Publisher Health

Receiving a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine or booster during pregnancy can benefit pregnant people and their newborn infants, according to findings recently published in Vaccine. The paper describes results from the Multisite Observational Maternal and Infant Study for COVID-19 (MOMI-VAX), which was funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health.
The MOMI-VAX study launched in June 2021 when data on COVID-19 vaccination in pregnant people were sparse. Researchers hoped to understand the immune response following receipt of Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, and determine how much protection against illness they provided. Pregnant people are more likely to be hospitalized and die from severe COVID-19, and the disease puts them at greater risk for preterm birth. Researchers also suspected that, as with other vaccines, the antibodies generated by COVID-19 vaccination might transfer to fetuses across the placenta, which would provide newborns with some additional protection against COVID-19 in their first months of life. Among other metrics, the study tracked the COVID-19 antibody levels of pregnant people who received either of the two COVID-19 vaccines, as well as the antibodies in their cord blood when they gave birth.
Researchers at the NIAID-funded Infectious Diseases Clinical Research Consortium (IDCRC) followed more than 500 pregnant volunteers and their newborns, at nine study sites. Results from 240 participants are reported in this paper, including 167 pregnant participants who received the two-dose primary series of either of the two mRNA vaccines during pregnancy, and 73 who received a booster dose; at the time, only one booster dose was recommended. Researchers examined blood samples taken before and after participants were vaccinated or boosted, and at time of delivery. The researchers also analyzed participants’ cord blood at the time of birth.
The researchers found that pregnant people who received the COVID-19 vaccines generated antibodies against specific types of SARS-CoV-2. These included antibodies against the D614G variant (which the vaccines were designed to protect against), as well as the Delta and Omicron subvariants. The antibodies effectively crossed the placenta and were also found in the cord blood of vaccinated participants. This likely conferred some protection in the newborns against these variants immediately after birth — a critical time when they are vulnerable to severe COVID-19 disease but are too young to be vaccinated, according to the researchers.
Pregnant participants who received a booster dose had substantially more antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, both in their own blood and in their cord blood, suggesting that boosting also increased their newborns’ immune defenses against COVID-19. These findings support the use of COVID-19 vaccination, and in particular booster doses, during pregnancy for protection of mothers and newborns.
The researchers suggest that future studies could determine the best time during pregnancy to get vaccinated against COVID-19 to provide the most protection for parent and newborn. In addition, researchers hope to build a more complete picture of how prenatal COVID-19 vaccination affects infants using more data collected during the MOMI-VAX study, such as antibody levels in breastmilk and infants’ SARS-CoV-2 antibody levels in the year after birth.

Producers of infant formula employ comprehensive food safety systems, including product testing to ensure those systems are working. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign finds that some testing methods are more powerful at catching contaminants than others.
Spacing out samples over time in a stratified sampling pattern is better at catching risky pathogens like Cronobacter than randomly sampling from the product as it is being produced, the researchers found. Furthermore, while taking more samples of product generally increases the chance to catch the pathogen, there is a point after which it is unlikely to increase safety.
“Our findings show that existing sampling and testing guidance is powerful, at least for the one hazard profile our team had access to for the study,” said project lead Matthew J. Stasiewicz, associate professor in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition (FSHN), part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at U. of I.
“However, this work also highlights the need for additional research and data sharing efforts into patterns of contamination in infant formula production, so that sampling and testing can be better matched to current needs,” he stated.
Safety systems for infant formula production include control points like milk pasteurization and steps to prevent contamination such as sanitary facility design and regular cleaning and sanitation. Product testing is an additional tool that producers are using to verify safety, and it must be powerful enough to catch a major failure before a potentially risky product is released to customers.
The study, published in the Journal of Food Protection, was supported by the Institute for the Advancement of Food and Nutrition Sciences (IAFNS) Food Microbiology Committee. The researchers used computer models to simulate sampling and testing finished formula to gauge the power of current national and international guidelines for testing programs and suggest ways to do better.
The process was based on detecting a realistic hazard, defined by what was observed in samples from Cronobacter-contaminated batches produced in Europe in the 2010s, the most current data available. The researchers found that safety plans with 30 or more grab samples had a very high probability of detecting hazards. However, there was a point of diminishing returns, where very high sample numbers — like testing every can produced — would not be meaningfully more powerful. They concluded that systematic or stratified random sampling patterns are more effective than simple random sampling for bulk powder testing.
“In addition to analyzing relevant scenarios, we built a web app that allows industry stakeholders to simulate various sampling scenarios and gain a deeper understanding of the effectiveness of sampling plans specific to their plants. With this knowledge, producers can proactively address risks and optimize current sampling practices,” said the study’s lead author Minho Kim, a doctoral student in FSHN.
For parents who are concerned about their infants becoming ill from bacterial contamination of formula, the researchers advise they talk to their doctor about safer formula feeding.
For example, one way to further reduce bacteria in formula is using hot water during reconstitution and then cooling it to body temperature prior to feeding. This simple preventative measure can greatly reduce the risk from Cronobacter contamination according to an international risk assessment. However, steps like this require care to avoid the risk of children being burned by the heated bottles.

