Zhengli Shi

Zhengli Shi   (Scientist)
Born	26 May 1964 Xixia County, Henan, China
Nationality	Chinese
Alma mater	Montpellier 2 University
Interests	• coronaviruses • SARS • HIV
Interest of	Eric Donaldson
Director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, an active researcher into novel coronaviruses.  Director Dates unknown Employer Wuhan Institute of Virology Location Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases

Professor Zhengli Shi is/was a Chinese virologist and close colleague of Peter Daszak. She was the director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases of the Wuhan Institute of Virology at the time of the COVID-19 outbreak in late 2019 in Wuhan and reportedly "was the first to identify the gene sequence for COVID-19".

Background

Zhengli Shi was born in China in 1964. She graduated from Wuhan University in 1987. She received her master's degree from the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Wuhan Institute of Virology in 1990. She did a Ph.D at Montpellier 2 University, France, from 1996 to 2000.

Research

Since 2005 Shi has been working on the emergence of coronaviruses with Peter Daszak.

Shi is the director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Her research focuses on viral pathogen discovery through traditional and high-throughput sequencing techniques. She has been studying the wildlife-borne viral pathogens, particularly bat-borne viruses since 2004. Her group has discovered diverse novel viruses/virus antibodies in bats, including SARS-like coronaviruses, adenoviruses, adeno-associated viruses, circoviruses, paramyxoviruses and filoviruses in China. With her international collaborators she has provided evidence that bats are natural reservoirs of SARS-CoV. She has coauthored over 130 publications on viral pathogen identification, diagnosis and epidemiology.

Creation of new coronaviruses

In 2013, "Shi began altering parts of the coronavirus" to study how easily it could cross species barriers, which prompted debate about the safety of "gain-of-function" research.

In October 2014, the US government announced a temporary moratorium on funding of "gain-of-function" research on the SARS and MERS viruses, pending a review of the risks.

In 2015 Shi's team published a paper detailing a genetically engineered new coronavirus. Simon Wain-Hobson stated that the researchers had created a novel virus that “grows remarkably well” in human cells and warned that "If the virus escaped, nobody could predict the trajectory."

Opinions on Covid-19

Like Peter Daszak, Zhengli Shi has stated that Covid-19 was not laboratory created.

“The novel 2019 coronavirus is nature punishing the human race for keeping uncivilized living habits. I, Shi Zhengli, swear on my life that it has nothing to do with our laboratory. I advise those who believe and spread rumors from harmful media sources, as well as those who believe the unreliable so-called academic analysis of Indian scholars, to shut their stinking mouths.”
Shi Zhengli (February 2020) 

Selected Publications

• 2015 - Nature Medicine - A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence - With co-authors Vineet Menachery, Boyd Yount Jr, Kari Debbink, Sudhakar Agnihothram, Lisa Gralinski, Jessica Plante, Rachel Graham, Trevor Scobey, Xing-Yi Ge, Eric Donaldson, Scott Randell, Antonio Lanzavecchia, Wayne Marasco and Ralph Baric. It reported that "in vivo experiments demonstrate replication of the chimeric virus in mouse lung with notable pathogenesis."
• 2013 - Nature Medicine - Isolation and characterization of a bat SARS-like coronavirus that uses the ACE2 receptor - Xing-Yi Ge, Jia-Lu Li, Xing-Lou Yang, Aleksei A. Chmura, Guangjian Zhu, Jonathan H. Epstein, Jonna K. Mazet, Ben Hu, Wei Zhang, Cheng Peng, Yu-Ji Zhang, Chu-Ming Luo, Bing Tan, Ning Wang, Yan Zhu, Gary Crameri, Shu-Yi Zhang5, Lin-Fa Wang, Peter Daszak, Zheng-Li Shi. The two corresponding co-authors were Peter Daszak and Zhengli Shi
• 2007 - Journal of Virology - Difference in Receptor Usage between Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) Coronavirus and SARS-Like Coronavirus of Bat Origin, a paper with co-authors Wuze Ren, Xiuxia Qu, Wendong Li, Zhenggang Han, Meng Yu, Peng Zhou, Shu-Yi Zhang, Lin-Fa Wang, Hongkui Deng on development of a SARS/HIV hybrid. Shi was corresponding author.

 

Related Document

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Logistical and Technical Exploration into the Origins of the COVID-19 virus	report	31 January 2020	Jonathan Jay Couey	Report of a thorough investigation into the origins of the virus that caused the pandemic. Whilst the author is circumspect, the evidence presented points clearly to the virus being the product of laboratory engineering.

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