What could independent investigators learn from the first (known) copies of the virus from Wuhan, if they had (physical?) access to these samples?

Question

RFI reports:

"You have to remember -- these labs are still open inside of China these labs that contain complex pathogens that were being studied. It's not just the Wuhan Institute of Virology," Pompeo told reporters.

"It's important that those materials are being handled in a safe and secure way such that there isn't accidental release," Pompeo told reporters.

Pompeo cited the example of nuclear facilities, pointing to the rigorous global inspections to ensure safety.

He renewed concerns that China has not shared a sample of the initially detected virus, known scientifically as SARS-CoV-2.

"We still do not have a sample of the virus, nor has the world had access to the facilities or other locations where this virus may have originally originated inside of Wuhan," Pompeo said.

(China has now rejected this US call as being "politically motivated" but they weren't terribly specific beyond that.)

Would China [physically] sharing "a sample of the initially detected virus" (which of course begets the question which sample is that precisely--but let's assume they share all 40 or so initial samples they reported/discovered back in Jan) have any scientific value? E.g. is [physically] sharing those samples (more broadly) likely to shed any additional light on the virus' origins? (In that regard, have Western scientists asked for those [physical] samples, or said they are important for China to [physically] share them, independently/before the US political leadership's involvement in the matter?)

For more context, a Yale med page from January says:

Two weeks ago, we didn't even know what the nCOV2019 virus was. Today, thanks to China’s quick public release of the initial nCOV2019 virus genome [...] To go from unknown pathogen to diagnostic tests so quickly is incredible! The scientists at the Fudan University, China CDC, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Zhejiang Provincial CDC, and the Thai National Institute of Health should be highly praised for making their data rapidly available to the public.

A bit later, Chinese researchers published a paper on 10 genomes from the initial outbreak in Wuhan. The (FASTA) data for those seems publicly available, although behind a registration page.

So, per comments below, if Pompeo means something else by "sample of the virus" (not physical sample[s]), what is that?

Answer 1

I'll take a shot at this. It's my impression that most of this is political rather than scientifically grounded. There are reasons to want physical samples of viruses (rather than just genomic sequences), e.g. if you want to do experimental (in vitro or in vivo) studies on a particular virus strain. (It might be theoretically possible to edit the genome or reconstruct the genome of an earlier strain, but it's much easier if you have the desired viral strain in hand.)

Based on this Financial Times article (which may or may not be accessible without a subscription/accepting cookies)

Mr Pompeo added the Chinese Communist party had still not shared virus samples with anyone outside China, impeding efforts to understand how it emerged.

A researcher at Wuhan Institute of Virology, who declined to be named, told the Financial Times earlier this month that China had not shared samples of the live virus with the WHO as the country “had already published plenty of information” such as the genetic code of coronavirus.

It does seem that almost all of the research on the origins of SARS-COV-2 is based on genome sequences rather than on phenotypic studies (i.e., in vitro and in vivo studies of actual viruses).

I don't think viral samples would actually be very useful (that's why I said at the beginning that I think most of this argument is political rather than scientific). In principle I guess you could use the viral samples from an early stage do experimental infections in different animal species, but I don't know that any researchers actually want to do that, and I don't think there's been enough phenotypic evolution in the last few months that the early-epidemic viral samples would behave that differently from current samples ... it's also likely that researchers could study the effects of particular mutations (observed in genomic sequence) by modifying viral samples they had in hand.

To take an example from an earlier pandemic, researchers have done experimental studies in mice to show how particular mutations influenced the virulence of earlier flu strains. This is an example where it's useful to have an actual virus rather than just the genome - but in this case the virus was actually reconstructed from knowledge of the genome ("two isogenic recombinant chimeric viruses were created with an influenza A/WSN/33 virus background containing the PB1 segment from the HK/156/97").