April 12

Canadian researchers announce the first successful sequencing of the coronavirus genome believed to be responsible for the global epidemic of SARS. Scientists from the CDC confirm these reports. The new sequence has 29,727 nucleotides which fits well with the typical RNA boundaries of known coronaviruses. The results come just 12 days after a team of 10 scientists, supported by numerous technicians, began working around the clock to grow cells from a throat culture, taken from one of the SARS patients, in Vero cells (African green monkey kidney cells) in order to reproduce the ribonucleic acid