What specific papers did Ralph Baric and Shi Zhengli co‑author, and what experiments did those papers describe?
Executive summary
Ralph S. Baric and Shi Zhengli appear as co‑authors or collaborators on a small set of high‑profile coronavirus papers that documented making chimeric bat–SARS viruses and studying spike‑protein changes that affect human cell entry; those studies involved combining spike genes from bat viruses with known coronavirus backbones and testing infectivity in cell culture and in mice, and they are the focal point for later debates about "gain‑of‑function" risks [1] [2] [3]. Reporting and primary summaries indicate Baric’s laboratory performed the chimeric construction and pathogenesis testing while Shi’s group supplied bat virus sequences and field collections, though accounts differ on who handled which materials and where each experiment was executed [1] [3] [4].
1. The 2015 chimera paper: what it was and who did what
The 2015 collaboration commonly cited involved a chimeric SARS‑related coronavirus that combined a spike (receptor‑binding) sequence from a bat virus discovered by Shi’s team (SHC014/WIV1 family) with a mouse‑adapted SARS‑CoV backbone, and the paper reported that this constructed virus could infect human cells and cause disease in mice—work described as creating an "artificial virus" or chimera [2] [3] [1]. Multiple outlets summarize that Baric’s lab synthesized and tested the chimeric constructs and performed mouse pathogenesis experiments at University of North Carolina, while Shi’s group contributed the bat virus sequences and field samples; Baric has stated Shi provided sequences before publication, which justified co‑authorship [3] [1] [4].
2. MERS‑related spike‑cleavage engineering papers and furin site work
Reporting and interpretive essays identify a separate 2014–2015 thread in which Baric and Shi (and other authors such as Fang Li and Lanying Du) appear on papers studying spike protein determinants of entry, including experiments that engineered or probed furin cleavage sites and glycan alterations to enable MERS‑like or HKU4 viruses to use human ACE2 or to enter human cells [5] [6]. Accounts say those studies showed that specific mutations or the introduction of cleavage motifs could alter receptor usage or cell entry properties—findings later cited in discussions about how cleavage sites affect transmissibility [5] [6].
3. Later recombination and hybridization studies reported in 2017 and related work
Summaries in Shi’s biographies and journalism note a 2017 paper from Wuhan authors about recombining genetic elements from several bat coronaviruses to create hybrid strains to study transmissibility and virulence in human cells, and that Shi was an author on further genetic‑engineering collaborations with Baric around that period [5]. Source summaries place that 2017 work in the broader research program of cataloging bat coronaviruses and experimentally testing spike function, though specific methodological details and the exact division of laboratory work between UNC and WIV are described differently across accounts [5] [4].
4. Disputes, framing, and what the sources do and don’t show
Contemporaneous reporting frames these papers as foundational science that exposed risks and informed pandemic debates, and critics label some experiments as gain‑of‑function or risky because they increased a virus’s ability to infect human cells; defenders stress the scientific rationale—vaccine and drug research—and say the teams did not create a "supervirus" or transfer live chimeras to collaborators [1] [2] [4]. The public record assembled in these sources supports specific factual points—chimeric constructs combining bat spikes with SARS backbones, in vitro human‑cell infectivity tests, and mouse pathogenesis studies done at UNC—but does not settle all procedural questions such as which viral clones or materials changed hands between labs or every experimental step taken at each site [1] [3] [4].
5. Bottom line for the record
The clearest, repeatedly cited paper involving direct Baric–Shi collaboration is the mid‑2010s chimeric SARS‑related coronavirus study that combined bat spike sequences (from Shi’s field work) with a SARS backbone and reported infection of human cells and disease in mice, and related papers from 2014–2017 studied spike mutations, furin cleavage motifs, and engineered changes that altered human‑cell entry—experiments documented in profiles and reporting summarizing Baric and Shi’s joint work [1] [2] [3] [5] [6]. The sources agree on the broad experimental descriptions but diverge on attribution of hands‑on lab steps and on interpreting risk, and the provided reporting does not fully resolve every procedural detail about material transfer or lab locations [1] [3] [4].