It is a shadowy realm of virus research, one that politicians are reluctant to see publicly negotiated because it can be easily linked to horror fantasies, and one that even the majority of researchers follow with more doubt than enthusiasm.

Everyone knows that what happens here, if things go badly, can turn the world off its hinges.

Like now, like in this pandemic, it could come - or even more catastrophic.

And that is precisely why it is now being dragged into the light with a vengeance.

This research area is called "Gain of function".

Joachim Müller-Jung

Editor in the features section, responsible for the “Nature and Science” section.

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    The concept is to upgrade dangerous pathogens through genetic interventions in the laboratory and thus make them even more dangerous.

    Understanding viruses better is the researchers' motivation.

    For many, scandal research, close to the production of biological weapons, is extremely risky despite all precautionary measures and therefore also a question of national and global security.

    In Washington, at any rate, it has now found its way out of the shadows and onto the political stage, and possibly also in Beijing - but there at best behind closed doors.

    Because the question is: Is GOF, as the abbreviation for it is, at the beginning of the pandemic that started in southern China?

    What dangers do you have to expect?

    Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky, an ophthalmologist who failed five years ago as a promising young presidential candidate, announced a Senate hearing this week: "We need to know how much of this research is happening and what dangers we have to expect," he tweeted in order to appease the greatest conspiracy theorists, especially from within their own ranks. Regardless of whether Sars-CoV-2 had a natural origin or whether it came from a laboratory, he wrote, "These artificially generated super viruses are a huge danger". Paul leaves it open, but like the vast majority in the Trump camp, he seems convinced that GOF research has what it takes and the will to create and circulate highly dangerous viruses such as Sars-CoV-2 - and it is it just happened through a kind of industrial accident.

    Such an industrial accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology is actually considered by many Americans to be the most plausible hypothesis for the starting point of the coronavirus pandemic. If you ask scientists like the immunologist Florian Krammer, who conducts research in New York, the probability of this is low based on the facts: one percent. Nevertheless, the "China virus" is back, a word created by ex-President Donald Trump. At least since his successor Joe Biden instructed the secret service a few days ago to finally put more information on what was going on in the Wuhan Institute on the table in three months at the latest, the “lab leak” thesis, previously traded as a conspiracy idea, has been get a huge boost. The spicy, because the real thing about it:The Chinese were allowed to use the know-how of American GOF researchers to manipulate the bat corona viruses.