evidence: The theory that the COVID-19 pandemic was triggered by the Sars-CoV-2 virus being leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China was recently given new life following an explosive article in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) in which the authors claimed "the most compelling reason to favour the lab leak hypothesis is firmly based in science". But does the science really support the claim that the virus was engineered in a laboratory? [...] An important way scientists can determine the origin of a virus is by looking at its genome. In the WSJ article, the authors, Prof Richard Muller, an astrophysicist, and Dr Steven Quay, physician and chief executive of Atossa Therapeutics, claim Sars-CoV-2 has "genetic fingerprints" of a lab-origin virus. They say that the presence of a particular genetic sequence (CGG-CGG) is a sign that the virus originated in a lab. [...] Disappointingly, many other media articles appear to have accepted and repeated the claims from the WSJ piece. The origin of Sars-CoV-2 may remain unresolved, but there is no evidence presented in the WSJ piece that scientifically supports the concept of a lab leak of a genetically engineered virus.