Forensic researchers at UT Knoxville’s famous Anthropological Research Facility, popularly known as the “Body Farm,” have made headlines for decades in their discoveries of what happens to human bodies after death. Now, a multidisciplinary team — engineers, soil scientists, and biologists — digs in with them for a deeper look at what happens to the soil underneath a decomposing body.
Their study, “Soil Elemental Changes During Human Decomposition,” published in June 2023 by PLOS One, could benefit investigators searching for human remains in remote or hard-to access-vegetated areas.
“This study was part of a larger project where we were investing environmental changes in the vicinity of a decomposing body,” said Jennifer DeBruyn, co-author and professor in the Department of Biosystems and Soil Science (BESS). “Our bodies are concentrated in nutrients and other elements compared to the surrounding environment. As they break down, these nutrients are released into the environment, resulting in changes to soil and vegetation nearby.”
A greater understanding of how and when soil and vegetation changes in the presence of decomposing human remains may offer clues to both locating bodies and estimating how long they have been there.
To test their ideas, this study asks: What elements are released from the human body during decomposition and how does it influence the local soil environment?
“We have previously looked at the major elements of the body, namely carbon and nitrogen,” said DeBruyn, “But we know there are lots more in our bodies.”
The next most abundant elements in the body are sulfur, phosphorus, sodium, and potassium. As the soft tissues in test bodies decomposed, the team observed an expected pulse of these elements in the soils as they were released into the environment.

Period products come in a variety of styles — liners, pads, tampons, cups and underwear — to help people feel comfortable during a menstrual bleed. But their labels don’t usually list the ingredients, so consumers don’t know what’s in their product of choice. Now, researchers have analyzed over 100 period products for fluorinated compounds, an indicator of potentially harmful per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. Their results show that while PFAS are absent from many products, they might be accidentally or intentionally added to others.
The researchers will present their results Sunday, Aug. 13, on the first day of the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). 
“Of course, you’re concerned for the wearer, but we’re also concerned about the ecological impact because PFAS are ‘forever chemicals,'” says Graham Peaslee, Ph.D., the principal investigator of the project. “Once these products are thrown away, they go to landfills and decay, releasing PFAS into groundwater. And we, or later generations, could end up inadvertently ingesting them.”
PFAS are a category of over 12,000 compounds that have stick-, stain- and water-resistant properties, which are desirable characteristics for some products. But because these compounds don’t break down easily in the environment or our bodies, they are persistent and bioaccumulative — hence the “forever chemical” moniker. Researchers have also linked exposure to PFAS with an increased risk of negative health outcomes, including some cancers and immune suppression.
Currently, there are few regulatory limits on including PFAS in textiles or period products in the U.S. or Europe. And when it comes to personal products like these, people are concerned about what goes into them, says Peaslee, which is why his research team at the University of Notre Dame started testing them for PFAS.
While it’s not known how much PFAS could pass from different materials through the skin, the team has found these compounds in firefighting gear, school uniforms and period underwear. And other researchers have detected PFAS in additional period products, such as tampons and pads. So, Alyssa Wicks, a graduate student in Peaslee’s lab who is presenting at the meeting, wanted to expand the analyses to a larger variety of period products that haven’t been widely tested, including the packaging for single-use tampons and pads, as well as reusable options, such as menstrual cups.
“Our first step was a screening that’s done quickly and simply,” says Wicks. “We determined if these products had organic fluorine as a surrogate for PFAS.” She cut out a small portion of each item and analyzed it in less than three minutes, using particle-induced gamma-ray emission spectroscopy.

