Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Chinese virologist who was first to share COVID-19 genome sleeps on street after lab shuts

Zhang Yongzhen shared the genomic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 with the world, speeding up the development of vaccines.
  1. Smriti Mallapaty
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

Zhang Yongzhen, the first scientist to publish a sequence of the COVID-19 virus, looks at a presentation on his laptop in a coffeeshop in Shanghai, China on Dec. 13, 2020.

Zhang Yongzhen, the first person to publicly release the genome sequence of the virus that causes COVID-19, was camping outside his laboratory. Credit: Dake Kang/AP via Alamy

The first person to publicly release the genome sequence of the virus that causes COVID-19 — virologist Zhang Yongzhen — seems to have resolved a public dispute with the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center (SPHCC), Fudan University, China, which erupted last week.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-01293-0

Updates & Corrections

  • Update 03 May 2024: The text was altered to reflect the fact that Zhang's social media posts have been removed

  • Correction 03 May 2024: Zhang's social media post regarding the agreement with SPHCC was posted after midnight on Tuesday night. The text has been corrected for accuracy.

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Advanced search

Quick links