What Should Be Kept Off-Limits in a Virology Lab?

February 2, 2023

(Vox) – Imagine you’re a virologist. You’re doing research into monkeypox, and in an effort to better understand which genes make monkeypox deadly, you take genetic components of one of the clades of monkeypox that is more deadly and components from a clade that is less deadly but more transmissible. (Because you’re a virologist, you know that a clade is a group of organisms sharing specific genetic traits.) You combine them to make a new monkeypox variant with traits from both the deadly version and the contagious version. Would this work be covered by US guidelines that require heightened safety scrutiny for research that could potentially spark a deadly pandemic? (Read More)