StemCell Therapy

CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing is one of the most powerful tools available to modern science, but genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) in food are subject to some tight regulations. Now, researchers at North Carolina State University have created a new version of CRISPR that lets scientists edit crops without introducing new DNA, meaning they technically arent GMOs.

CRISPR-Cas9 allows for precise cut-n-paste edits to DNA in living cells. An RNA guide sequence directs the system to the target section of the genome. Once there, an enzyme, usually Cas9, snips out the sequence then deletes it or replaces it with something else. In this way, scientists can cut out problem genes, such as those that cause disease, or add new beneficial ones, such as giving crops better pest resistance.

For the new study, the researchers tweaked the process to make a cleaner edit in plants. It uses a process known as lipofection, where positively-charged lipids are used to build a kind of bubble around the Cas9 and RNA mechanisms. When injected into the organism, this bubble binds to and fuses with the cellular membrane, which pushes the CRISPR system into the cell itself. The method also uses a Cas9 protein itself, rather than the Cas9 DNA sequence.

The team tested the method by introducing fluorescent proteins into tobacco plants. And sure enough, after 48 hours the edited plants were glowing, indicating it had worked.

Wusheng Liu/NC State University

The new method has a few advantages over existing ones, the team says. Its easier to target the desired genetic sequence, and opens up new crops that couldnt be edited with existing methods. Plus, the protein only lasts for a few days before degrading, which reduces off-target edits.

But the most important advantage is that the resulting crops arent considered GMOs. Since the new method doesnt use Cas9 DNA, it doesnt introduce foreign DNA into the plant, which is an important distinction.

This was the first time anyone has come up with a method to deliver the Cas9 protein through lipofection into plant cells, says Wusheng Liu, lead author of the study. Our major achievement was to make that happen. Also, since many consumers prefer non-GMO specialty crops, this method delivers the Cas9 protein in a non-GMO manner.

As useful as genetic engineering can be, the term GMO has negative connotations for many people, who believe there are health concerns with eating these crops or meats. Other problems include the chance of modified plants or animals escaping into the wild, where they can spread their new genes to the native population, affecting ecosystems.

As such, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have regulations on which edited crops and animals are allowed in food. And theyve decided that the line is drawn at introducing foreign genes into an organism.

It makes sense. Humans have been genetically-engineering plants and animals for millennia, through selective breeding. Many of our most widely-eaten crops are bigger, tastier, and easier to eat or grow, to the point that they hardly resemble their wild counterparts anymore.

CRISPR and other gene-editing tools can be the next generation of this process. By removing problematic genes or ensuring that specific ones are turned on or off, scientists arent really creating anything new. Some individuals naturally have mutations that do the same thing all the scientists are really doing is removing the element of chance, genetically.

In 2015, a new type of salmon became the first genetically engineered animal approved by the FDA for human consumption. In 2016, a Swedish scientist grew, harvested and served up CRISPR cabbage after approval by the Swedish Board of Agriculture. In both cases, the products were allowed because they were functionally identical to wild-type organisms the scientists had just chosen beneficial genes from an existing natural pool, without introducing foreign DNA.

That said, the rules aren't the same everywhere. In 2018 the Court of Justice of the European Union somewhat controversially ruled that tough GMO laws applied to crops that had been edited even if new DNA hadn't been inserted. The issue will likely remain fragmented, but for the NC State team at least, their crops aren't GMOs according to their own country's regulations.

However, there are still some hurdles to overcome before the new method becomes viable. The team says that lipofection can only be done if the outer wall of the plant cell is removed first. This kind of plant cell, known as a protoplast, allows scientists to more easily tweak the genes, but it isnt possible in all types of crops, and even when it does work, its a complex process.

Instead, the researchers are exploring other options that dont require removing the cell wall at all. One such alternative is to use CRISPR to introduce the Cas9 protein into pollen grains, which can then go on to fertilize another plant. Some of the offspring will have the required genetic edits from day one.

The researchers plan to investigate this latter method in tomatoes and hemp first, before moving onto others.

The new study was published in the journal Plant Cell Reports.

Source: NC State University

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New CRISPR method edits crops without technically making them GMOs - New Atlas

Visually indistinguishable particles of Brome Mosaic Virus. Credit: Ayala Rao/UCR

University of California Riverside scientists have solved a 20-year-old genetics puzzle that could result in ways to protect wheat, barley, and other crops from a devastating infection.

