#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesRisk Near YouVaccine RolloutGuidelines After VaccinationAdvertisementContinue reading the main storyCovid-19 News: Study Suggests 3 Feet of Distancing Is Enough in SchoolsA new study suggests 3 feet, not 6 feet, is sufficient distance for school students, with mask-wearing and other safety measures kept in place.March 14, 2021, 4:44 p.m. ETMarch 14, 2021, 4:44 p.m. ETAnna Artist, 6, working on her classwork at St. Mary’s School, a Catholic school in Lee, Mass., last month.Credit…Ben Garver/The Berkshire Eagle, via Associated PressSchool shutdowns have been a divisive topic during since the pandemic erupted, and a new study has ignited debate over the six-foot rule of social distancing and whether it can be relaxed in classroom settings, which would ease the way for children to return to schools.The new study, published last week in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, suggests public schools may be able to reopen safely for in-person instruction as long as children maintain three feet of distance between them, and with other mitigation measures maintained, such as wearing masks.Dr. Jill Biden and members of her husband’s administration have been traveling in a concerted campaign for reopening schools safely while parents and educators have grown increasingly frustrated by the off-again, on-again policies from district to district.Asked about the new report by Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” program on Sunday, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, agreed the study appeared to indicate three feet would be sufficient distance to curb transmission of the virus.No official guidance on shortening the recommended six-foot rule has yet been issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, although Dr. Fauci said the agency is studying the data.“What the C.D.C. wants to do is accumulate data, and when data shows ability to be three feet, they will act accordingly,” Dr. Fauci said. He added that the agency’s director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, was aware of the new research, and that the C.D.C. was also conducting its own studies. “I don’t want to get ahead of official guidelines,” he said.The Coronavirus Outbreak

SharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingimage copyrightReutersThe use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine has been suspended in the Republic of Ireland.The National Immunisation Advisory Committee (NIAC) recommended the move following reports of serious blood clotting events in adults in Norway. In a tweet, the Irish Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly said it was a “precautionary step”.The World Health Organisation has said there was no link between the jab and an increased risk of developing a clot.Last week, Denmark and Norway suspended the use of vaccine.On Friday, the World Health Organisation said countries should not stop using the vaccine over fears it causes blood clots as there is no indication this is true.More than 110,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine have been administered in Ireland, which is about 20% of all doses given to date.The decision to temporarily suspend use of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine was based on new information from Norway that emerged late last night. This is a precautionary step. The National Immunisation Advisory Comm meets again this morning and we’ll provide an update after that— Stephen Donnelly (@DonnellyStephen) March 14, 2021
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.View original tweet on TwitterEarlier on Sunday, Ireland’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr Ronan Glynn said new information was received from the Norwegian Medicines Agency on Saturday night.”It has not been concluded that there is any link between the Covid-19 vaccine AstraZeneca and these cases,” he said.”However, acting on the precautionary principle, and pending receipt of further information, the National Immunisation Advisory Committee has recommended the temporary deferral of the Covid-19 vaccine AstraZeneca vaccination programme in Ireland.”No reason to stop using AstraZeneca jab – WHO AstraZeneca defends EU vaccine rollout planIn a statement to RTÉ, AstraZeneca said that an analysis of safety data covering more than 17 million doses of the vaccine administered has shown no evidence of an increased risk of the conditions concerned, and that no trends or patterns were observed in clinical trials.”In fact, the reported numbers of these types of events for Covid-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca are not greater than the number that would have occurred naturally in the unvaccinated population,” said a spokesperson.”A careful review of all available safety data including these events is ongoing and AstraZeneca is committed to sharing information without delay.”In Northern Ireland, Deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill tweeted that she had sought clarification from the health minister, Robin Swann, about the suspensions in Ireland and elsewhere.Have sought clarification from the Health Minister about the temporary suspension of use of the Astra Zeneca vaccine elsewhere, and what these developments may mean for the North. Be assured we will keep the public informed.— Michelle O’Neill (@moneillsf) March 14, 2021
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.View original tweet on TwitterLast week, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in the UK said people should continue to get vaccinated.”Blood clots can occur naturally and are not uncommon. More than 11 million doses of the Covid-19 AstraZeneca vaccine have now been administered across the UK,” said Phil Bryan of the MHRA.

