Science Trends

Sars-CoV-2 virus illustration (stock image). Researchers at MIT; the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard; and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; along with colleagues from around the world have identified specific types of cells that appear to be targets of the coronavirus that is causing the Covid-19 pandemic. Using existing data on the RNA found in different types of cells, the researchers were able to search for cells that express the two proteins that help the SARS-CoV-2 virus enter human cells. They found subsets of cells in the lung, the nasal passages, and the intestine that express RNA for both of these proteins much more than other cells. The researchers hope that their findings will help guide scientists who are working on developing new drug treatments or testing existing drugs that could be repurposed for treating Covid-19. "Our goal is to get information out to the community and to share data as soon as is humanly possible, so that we ca...

Exoplanet illustration (stock image; elements furnished by NASA). A team of transatlantic scientists, using reanalyzed data from NASA's Kepler space telescope, has discovered an Earth-size exoplanet orbiting in its star's habitable zone, the area around a star where a rocky planet could support liquid water. Scientists discovered this planet, called Kepler-1649c, when looking through old observations from Kepler, which the agency retired in 2018. While previous searches with a computer algorithm misidentified it, researchers reviewing Kepler data took a second look at the signature and recognized it as a planet. Out of all the exoplanets found by Kepler, this distant world -- located 300 light-years from Earth -- is most similar to Earth in size and estimated temperature. This newly revealed world is only 1.06 times larger than our own planet. Also, the amount of starlight it receives from its host star is 75% of the amount of light Earth receives from our Su...

A new study finds volcanic activity played a direct role in triggering extreme climate change at the end of the Triassic period 201 million year ago, wiping out almost half of all existing species. The amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere from these volcanic eruptions is comparable to the amount of CO 2   expected to be produced by all human activity in the 21st century. The end-Triassic extinction has long been thought to have been caused by dramatic climate change and rising sea levels. While there was large-scale volcanic activity at the time, known as the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province eruptions, the role it played in directly contributing to the extinction event is debated. In a study for  Nature Communications , an international team of researchers, including McGill professor Don Baker, found evidence of bubbles of carbon dioxide trapped in volcanic rocks dating to the end of the Triassic, supporting the theory that volcanic activity contribu...

Most drugs in clinical trials against COVID-19, such as chloroquine phosphate, can be made cheaply. With a vaccine for the novel coronavirus still likely a year or more away, the first weapon against the virus could be one of the drugs now in clinical trials with COVID-19 patients. A new analysis out today shows that many of these drugs, which are currently manufactured or in development to treat other diseases, can be made for $1 a day per patient, or less. If any prove effective against the novel coronavirus, a coordinated international effort will be needed to ensure they are made affordable for people worldwide, the researchers argue. Scientists worldwide are conducting clinical trials on at least a dozen potential treatments for COVID-19. Some compounds have been on the market for decades, such as chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine used to combat malaria and lupus. That makes it relatively straightforward to estimate the minimum cost of making them, says...

Spiral galaxy illustration (stock image). Just as the sun has planets and the planets have moons, our galaxy has satellite galaxies, and some of those might have smaller satellite galaxies of their own. To wit, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a relatively large satellite galaxy visible from the Southern Hemisphere, is thought to have brought at least six of its own satellite galaxies with it when it first approached the Milky Way, based on recent measurements from the European Space Agency's Gaia mission. Astrophysicists believe that dark matter is responsible for much of that structure, and now researchers at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the Dark Energy Survey have drawn on observations of faint galaxies around the Milky Way to place tighter constraints on the connection between the size and structure of galaxies and the dark matter halos that surround them. At the same time, they have found more evidence for the existenc...

Pangolin (stock image). As scientists scramble to learn more about the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, two recent studies of the virus' genome reached controversial conclusions: namely, that snakes are intermediate hosts of the new virus, and that a key coronavirus protein shares "uncanny similarities" with an HIV-1 protein. Now, a study in ACS'  Journal of Proteome Research  refutes both ideas and suggests that scaly, anteater-like animals called pangolins are the missing link for SARS-CoV-2 transmission between bats and humans. Understanding where SARS-CoV-2 -- the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic -- came from and how it spreads is important for its control and treatment. Most experts agree that bats are a natural reservoir of SARS-CoV-2, but an intermediate host was needed for it to jump from bats to humans. A recent study that analyzed the new virus' genome suggested snakes as this host, despite the fact that coronaviruses are only known to infec...

SARS-CoV-2 illustration (stock image). No vaccines exist that protect people against infections by coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, or the ones that cause SARS and MERS. As COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc, many labs around the world have developed a laser-like focus on understanding the virus and finding the best strategy for stopping it. This week in  mBio , a journal of the American Society of Microbiology, a team of interdisciplinary researchers describes a promising vaccine candidate against the MERS virus. Since the MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak began in 2012, more than 850 people have died, and studies suggest the virus has a case fatality rate of more than 30%. In the new paper, the researchers suggest that the approach they took for a MERS virus vaccine may also work against SARS-CoV-2. The vaccine's delivery method is an RNA virus called parainfluenza virus 5 (PIV5), which is believed to cause a condition known a...

Coronavirus illustration (stock image). The novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that emerged in the city of Wuhan, China, last year and has since caused a large scale COVID-19 epidemic and spread to more than 70 other countries is the product of natural evolution, according to findings published today in the journal  Nature Medicine . The analysis of public genome sequence data from SARS-CoV-2 and related viruses found no evidence that the virus was made in a laboratory or otherwise engineered. "By comparing the available genome sequence data for known coronavirus strains, we can firmly determine that SARS-CoV-2 originated through natural processes," said Kristian Andersen, PhD, an associate professor of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research and corresponding author on the paper. In addition to Andersen, authors on the paper, "The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2," include Robert F. Garry, of Tulane University; Edward Holmes, of the University of Sy...

A Dinosaur egg concept An international team of scientists led by the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, has been able to reconstruct, in the smallest details, the skulls of some of the world's oldest known dinosaur embryos in 3D, using powerful and non-destructive synchrotron techniques at the ESRF, the European Synchrotron in France. They found that the skulls develop in the same order as those of today's crocodiles, chickens, turtles and lizards. The findings are published today in  Scientific Reports . University of the Witwatersrand scientists publish 3D reconstructions of the ~2cm-long skulls of some of the world's oldest dinosaur embryos in an article in   Scientific Reports . The embryos, found in 1976 in Golden Gate Highlands National Park (Free State Province, South Africa) belong to South Africa's iconic dinosaur   Massospondylus carinatus , a 5-meter long herbivore that nested in the Free State region 200 million years ago. ...