O-73 - SARS-CoV-2 is a recombinant mosaic of -5 wild bat sarbecoviruses, its RBD fragment nesting in the BANAL clade
A GARD recombination analysis found 14 breakpoints (15 fragments); SARS-CoV-2’s genome is a mosaic contributed to by more than five bat sarbecoviruses (RmYN02, RpYN06, RaTG13, BANAL-52, BANAL-103), with a breakpoint 7 nt upstream of the RBD and the RBD-containing fragment grouping with the wild BANAL-52/103/236 clade; no pangolin coronavirus was immediately associated with a recombination event at the origin of SARS-CoV-2.
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Why this is evidence
A natural recombinant mosaic of ~5 wild bat sarbecoviruses, with the RBD-containing fragment nesting in the wild BANAL clade, explains the genome without engineering — favouring H-41/H-42 over the chimera reading of H-43.