Researchers have developed a new tool to study ‘undruggable’ proteins through the sugars they depend on. Almost 85 percent of proteins, including those associated with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, inflammation, and certain cancers, are beyond the reach of current drugs. Now, with a new pencil/eraser tool, researchers can start to study how sugar molecules affect these proteins, insights that could lead to new treatments for the ‘undruggable.’
Sugar has been called “evil,” “toxic,” and “poison.” But the body needs sugars, too. Sugar molecules help cells recognize and fight viruses and bacteria, shuttle proteins from cell to cell, and make sure those proteins function. Too much or too little can contribute to a range of maladies, including neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, inflammation, diabetes, and even cancer.
About 85 percent of proteins, including those associated with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, are beyond the reach of current drugs. One critical and abundant sugar (O-GlcNAc, pronounced o-glick-nack) is found on over 5,000 proteins, often those considered “undruggable.” But now, researchers at Harvard University have designed a new highly-selective O-GlcNAc pencil and eraser — tools that can add or remove the sugar from a protein with no off-target effects — to examine exactly what these sugars are doing and, eventually, engineer them into new treatments for the “undruggable.”
“We can now start studying particular proteins and see what happens when you add or remove the sugar,” said Daniel Ramirez, a co-author on the paper published in Nature Chemical Biology and a Ph.D. candidate in biological and biomedical sciences in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. “This is turning out to be very important for a lot of chronic diseases like cancer and diabetes and Alzheimer’s.”
Ramirez designed the original O-GlcNAc pencil, which was reported in ACS Chemical Biology.
All cells carry a multitude of sugars (called glycans), but they’re notoriously hard to study. Current tools either provide a wide-lens view (turning on or off all the O-GlcNAc in a cell) or an ultra-zoomed in view (turning on or off a single sugar on one amino acid on one protein). Neither of these perspectives can show what O-GlcNAc molecules are doing to a protein as a whole, the crucial insight that would enable researchers to connect the dots from O-GlcNAc to disease.

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“With the protein-level approach, we’re filling in an important piece that was missing,” said Christina Woo, an associate professor of chemistry and chemical biology, who led the study. Her lab’s tool is like Goldilocks’ lukewarm bowl of porridge: Not too broad, not too specific. Just right.
“Once you have any protein of interest,” said first-author and postdoctoral scholar Yun Ge, “you can apply this tool on that protein and look at the outcomes directly.” Ge engineered the O-GlcNAc eraser, which, like the pencil, uses a nanobody as a protein homing device. The tool is adaptable, too; as long as a nanobody exists for a protein of choice, the tool can be modified to target any protein for which a homing nanobody exists.
The nanobody is a crucial component, but it has limitations: Whether or not it remains stuck to the target protein is still in question, and the molecule could alter the function or structure of the protein once stuck. If cellular changes can’t be definitively linked to the sugar on the protein, that muddies the data.
To skirt these potential limitations, the team engineered their pencils and erasers to be “catalytically dead,” said Woo. The neutered enzymes won’t make unwanted changes along the way to their target protein. And, they can both add and remove sugars, unlike previous tools, which cause permanent changes. Of course, once they connect a specific protein function to O-GlcNAc, they can then use those tools to zoom in and locate exactly where those sugars are latching onto and modifying the protein.