Think you know everything about a material? Try giving it a twist — literally. That’s the main idea of an emerging field in condensed matter physics called “twistronics,” which has researchers drastically changing the properties of 2D materials, like graphene, with subtle changes — as small as going from a 1.1° to 1.2° — in the angle between stacked layers. Twisted layers of graphene, for example, have been shown to behave in ways that single sheets have not, including acting like magnets, like electrical superconductors, or like a superconductor’s opposite, insulators, all due to small changes in the twist angle between sheets.
In theory, you could dial in any property by turning a knob that changes the twist angle. The reality, however, isn’t so straightforward, says Columbia physicist Cory Dean. Two twisted layers of graphene can become like a new material, but exactly why these different properties manifest is not well understood, let alone something that can be fully controlled yet.
Dean and his lab have come up with a simple new fabrication technique that may help physicists probe the fundamental properties of twisted layers of graphene and other 2D materials in a more systematic and reproducible way. Writing in Science, they use long “ribbons” of graphene, rather than square flakes, to create devices that offer a new level of predictability and control over both twist angle and strain.
Graphene devices have typically been assembled from atom-thin flakes of graphene that are just a few square micrometers. The resulting twist angle between the sheets is fixed in place, and the flakes can be tricky to layer together smoothly. “Imagine graphene as pieces of saran wrap — when you put two pieces together you get random little wrinkles and bubbles,” says postdoc Bjarke Jessen, a co-author on the paper. Those bubbles and wrinkles are akin to changes in the twist angle between the sheets and the physical strain that develops in between and can cause the material to buckle, bend, and pinch randomly. All these variations can yield new behaviors, but they have been difficult to control within and between devices.
Ribbons can help smooth things out. The lab’s new research shows that, with just a little push from the tip of an atomic force microscope, they can bend a graphene ribbon into a stable arc that can then be placed flat on top of a second, uncurved, graphene layer. The result is a continuous variation in the twist angle between the two sheets that spans from 0° to 5° across the length of the device, with evenly distributed strain throughout — no more random bubbles or wrinkles to contend with. “We no longer have to make 10 separate devices with 10 different angles to see what happens,” said postdoc and co-author Maëlle Kapfer. “And, we can now control for strain, which was completely lacking in prior twisted devices.”
The team used special high-resolution microscopes to confirm how uniform their devices were. With that spatial information, they developed a mechanical model that predicts twist angles and strain values simply based on the shape of the curved ribbon.
This first paper was focused on characterizing the behavior and properties of ribbons of graphene as well as other materials that can be thinned to single layers and stacked on top of each other. “It’s worked with every 2D material that we’ve tried so far,” noted Dean. From here, the lab plans to use their new technique to explore how the fundamental properties of quantum materials change as a function of twist angle and strain. For example, prior research has shown that two twisted layers of graphene act like a superconductor when the twist angle is 1.1. However, there are competing models to explain the origins of superconductivity at this so-called “magic angle,” as well as predictions of additional magic angles that have thus far been too difficult to stabilize, Dean said. With devices made with ribbons, which contain all angles between 0° and 5°, the team can more precisely explore the origins of this phenomenon, and others.
“What we are doing is like quantum alchemy: taking a material and turning it into something else. We now have a platform to systematically explore how that happens,” said Jessen.

Yoga and breathing control practices, in combination with aerobic training, are particularly key exercises for asthmatic people seeking to improve their lung function, a new peer-reviewed study suggests.
The research which is published today in the journal Annals of Medicine highlights the importance of integrating appropriate exercise training into asthma management plans.
The findings demonstrate just how effective specific types of exercise training can be to enhance lung function for those with adults, explains lead author Shuangtao Xing, an Associate Professor at the School of Physical Education at Henan Normal University in China.
“Breathing training combined with aerobic training, and yoga training, appear to be particularly advantageous — offering potential avenues for effective treatment approaches,” he states.
“Larger, well-designed randomized controlled trials are now needed to more accurately estimate the benefits of exercise training for individuals with asthma.”
Asthma, a chronic lung condition that affects around 339 million people worldwide, causes symptoms such as coughing, wheezing, shortness of breath and chest tightness.
In the past, exercise was considered a potential risk factor for individuals with asthma, as it was believed to trigger or worsen acute asthma attacks. However, recent studies have revealed that exercise training can actually enhance respiratory function and exercise capacity in adult patients. However, variations in the specific exercise interventions in existing randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have made it challenging to compare the effectiveness of different rehabilitation programs.

