information, the NIH division that maintains the collection. Over the same period, 2.09% of submissions were updated and 0.19% were withdrawn, the spokesperson said.

NCBI officials said it was difficult to determine the validity of requests to update or delete data from the sequence read archive and they take such requests at face value. NCBI acting director Stephen Sherry said, “We can’t judge the truth.”

The NIH said it retains the extracted data for scientific records and in case of disaster recovery.

Doctor. According to Sherry, the review includes collection procedures and training practices as well as a specific request from a Chinese researcher to remove sequences from the COVID-19 virus.

An NIH spokesperson said the agency is still discussing whether policy changes are needed. “In the meantime,” she said, “if the owners of the original data wish to resubmit SARS-CoV-2 sequences to SRA, we will make that data available.”