Already, a few of the Woo lab’s collaborators are using the pencil/eraser combo to study O-GlcNAc in live animals. One, for example, is using fruit flies to study how the sugar impacts a protein associated with Alzheimer’s disease. The sugar is also associated with Parkinson’s disease progression: “If you’re taking in less glucose,” said co-author Ramirez, “then you’re not able to produce this sugar inside the cells.” That means the body can’t attach the sugars to the proteins, which causes wide-reaching changes to the cells, aggravating the disease. In diabetes, excess sugars cause similar global disruption; and cancer cells tend to eat lots of sugars. Now, with the Woo lab’s pencil/eraser pair, researchers can identify exactly how these sugars impact various proteins and start to design drugs to reverse negative effects.
Next, the team plans to tweak their tool to achieve even greater control. With optogenetics, for example, they could switch sugars on or off with just a flash of light. Swapping out nanobodies for small molecules (used in traditional drug design), they could edge closer to new treatments. They’re also designing an eraser for the eraser — a tool with a kill switch — and plan to incorporate nanobodies that can target a naturally-occurring protein (for this study, they tagged proteins so the nanobody could find them). “We’re basically trying to make the system more natural and function the way the cell does,” said Ramirez.
Woo also plans to investigate how O-GlcNAc may influence traditionally “undruggable” proteins called transcription factors, which turn genes on and off. If O-GlcNAc plays a role in that process, the sugars could be engineered to study and regulate gene function, too.
“We really don’t know what people are going to find once we give them these tools,” said Ramirez. The tool may be new, but the potential is great: “We’re on the iPhone one, basically,” he continued, “but we’re already working on the next couple generations.”

Men experiencing vital exhaustion are more likely to have a heart attack, according to research presented today at ESC Acute CardioVascular Care 2021, an online scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).1 The risk of a myocardial infarction linked with exhaustion was particularly pronounced in never married, divorced and widowed men.
“Vital exhaustion refers to excessive fatigue, feelings of demoralisation and increased irritability,” said study author Dr. Dmitriy Panov of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics, Novosibirsk, Russian Federation. “It is thought to be a response to intractable problems in people’s lives, particularly when they are unable to adapt to prolonged exposure to psychological stressors.”
This study examined the relationship between vital exhaustion and the risk of myocardial infarction in men with no history of cardiovascular disease. The study used data from the World Health Organization (WHO) MONICA Project.2 A representative sample of 657 men aged 25 to 64 years in Novosibirsk was enrolled in 1994.
Symptoms of vital exhaustion were assessed at baseline using the Maastricht Vital Exhaustion Questionnaire adopted by the MONICA protocol. Participants were classified according to their level of vital exhaustion: none, moderate, or high. Participants were followed-up for 14 years for the incidence of heart attack.
Overall, two-thirds (67%) of the men had vital exhaustion (15% had a high level and 52% had a moderate level) while 33% were unaffected. Nearly three-quarters (74%) of men with high blood pressure had vital exhaustion — high in 58% and moderate in 16%.