A new study presents a promising treatment method for so-called fusion-driven cancers, which are currently often difficult to cure. These fusion-driven cancers are caused by an error in cell division that creates a fusion of different genes. This fusion causes the cancer and drives the uncontrolled cell growth.
Using the so-called molecular scissors CRISPR/Cas9, researchers from Aarhus University have developed a gene therapy that can stop cell division in a subtype of the aggressive blood cancer acute myeloid leukaemia (AML).
The study has just been published in the scientific journal Leukemia. Even though the study focuses on blood cancer, many other types of cancer are also driven by fusion genes, for example some lung cancers and sarcomas. The researchers hypothesize that this technology can become a platform technology for specific types of cancer driven by fusion genes.
A paradigm shift in cancer therapy
So far, this gene therapy has been carried out in the laboratory on cell lines and mice. But the results are an important step towards developing a new form of treatment based on targeting the drivers of the disease, explains Associate Professor Maja Ludvigsen from the Department of Clinical Medicine at Aarhus University, who is one of the authors behind the study.
In brief, the researchers have succeeded in cutting genes that, in fusion cancers, are fused incorrectly together and which send a fatal signal to cells to begin dividing uncontrollably. When the fusion gene have been cut, the cancer cells stop dividing.
In this study, the researchers have applied this treatment to cells in a laboratory setting by opening the cell membrane using electricity, a recognised laboratory method that allows substances to pass through the cell membrane. In this way, the ‘scissors’ — the enzyme Cas9 — can target the gene together with guides that consist of RNA (guideRNAs).

Specific receptors in the ears of mosquitoes have been revealed to modulate their hearing, finds a new study led by researchers at UCL and University of Oldenburg. Scientists say, this discovery could help develop new insecticides and control the spread of harmful diseases, such as malaria.
The ability of male mosquitoes to hear female mosquitoes is a crucial requirement for their reproduction. As a result, the finding could help develop novel insecticides or mating disruptors to prevent mosquito-borne diseases like malaria, dengue, and yellow fever
In the study, published in Nature Communications, the researchers focused on a signalling pathway involving a molecule called octopamine. They demonstrated that it is key for mosquito hearing and mating partner detection, and so is a potential new target for mosquito control.
Male mosquitoes acoustically detect the buzz generated by females within large swarms that form transiently at dusk.
As swarms are potentially noisy, mosquitoes have developed highly sophisticated ears to detect the faint flight tone of females amid hundreds of mosquitoes flying together.
However, the molecular mechanisms by which mosquito males ‘sharpen their ears’ to respond to female flight tones during swarm time have been largely unknown.
The researchers looked at the expression of genes in the mosquito ear and found that an octopamine receptor specifically peaks in the male mosquito ear when mosquitoes swarm.

Researchers at The Jackson Laboratory have created a panel of genetically diverse mice that accurately model the highly variable human response to SARS-CoV-2 infection. Together with collaborators at NIH’s Rocky Mountain Laboratories, the team uncovered differences in the innate immune and regulated proinflammatory responses, the timing and strength of which are associated with disease severity. Moving forward, the diverse mouse strains will allow scientists to model patient variation in COVID-19 outcome and provide a platform for discovering biomarkers of disease severity, characterizing antiviral immune responses and evaluating countermeasures.
Reproducing variable human response
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, it became clear that people had hugely variable responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection. Many exhibited no symptoms at all, while a small percentage contracted severe or lethal disease. The timing and strength of innate immune activity and interferon signaling, the front-line cellular defense against microbial infection, were implicated in this variability, but the underlying factors determining disease severity between individuals remained poorly understood.
In response to the pandemic, a mouse model was quickly re-derived that allowed SARS-CoV-2 infection through humanized angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (hACE2) receptors. At first, the hACE2 was only present in a single inbred mouse line, known as K18-hACE2, which always developed severe/lethal disease. To see whether the variable human response could be replicated in mice, a team of researchers led by The Jackson Laboratory (JAX) Scientific Director and Professor Nadia Rosenthal, Ph.D., F.Med.Sci., and Rocky Mountain National Laboratories Chief of Innate Immunity and Pathogenesis Sonja Best, Ph.D., crossed the original K18-hACE2 line with other mouse strains that represent broad genetic diversity.
In “Genetically diverse mouse models of SARS-CoV-2 infection reproduce clinical variation in type I interferon and cytokine responses in COVID-19,” a paper published in Nature Communications, the team shows that the resulting F1 (first generation crossed) mice indeed modeled human COVID-19 severity, ranging from asymptomatic to lethal. The original genetic background used for the K18-hACE2 mice (C57Bl/6J) proved to be among the most susceptible, while the F1 crosses from a strain known as PWK were highly resistant to disease. F1 progeny of the other crosses, derived from the inbred strains A/J, 129S1, NOD, NZO, CAST, WSB, BALB/c, and DBA/2, had a range of responses mostly between the two extremes. Interestingly, some of them — CAST, NOD, and WSB — also had sex differences, with consistently different levels of disease severity between F1 males and females.
Developing a preclinical platform
With the mouse panel, the team was able to further investigate differences in the innate immune responses that had been implicated in human patient variability. In particular, type 1 interferon (IFN-1) is essential for control of virus replication, where the timing and regulation of the response plays key roles in determining disease severity. If the response is delayed, viral replication and spread can proceed unchecked during the early stages of infection. At the same time, failure to regulate it and reduce signaling once acute infection is over can lead to ongoing inflammation and adverse health consequences.
The research team found that the highly resistant PWK F1 mice exhibited early control of virus replication in the lungs, with phased amplification and resolution of pro-inflammatory responses and prevention of virus dissemination to other organs. In contrast, F1 crosses with the more susceptible strains exhibited relatively inefficient IFN-1 expression in the lung, failed control of virus replication, and dysregulated pro-inflammatory responses. An outlier was WSB, which had high early IFN-1 expression but also high early virus burden in the lung, and clearance was delayed in a manner similar to mice with low IFN-1 expression. WSB may therefore prove valuable for investigating additional pathological responses associated with high IFN-1 expression but low antiviral activity.
There are many gaps in our current knowledge that remain to be addressed, including the exact mechanisms of innate immune control of virus replication, the events needed for a well-orchestrated inflammatory response, the molecular mechanisms of sex-dependent disease severity, and longer-term implications for tissue repair and lung function. Developing a preclinical platform for linking disease outcome to patient genetic features promises to bridge the knowledge gap in our understanding of the underlying differences in COVID-19 susceptibility, facilitating the development of precise models for rapid diagnoses, mechanistic studies and therapeutic intervention strategies.

