Biolabs in Your Backyard: Chapel Hill, North Carolina

OCA's Alexis Baden-Mayer discusses and takes live questions on Ralph Baric's risky gain-of-function research lab

If you’re in North Carolina, you’re in the vicinity of six BSL-3 labs on the University of North Carolina’s campus, where virus engineer Ralph Baric works.

Baric is the scientist who worked with Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan Institute of Virology and Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance to create viruses eerily similar to SARS-CoV-2.

In fact, one of Baric’s viruses may even be identical. We can't be sure because he didn’t publish its genetic code until 2020!