In the overall group of men, the researchers analysed the association between vital exhaustion at baseline and the risk of having a heart attack. Compared to those without vital exhaustion, men with moderate or high levels had a 2.7-fold greater risk of a heart attack within five years, a 2.25 higher risk within 10 years, and a 2.1 raised risk within 14 years (p for all

AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAfter a 28-Year Ban, Alabama Could Allow Yoga in Public Schools“It’s just exercise,” said Jeremy Gray, a state lawmaker whose bill is making its way through the Legislature. But some people still say the practice has no place in the classroom.A yoga class in Birmingham, Ala. In 1993, parents in the state were raising concerns not only about yoga but also about hypnotism and “psychotherapeutic techniques.”Credit…Audra Melton for The New York TimesMarch 13, 2021, 9:57 a.m. ETFor nearly three decades, teaching yoga in Alabama’s public schools has been forbidden by the state’s school board.One lawmaker, Jeremy Gray, has been trying to change that since 2019. He made progress on Thursday, when the state’s House of Representatives passed a bill that would override the ban. The bill, which was approved by a vote of 73 to 25, will soon be taken up by the Senate.Mr. Gray, a Democrat representing Opelika, has taught and practiced yoga for years. He said that while some conservative legislators in the state might have opposed yoga because of its associations with Hinduism, officials on both sides of the aisle had been slowly warming to the idea.“Most of the senators that I’ve talked to are OK with it,” Mr. Gray said. “A lot of people in their districts have reached out to them, and a lot of their wives actually do yoga. So I think it has a good chance of passing.”His legislation would override a 1993 school board regulation that says that “school personnel shall be prohibited from using any techniques that involve the induction of hypnotic states, guided imagery, meditation or yoga.”The yoga bill is far from the only issue on the docket for Alabama lawmakers. Mr. Gray also has other legislative priorities, such as providing clean water for schools and improving the state’s policies on expunging criminal records.But because it hits at the intersection of some combustible issues — religion, culture and children’s education — the yoga bill has captured outsize news media attention. This year and last year, it was covered by multiple local, state and national news outlets, including The New York Times.Eric Johnston, a legal adviser for the Alabama Citizens Action Program, or ALCAP, a church-supported group that holds substantial influence in the Legislature, said the group intended to fight the bill when it reaches the Senate.Yoga is “a very important part of the Hindu religion,” he said. “As such, it does not need to be taught to small children in public schools.”Mr. Gray pointed out that his bill would allow schools and students to make their own decisions about whether to offer or participate in yoga classes. It also says that public schoolteachers cannot say “namaste,” a greeting often used in yoga, or any kind of chant.“You have to compromise in order to get that bipartisan support,” he said.Mr. Gray came across the issue largely by chance. In a speech at a public high school in Auburn, Ala., in 2019, he mentioned that yoga had helped him stay grounded while juggling responsibilities.After his remarks, teachers told him that they had been unable to arrange exercises for their students. “That’s how I learned it was banned,” Mr. Gray said.Around the time of the ban in 1993, parents in the state were raising concerns not only about yoga but also about hypnotism and “psychotherapeutic techniques.” According to an April 1993 article in The Anniston Star, one mother in Birmingham said her child had brought a relaxation tape home from school that made a boy “visibly high,” The Montgomery Advertiser reported.But for Mr. Gray, a former football player, yoga has long been a useful part of his exercise regimen. The gentle stretches helped him cool down after practices, he said, while the breathing exercises strengthened his lungs. (That, he added, may have helped him recover quickly from a bout of Covid-19 last year.)He introduced his first bill to challenge the yoga ban in 2019, but it quickly failed. His second attempt passed the House in 2020 but was put on the back burner because of the pandemic.This time, Mr. Gray is optimistic about the bill’s prospects. He said a Republican senator, Tom Whatley, had agreed to carry the legislation forward in the Senate, where, like the House, Republicans have a majority. (Mr. Whatley did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Friday.)Mr. Johnston, the adviser for ALCAP, which opposes the yoga bill, said he did not oppose the practice of yoga. “I think yoga is widely accepted, and even some Christian churches have yoga classes,” he added.But he framed the practice as inseparable from Hinduism, and therefore subject to the constitutional separation of religion and state. “You cannot have any kind of religious activities in elementary schools,” he said.Mr. Gray disagreed. “It’s just exercise,” he said. “We do it all the time in the gym. It’s not a big deal.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story

SharecloseShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingimage copyrightReutersJordan’s health minister has resigned after six people died due to a lack of oxygen at a hospital ward treating Covid-19 patients, state media report. The deaths were reported early on Saturday at a new government facility in the town of Salt, about 14 miles (23km) west of the capital, Amman.Prime Minister Bisher al-Khasawneh had asked Health Minister Nathir Obeidat to step down over the incident. Police were sent to the hospital after dozens of relatives turned up.The oxygen shortage, which lasted for about an hour, reportedly also affected intensive care and maternity units at the facility, although there were no reports of fatalities on those wards. It is not yet clear why there was an oxygen shortage and an investigation is under way, Mr Obeidat said. The health minister had earlier said he felt a “moral responsibility” for what had happened. A forensic doctor at Jordan’s health ministry, Dr Adnan Abbas, told Petra news agency that all six patients who died on Saturday were being treated for coronavirus. image copyrightReutersDozens of relatives whose family members were receiving treatment at the Salt hospital turned up at the facility following the news, but were prevented from entering by police and security personnel. One relative, Fares Kharabsha, said he was inside the hospital when the incident occurred and saw staff carrying portable oxygen devices to patients, AP news agency reported.”They resuscitated a large number of people, including my father and mother,” he said, adding: “I saw people who died.”Jordan’s King Abdullah II has visited the hospital since the incident, Reuters news agency reported. The country has so far reported more than 460,000 cases of Covid-19 and 5,224 coronavirus-related deaths since the start of the pandemic.Jordan has stepped up measures to reduce the spread of the virus in recent weeks as cases have steadily increased since late January. Restrictions include overnight curfews at weekends, which prevent prayers inside mosques and masses in churches. The country, which has a population of about 10 million, began its vaccination programme in January. You might also be interested in:Covid-19: Tracking the global pandemic in maps and chartsHow will I know if I have coronavirus?

AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyEbola Survivor Infected Years Ago May Have Started New OutbreakGenetic sequencing of virus samples from patients in Guinea suggest that the new outbreak is a continuation of the 2014-16 epidemic.Researchers were shocked to discover that an Ebola outbreak in Guinea was most likely started by a man infected at least five years ago. Here a hospital worker in Guinea is given an Ebola vaccine.Credit…Carol Valade/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMarch 12, 2021, 10:31 p.m. ETAn Ebola outbreak now occurring in Guinea was almost certainly started by someone who survived West Africa’s historic 2014-16 epidemic, harbored the virus for at least five years and then transmitted it via semen to a sex partner, researchers reported on Friday.The finding, based on genetic sequencing of virus samples taken from patients in the current outbreak, shocked researchers. Until now, the longest the virus had been known to persist in a survivor was 500 days.“It’s a stunner,” Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious-disease expert at Vanderbilt University who was not involved in the research, said in an interview. “This is an extraordinary phenomenon.”The current outbreak in Guinea was first recognized in January and has infected at least 18 people and killed nine.The discovery that a survivor most likely started the outbreak has profound implications. West Africa’s previous epidemic infected more than 28,000 people, killed more than 11,000 and left thousands of survivors, some of whom were already being shunned because of fears about the disease. The prospect that those who survived might be infectious for years is likely to worsen their plight.The new finding also raises the possibility that other outbreaks in the region, assumed to have begun with transmission from animals, may actually have been started by survivors with unrecognized, lingering infections.One possible solution, Dr. Schaffner said, would be “to vaccinate much of equatorial Africa” against Ebola even where there is no current outbreak. Effective vaccines are available, one made by Merck and another by Johnson & Johnson, but so far they have generally been used only in response to outbreaks.People recover from Ebola when their immune systems wipe out the virus. But certain parts of the body, including the eye, the central nervous system and the testes are so-called privileged sites, beyond the reach of the immune system. The virus can sometimes hide in those spots. But no one knew it could hide out for so long.“We have no idea how often this may be happening,” Dr. Schaffner said. “Some studies are underway. As you can imagine, it’s not easy to study hiding viruses in immunologically privileged sites, like the testicles, the eye and, rarely, the central nervous system. Those are not accessible places for easy study.”Genetic sequences of virus samples from the current patients were compared to those from the 2014-16 outbreak and were found to be so similar that they had to be closely related, researchers said. The report, posted online on Friday, involved researchers from the Guinea Ministry of Health, other labs in that country, Senegal’s Pasteur Institute, the University of Edinburgh, the University of Nebraska Medical Center and the company PraesensBio.The findings were reported earlier on Friday by Science and Stat.