In a pair of related studies published in Science, researchers at University of California San Diego, with colleagues on four continents, show that the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019 was at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, and resulted from at least two instances of the SARS-CoV-2 virus jumping from live animal hosts to humans working or shopping there.
The first paper's lead author is Jonathan Pekar, a Ph.D. student in Bioinformatics and Systems Biology, and the main PI is BISB Prof. Joel Wertheim. Coauthors also include BISB Ph.D. student Jennifer Havens, BISB Prof. Niema Moshiri, and Moshiri Lab undergraduate student Katherine Izhikevich. The second paper was also coauthored by Jonathan Pekar and Prof. Joel Wertheim.