Ayala Rao, professor of plant pathology and microbiology, has been studying Brome Mosaic virus for decades. Unlike some viruses, the genetic material of this virus is divided into three particles that until now were impossible to tell apart.

Without a more definitive picture of the differences between these particles, we couldnt fully understand how they work together to initiate an infection that destroys food crops, Rao said. Our approach to this problem has brought an important part of this picture into very clear focus.

A paper describing the work Raos team did to differentiate these particles was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Inside each of the particles is a strand of RNA, the genetic material that controls the production of proteins. The proteins perform different tasks, some of which cause stunted growth, lesions, and ultimately death of infected host plants.

Two decades ago, scientists used the average of all three particles to create a basic description of their structure. In order to differentiate them, Rao first needed to separate them, and get them into their most pure form.

Using a genetic engineering technique, Raos team disabled the pathogenic aspects of the virus and infused the viral genes with a host plant.

This bacterium inserts its genome into the plants cells, similar to the way HIV inserts itself into human cells, Rao said. We were then able to isolate the viral particles in the plants and determine their structure using electron microscopes and computer-based technology.

Now that one of the particles is fully mapped, its clear the first two particles are more stable than the third.

Once we alter the stability, we can manipulate how RNA gets released into the plants, Rao said. We can make the third particle more stable, so it doesnt release RNA and the infection gets delayed.

This work was made possible by a grant from the University of California Multicampus Research Program and Initiatives. Professors Wiliam Gelbart,Chuck Knobler,and Hong Zhou of UCLA, as well as graduate students Antara Chakravarthy of UCR and Christian Beren of UCLA, made significant contributions to this project.

Moving forward, Rao is hoping to bring the other two viral particles into sharper focus with the expertise of scientists at UCLA and UC San Diego.

Brome Mosaic virus primarily affects grasses such as wheat and barley, and occasionally affects soybeans as well. According to Rao, it is nearly identical to Cucumber Mosaic virus, which infects cucumbers as well as tomatoes and other crops that are important to California agriculture.

Not only could this research lead to the protection of multiple kinds of crops, it could advance the understanding of any virus.

It is much easier to work with plant viruses because theyre easier and less expensive to grow and isolate, Rao said. But what we learn about the principles of replication are applicable to human and animal viruses too.

Reference: Genome organization and interaction with capsid protein in a multipartite RNA virus by Christian Beren, Yanxiang Cui, Antara Chakravarty, Xue Yang, A. L. N. Rao, Charles M. Knobler, Z. Hong Zhou and William M. Gelbart, 1 May 2020, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1915078117

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Innovative Virus Research May Save Wheat and Other Crops - SciTechDaily

Covid-19 has changed life as we know it. It has also accelerated already rapid trends in innovation and collaboration across the scientific community.

As the pandemic spreads across the globe, researchers are racing to develop diagnostics, vaccines and treatments. In the pursuit of new solutions to tackle SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19, researchers have been turning to machine learning, AI and high-throughput experimental automation that aid in development. Another powerful tool they are using to accelerate the process is CRISPR. This gene-targeting and gene-editing technology, based on the mechanism that bacteria naturally use to fight viruses, is already proving useful in our joint fight against this new virus.

CRISPR Advances Covid-19 TestingWe know early detection of SARS-CoV-2 is essential to isolating infected patients and managing appropriate healthcare responses. Recently, researchers at MIT published a rapid CRISPR-Cas13-based COVID-19 detection assay protocol.Since CRISPR can be modified to target nearly any genetic sequence, it can be used to detect SARS-CoV-2 RNA in a patient sample. This assay utilizes an RNA-targeting CRISPR nuclease to help scientists detect the SARS-CoV-2 RNA from patient samples within 60 minutes. More recently, an improved assay was developed by researchers at MIT that was shown to provide faster and more robust results.

Utilizing another CRISPR nuclease that is thermostable, they developed a test that in one step copies the viral RNA in a patient sample, such as saliva, into the more stable DNA and then specifically identifies a SARS-CoV-2 gene sequence. Performing this point-of-care assay requires minimal lab equipment and resources, as it only needs a few reagents and a heat source, delivering results in as little as 40 minutes. Supplementing existing tests with new CRISPR-based approaches can broaden accessibility to Covid-19 testing, a key strategy for stopping the spread through track and trace efforts, as outlined by the World Health Organization.

