Would it be normal for a research lab to do recombinant research of the sort which apparently happened here? Would this be evidence more of malicious attempt?
Does CRISPR leave any “tool marks”, sequences that show it's been used? Would you even need CRISPR since the replication process is so sloppy the clone you want will show up anyway eventually?
How long before some idiot working in his garage creates something as bad or worse? This really scares me, because there are some nucleic acid hobbyists that make people with pet black mambas look extremely normal.
Recombinant research is very normal for virology labs. It's powerful and has helped provide a huge understanding of how viruses interact with their hosts. I perform a lot of recombinant engineering of varicella-zoster virus. Could this be used maliciously? Unlikely. The reason I say that is because it is not known what is needed to be engineered in a virus for it to be more deadly or transmit more easily. Also, that can be done with traditional virological techniques without genetic engineering. Both the USA and Russia had such programs up until the mid 1990's.
There was a big discussion a few years back about 'gain of function' experiments being performed with influenza. So much so that the NIH prevented a number of labs to use their funding for such studies. This has since been overturned after extensive review about this type of research. As with all things, a number of folk who raised the concerns also had hidden agendas. And this might be what we're seeing emerge form the coronavirus outbreak.
For coronavirus it is unlikely that any CRISPR systems will be used. They're actually quite complex and do leave evidence behind. Most genetic engineering will be performed on a plasmid-transfection system. The virus genome will be placed inside a plasmid, a clone, making it easy to manipulate using a process called restriction digest, essentially cut and paste. The clone (plasmid) will then be transfected into mammalian cells and this will produce virus particles that can then be used for subsequent infection studies.
Will it be possible for the Biohackers (thankfully
this clown didn't get much further in his attempts) to do this work? As straightforward as all this sounds it still takes a good amount of resources. Biological safety cabinets are needed for cell culture. Centrifuges are needed. Incubators are needed, wet and dry. Freezers, -20 and -80 are needed. Enzymes are needed. Bacteria are needed. Mammalian cells are needed etc. Could you set up a lab? Yes, but it would take a lot of time, money, maintenance and avoid regulatory bodies. And then they're going to have to understand the molecular biology of how a virus works if they want to make a virus that's going to do the job they want.
Mother nature has been doing these experiments for millions of years and will continue to do so. Engineering a microorganism for a specific purpose is not easy as there are always tradeoffs. Probably why the US and Russia didn't really succeed in their attempts to weaponize microorganism effectively.