The skin, hair and eye color of more than eight billion humans is determined by the light-absorbing pigment known as melanin. An article recently published in the journal Science features research from Vivek Bajpai, Ph.D., lead author and an assistant professor in the School of Sustainable Chemical, Biological and Materials Engineering at the University of Oklahoma, and collaborators from Stanford University. Their research has identified 135 new genes associated with pigmentation.
Melanin is produced within special structures called melanosomes. Melanosomes are found inside melanin-producing pigment cells called melanocytes. Although all humans have the same number of melanocytes, the amount of melanin they produce differs and gives rise to the variation in human skin color.
“To understand what actually causes different amounts of melanin to be produced, we used a technology called CRISPR-Cas9 to genetically engineer cells,” Bajpai said. “Using CRISPR, we systematically removed more than 20,000 genes from hundreds of millions of melanocytes and observed the impact on melanin production.”
To identify which genes influence melanin production, cells that lost melanin during the gene removal process needed to be separated from millions of other cells that did not. Using in vitro cell cultures, Bajpai developed a novel method to achieve this goal that detects and quantifies the melanin-producing activity of melanocytes. By passing light through the melanocytes, he could record if the light was either absorbed or scattered by the melanin inside.
“If there are a lot of melanin-producing melanosomes, the light will scatter much more than in cells with little melanin,” Bajpai said. “Using a process called side-scatter of flow cytometry, we were able to separate cells with more or less melanin. These separated cells were then analyzed to determine the identity of melanin-modifying genes. We identified both new and previously known genes that play important roles in regulating melanin production in humans.”
The researchers found 169 functionally diverse genes that impacted melanin production. Of those, 135 were not previously associated with pigmentation. They further identified the function of two newly discovered genes: KLF6 and COMMD3. The DNA-binding protein KLF6 led to a loss of melanin production in humans and animals, confirming the role KLF6 plays in melanin production in other species as well. The COMMD3 protein regulated melanin synthesis by controlling the acidity of melanosomes.
Historically, darker pigmentation has been needed to protect against ultraviolet radiation in areas closer to the equator and for people who spend hours in direct sunlight. As humans moved into areas with less direct sunlight or fewer hours of daylight overall, less melanin was needed. Over time, this resulted in melanosomes that produced less melanin, thus absorbing more sunlight.
“By understanding what regulates melanin, we can help protect lighter-skinned people from melanoma, or skin cancer,” Bajpai said. “By targeting these new melanin genes, we could also develop melanin-modifying drugs for vitiligo and other pigmentation diseases.”
The technological processes developed and used by the research team could also be applied to identify genes that regulate melanin production in fungi and bacteria. Melanin production in fungi and bacteria enables them to be more pathogenic to humans or crops. Researchers could develop effective interventions against these microbes and their diseases by discovering and targeting such melanin-producing genes.
Bajpai’s role in the study was completed during his professorship at the University of Oklahoma. However, a portion of this research took place during his postdoctoral research fellowship at Stanford University. A grant from the Oklahoma Center for Adult Stem Cell Research supported the study. Additional funding was provided by the U.S. Department of Defense, CA160997; Howard Hughes Medical Institute; National Institute of General Medical Sciences, NIH R35 GM131757; Stinehart-Reed Award; and the Ludwig Center for Cancer Stem Cell Research and Medicine.