“There are very few genomic changes, and for those to occur, the virus has to multiply,” Dr. Schaffner said. “I think the virus is in hibernation for the most part.”“Among other things, it shows you what brilliant insights molecular whole-genome sequencing can provide,” he said. “Till this moment, all of us thought the current outbreak was a consequence of transmission from nature, from bats. But it likely came from a human reservoir.”Michael Wiley, a virologist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and the chief executive of PraesensBio, which provided materials used to study the samples, described the current outbreak as a “continuation” of the previous one.He said persistent infections and sexual transmission had already been recognized during the West African outbreak and during one in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Each new milestone for viral persistence has come as a shock, he said: first 180 days, then 500 days, and now more than five years after the initial infection.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement provided by its spokesman, Thomas Skinner: “CDC has reviewed the sequencing data from samples taken during the current outbreak in Guinea. While we can’t be 100 percent certain, CDC agrees that data supports the conclusion that cases in the current outbreak are likely linked to cases in the area during the 2014-2016 West Africa Ebola outbreak.”He added: “This suggests the outbreak was likely started from a persistent infection, a survivor, and not a new introduction of the virus from the animal reservoir. While we have seen outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of Congo linked to survivors, the length of time between the end of the 2014-2016 outbreak and the emergence of this outbreak is surprising and highlights the need for further research to better understand the complex epidemiology and ecology of Ebola.”Dr. Ian Lipkin, a virologist at Columbia University, said that after male patients had several semen samples that tested negative for Ebola, they were generally assumed to have cleared the virus, but that that was not always a correct assumption.“Somebody who had Ebola should probably be monitored on a regular basis to make sure they’re negative and remain negative,” he said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story

Cancer cells can dodge chemotherapy by entering a state that bears similarity to certain kinds of senescence, a type of “active hibernation” that enables them to weather the stress induced by aggressive treatments aimed at destroying them, according to a new study by scientists at Weill Cornell Medicine. These findings have implications for developing new drug combinations that could block senescence and make chemotherapy more effective.
In a study published Jan. 26 in Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, the investigators reported that this biologic process could help explain why cancers so often recur after treatment. The research was done in both organoids and mouse models made from patients’ samples of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) tumors. The findings were also verified by looking at samples from AML patients that were collected throughout the course of treatment and relapse.
“Acute myeloid leukemia can be put into remission with chemotherapy, but it almost always comes back, and when it does it’s incurable,” said senior author Dr. Ari M. Melnick, the Gebroe Family Professor of Hematology and Medical Oncology and a member of the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medicine. “A longstanding question in the field has been, ‘Why can’t you get rid of all the cancer cells?’ A similar question can be posed for many other types of aggressive cancer in addition to AML.”
For years, cancer researchers have studied how tumors are able to rebound after they appear to be completely wiped out by chemotherapy. One theory has been that because not all cells within a tumor are the same at the genetic level — a condition called tumor heterogeneity — a small subset of cells are able to resist treatment and begin growing again. Another theory involves the idea of tumor stem cells — that some of the cells within a tumor have special properties that allow them to re-form a tumor after chemotherapy has been given.
The idea that senescence is involved does not replace these other theories. In fact, it could provide new insight into explaining these other processes, Dr. Melnick said.
In the study, the researchers found that when AML cells were exposed to chemotherapy, a subset of the cells went into a state of hibernation, or senescence, while at the same time assuming a condition that looked very much like inflammation. They looked similar to cells that have undergone an injury and need to promote wound healing — shutting down the majority of their functions while recruiting immune cells to nurse them back to health.

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“These characteristics are also commonly seen in developing embryos that temporarily shut down their growth due to lack of nutrition, a state called embryonic diapause,” Dr. Melnick explained. “It’s not a special process, but normal biological activity that’s playing out in the context of tumors.”
