Supports· moderateCOV-E027
The proposal's cleavage-site passage, at a confirmed locator
- what the source states
- Under the run-in heading "S2 Proteolytic Cleavage and Glycosylation Sites": "We will analyze all SARSr-CoV S gene sequences for appropriately conserved proteolytic cleavage sites in S2 and for the presence of potential furin cleavage sites. SARSr-CoV S with mismatches in proteolytic cleavage sites can be activated by exogenous trypsin or cathepsin L. Where clear mismatches occur, we will introduce appropriate human-specific cleavage sites and evaluate growth potential in Vero cells and HAE cultures." The proposal requested $14,209,245 across 3.5 project years, with performance sites including Kunming and Wuhan, China; Chapel Hill; New York; Singapore; Palo Alto; and Madison.
- what we infer
- A documented pre-pandemic intention, in a program with a Wuhan partner, to insert precisely the class of feature the pandemic virus carries. That is a real and uncomfortable coincidence of technique and timing, and it is evidence about what was proposed — not about what was done, which is graded separately. The non-award belongs beside the quotation wherever the quotation appears.
- limitations
- The text is OCR-derived from an image-only scan; two independent passes agree on every substantive word, and footnote superscripts were dropped rather than guessed.
- The available copy is a third-party archive upload, not an official release or authenticated FOIA production.
- The proposal was not funded, confirmed by the congressional record, contemporaneous reporting, and a negative check of federal award data.
- A phrase widely attributed to this document — about a cleavage site 'able to interact with furin' — is not proposal text but a journalist's wording, and is not quoted here.