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Journalism of Courage
The first scientist to publish the genome sequencing of Covid-19 has been allowed access to his laboratory again in China, following a recent protest against its closure. Scientist Zhang Yongzhen’s work on the coronavirus in early 2020 was crucial to the creation of vaccines against coronavirus and in understanding the nature of the disease.
He wrote in an online post on Wednesday (May 1) that authorities had “tentatively agreed” to let him and his team use the lab at the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center and continue their research work, the Associated Press reported. On Monday, he said they had been evicted without prior notice. He posted several photos on social media that showed him sleeping outside the lab, leading several people to raise concerns about him.
In his comments to science journal Nature, Zhang said on Monday that his situation was “terrible”. It is believed that following his work on genome sequencing, he had come under the radar of Chinese authorities for sharing information on his own accord, despite some restrictions on doing so at the time.
We recall how Zhang’s work helped decipher the virus, and what has happened since.
The human genome is essentially a “biological instruction manual” that we inherit from our parents. It is a tome written with just four letters, A,C,G, and T — the four bases that come together to create everyone’s unique DNA or genetic makeup.
There are around 3 billion pairs of bases in the complete human genome. This contains all the information needed to create a human being’s physical form and maintain it throughout life.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), genome sequencing allows scientists to understand the genetic material found in an organism or virus. “Sequences from specimens can be compared to help scientists track the spread of a virus, how it is changing, and how those changes may affect public health,” it states. To do so, researchers extract information from the blood.
What did Zhang do?
A profile of Zhang’s work in Nature said his lab at the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center received a sample of a new pathogen on January 3, 2020. Back then, the virus was known to be spreading in the city of Wuhan and resulting in flu-like symptoms.
Despite a government order prohibiting local authorities from sharing information on the virus, Zhang’s team worked for 40 hours and on January 5, they found that the virus was related to severe acute respiratory syndrome or SARS, which first gripped China from 2002 to 2004.
He shared the findings with Shanghai’s municipal health authority and uploaded the data to the US National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). As he waited for processing and approval from NCBI, he visited Wuhan, attempted to gather more information and met health officials over the next few days.
Eventually, he shared the sequencing data with his friend and collaborator Edward Holmes, a virologist at the University of Sydney in Australia. Both mulled releasing the data online, just as Zhang was boarding a flight to Beijing.
“Zhang asked Holmes for a minute to think, but the flight attendant was telling him to hang up. He reflected on the grim conversations he’d had in Wuhan.” Zhang had told Nature of that moment: “It was getting serious”. Finally, he gave the go-ahead, leading Holmes to post it on the website virological.org.
Almost immediately, the data was seized upon by countries to check whether the viruses they detected domestically were the same. A 2021 report from The New York Times said: “Moderna, an obscure biotech company in Cambridge, Mass., immediately began working with the National Institutes of Health on a plan.”
Reportedly, Moderna never had a virus sample on its site when it began working on the vaccine and relied on the genome sequence. Testing companies also began to develop kits based on the genome sequencing.
For Zhang too, the work happened at a rapid pace. The Nature profile says: “In 2003, scientists took several months to pin down the SARS coronavirus as the cause. Next-generation sequencing technology has made the difference, and Zhang has been one of the most prolific at applying it; he and Holmes have reported thousands of new RNA viruses.”
What has happened since?
A day after Zhang and Holmes published the data, his lab was ordered to close for “rectification”. Zhang later said this was an acceptable norm given the possibility of wrong information going out.
In the more recent stand-off, the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center said it had closed some labs, including Zhang’s, for renovation due to safety concerns. It claimed to have provided additional office and experimental spaces for Zhang and his team, according to CNN. However, some of his collaborators have also told various media outlets about the difficulties of doing his work in the years since his landmark work.
Certain critical posts he shared on recent events have been deleted from Chinese social media websites. It is being seen as part of the larger clampdown from the Chinese government on the medical community and activists who have attempted to shed more light on events around Covid-19.
Yanzhong Huang, a specialist in Chinese health policy at the US think tank Council on Foreign Relations told Nature that the true nature of the lab dispute and protest are “shrouded in mystery”.