Further research revealed that this inflammatory senescent state was induced by a protein called ATR, suggesting that blocking ATR could be a way to prevent cancer cells from adopting this condition. The investigators tested this hypothesis in the lab and confirmed that giving leukemia cells an ATR inhibitor before chemotherapy prevented them from entering senescence, thereby allowing chemotherapy to kill all of the cells.
Importantly, studies published at the same time from two other groups reported that the role of senescence is important not just for AML, but for recurrent cases of breast cancer, prostate cancer and gastrointestinal cancers as well. Dr. Melnick was a contributor to one of those other studies.
Dr. Melnick and his colleagues are now working with companies that make ATR inhibitors to find a way to translate these findings to the clinic. However, much more research is needed, because many questions remain about when and how ATR inhibitors would need to be given.
“Timing will be very critical,” he said. “We still have a lot to work out in the laboratory before we can study this in patients.”
Dr. Cihangir Duy, a former postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Melnick’s lab, was the study’s first author. Dr. Duy now leads his own lab at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.
Dr. Ari Melnick has been a paid consultant for KDAC Therapeutics, Epizyme, and Constellation Pharmaceuticals.

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How much did SARS-CoV-2 need to change in order to adapt to its new human host? In a research article published in the open access journal PLOS Biology Oscar MacLean, Spyros Lytras at the University of Glasgow, and colleagues, show that since December 2019 and for the first 11 months of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic there has been very little ‘important’ genetic change observed in the hundreds of thousands of sequenced virus genomes.
The study is a collaboration between researchers in the UK, US and Belgium. The lead authors Prof David L Robertson (at the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, Scotland) and Prof Sergei Pond (at the Institute for Genomics and Evolutionary Medicine, Temple University, Philadelphia) were able to turn their experience of analysing data from HIV and other viruses to SARS-CoV-2. Pond’s state-of-the-art analytical framework, HyPhy, was instrumental in teasing out the signatures of evolution embedded in the virus genomes and rests on decades of theoretical knowledge on molecular evolutionary processes.
First author Dr Oscar MacLean explains, “This does not mean no changes have occurred, mutations of no evolutionary significance accumulate and ‘surf’ along the millions of transmission events, like they do in all viruses.” Some changes can have an effect; for example, the Spike replacement D614G which has been found to enhance transmissibility and certain other tweaks of virus biology scattered over its genome. On the whole, though, ‘neutral’ evolutionary processes have dominated. MacLean adds, “This stasis can be attributed to the highly susceptible nature of the human population to this new pathogen, with limited pressure from population immunity, and lack of containment, leading to exponential growth making almost every virus a winner.”
Pond comments, “what’s been so surprising is just how transmissible SARS-CoV-2 has been from the outset. Usually viruses that jump to a new host species take some time to acquire adaptations to be as capable as SARS-CoV-2 at spreading, and most never make it past that stage, resulting in dead-end spillovers or localised outbreaks.”
Studying the mutational processes of SARS-CoV-2 and related sarbecoviruses (the group of viruses SARS-CoV-2 belongs to from bats and pangolins), the authors find evidence of fairly significant change, but all before the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in humans. This means that the ‘generalist’ nature of many coronaviruses and their apparent facility to jump between hosts, imbued SARS-CoV-2 with ready-made ability to infect humans and other mammals, but those properties most have probably evolved in bats prior to spillover to humans.
Joint first author and PhD student Spyros Lytras adds, “Interestingly, one of the closer bat viruses, RmYN02, has an intriguing genome structure made up of both SARS-CoV-2-like and bat-virus-like segments. Its genetic material carries both distinct composition signatures (associated with the action of host anti-viral immunity), supporting this change of evolutionary pace occurred in bats without the need for an intermediate animal species.”
Robertson comments, “the reason for the ‘shifting of gears’ of SARS-CoV-2 in terms of its increased rate of evolution at the end of 2020, associated with more heavily mutated lineages, is because the immunological profile of the human population has changed.” The virus towards the end of 2020 was increasingly coming into contact with existing host immunity as numbers of previously infected people are now high. This will select for variants that can dodge some of the host response. Coupled with the evasion of immunity in longer-term infections in chronic cases (e.g., in immunocompromised patients), these new selective pressures are increasing the number of important virus mutants.
It’s important to appreciate SARS-CoV-2 still remains an acute virus, cleared by the immune response in the vast majority of infections. However, it’s now moving away faster from the January 2020 variant used in all of the current vaccines to raise protective immunity. The current vaccines will continue to work against most of the circulating variants but the more time that passes, and the bigger the differential between vaccinated and not-vaccinated numbers of people, the more opportunity there will be for vaccine escape. Robertson adds, “The first race was to develop a vaccine. The race now is to get the global population vaccinated as quickly as possible.”

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Sound sleep plays a critical role in healing traumatic brain injury, a new study of military veterans suggests.
The study, published in the Journal of Neurotrauma, used a new technique involving magnetic resonance imaging developed at Oregon Health & Science University. Researchers used MRI to evaluate the enlargement of perivascular spaces that surround blood vessels in the brain. Enlargement of these spaces occurs in aging and is associated with the development of dementia.
Among veterans in the study, those who slept poorly had more evidence of these enlarged spaces and more post-concussive symptoms.
“This has huge implications for the armed forces as well as civilians,” said lead author Juan Piantino, M.D., MCR, assistant professor of pediatrics (neurology) in the OHSU School of Medicine and Doernbecher Children’s Hospital. “This study suggests sleep may play an important role in clearing waste from the brain after traumatic brain injury — and if you don’t sleep very well, you might not clean your brain as efficiently.”
Piantino, a physician-scientist with OHSU’s Papé Family Pediatric Research Institute, studies the effects of poor sleep on recovery after traumatic brain injuries.
The new study benefited from a method of analyzing MRIs developed by study co-author Daniel Schwartz and Erin Boespflug, Ph.D., under the direction of Lisa Silbert, M.D., M.C.R., professor of neurology in the OHSU School of Medicine. The technique measures changes in the brain’s perivascular spaces, which are part of the brain’s waste clearance system known as the glymphatic system.

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“We were able to very precisely measure this structure and count the number, location and diameter of channels,” Piantino said.
Co-author Jeffrey Iliff, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and of neurology at the University of Washington and a researcher at the VA Puget Sound Health Care System, has led scientific research into the glymphatic system and its role in neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease. During sleep, this brain-wide network clears away metabolic proteins that would otherwise build up in the brain.
The study used data collected from a group of 56 veterans enrolled by co-authors Elaine Peskind, M.D., and Murray Raskind, M.D., at the Mental Illness Research, Education and Clinical Center at the VA Puget Sound between 2011 and 2019.
“Imagine your brain is generating all this waste and everything is working fine,” Piantino said. “Now you get a concussion. The brain generates much more waste that it has to remove, but the system becomes plugged.”
Piantino said the new study suggests the technique developed by Silbert could be useful for older adults.

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“Longer term, we can start thinking about using this method to predict who is going to be at higher risk for cognitive problems including dementia,” he said.
The study is the latest in a growing body of research highlighting the importance of sleep in brain health.
Improving sleep is a modifiable habit that can be improved through a variety of methods, Piantino said, including better sleep hygiene habits such as reducing screen time before bed. Improving sleep is a focus of research of other OHSU scientists, including Piantino’s mentor, Miranda Lim, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of neurology, medicine and behavioral neuroscience in the OHSU School of Medicine.
“This study puts sleep at the epicenter of recovery in traumatic brain injury,” Piantino said.
The study was supported by the National heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health, award K23HL150217-01; the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Rehabilitation Research and Development Service Merit Review grant B77421; and NIH award P30AG008017-18.