CRISPR Helps Engineer Future TreatmentsPreviously, the genome-engineering power of CRISPR has been directed at fighting genetic diseases. But more recently, its also being harnessed to fight infectious diseases, now including the new coronavirus.

Understanding how a pathogenic disease operates at the host-pathogen interface is critical to developing new treatments. CRISPR-based genome engineering enables researchers to study how SARS-CoV-2 interacts with human cells and generate the appropriate cell models that could lead to faster discovery of a potential new treatment or an existing drug combination that may provide a treatment solution. Once a potential treatment is identified, CRISPR makes the next step drug target screening more efficient, advancing us more quickly to a viable treatment option.

As an example of this approach in action, researchers are exploring if CRISPR can be used to verify the functional relevance of human genes recently identified to interact with SARS-CoV-2 proteins. The investigation of the molecular mechanisms of the novel virus can ultimately help identify drug combinations that have the best potential to treat those infected.

Current Fight for the Future of Human HealthGenome engineering has been rapidly harnessed by academic and non-profit institutions, the biopharma industry, and scientific pioneers to develop Covid-19 testing and treatment solutions. CRISPR-based genome engineering enables researchers to study how SARS-CoV-2 interacts with human cells and generate the appropriate cell models that could lead to faster discovery of a potential new treatment or an existing drug combination that may provide a treatment solution.

Beyond this, the unprecedented innovation taking place in response to the Covid-19 pandemic will provide a foundation for improving human health in the future. Additionally, as technologies and understanding mature, new approaches, such as engineered cell therapies, will become part of the toolkit in future responses to global health challenges.

The current scientific response is representative of the future of life sciences a future where we integrate multiple technologies and disciplines including high throughput experimental automation, machine learning and agile, programmable tools such as CRISPR to fundamentally change our approach to research and development. We are seeing a new bar being set on the speed of science as the research community comes together, leveraging these technologies to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic at unprecedented velocity. Once the public health crisis subsides and the research halted by the pandemic resumes, the need for these transformative tools, technologies and approaches to life science research and development will be greater than ever.

Photo: wildpixel, Getty Images

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How CRISPR can help us win the fight against the pandemic - MedCity News

This story is from The Pulse, a weekly health and science podcast.

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Back in mid-March, when most of us were hearing the words shelter in place for the first time, research labs across the country were busy with what they call saccing. Its short for sacrifice, like for science and the greater good.

There are a lot of different terms that are used that I think people use to protect themselves from the reality of this, said Anneka Allman, a research technician at a University of Pennsylvania lab that works with hundreds of mice as part of cancer studies. Personally, I prefer to say we kill them, but the common term is saccing.

Research mice, you might imagine, generally are not long for this world. At her lab, Allman is usually the one to send them into the hereafter. Most of the mice born there even in normal times arent suitable for experiments for some reason or another.

Id say maybe we only actually use like a tenth of the mice that we breed, Allman said. Euthanizing these mice on a regular basis is just part of the job, and its not a fun part of the job, but it is a necessity.

Still, what happened back in March, on Friday the 13th, it was different it was a massacre.

We have a weekly lab meeting and we had it virtually, and we were like, OK, we need to figure out how to shut everything down she recalled.

They had some 500 cages of mice, and a looming stay-at-home order for most staff. You just cant take that many mice home with you, and many cant survive outside sterile settings. So most of the mice, they were going to get sacced.

It was just like piles and piles of cages just on top of each other empty cages, Allman said.

She personally euthanized hundreds of the mice.

Its actually very simple. You take their cages, take off the tops, put it in a machine called the Euthan-X which I have a lot of feelings about, but its essentially just a CO2 chamber, Allman said. And you turn the button on, and you wait for 20 minutes to half an hour, and they die.

Allman only worked that Friday before she was sent home for safety, but a skeleton crew stayed behind and saccing continued.

We did get an email about, I think, two weeks in that basically requested that we stop asking them to do it because of the emotional toll that it was having on them because of the masses that they had to kill, Allman said.

The animals deaths didnt hit her on that level. Before you get the wrong idea about Allman, know shes a self-described animal lover, a vegetarian; one of her pet cats scurried across her laptop during an interview. But she didnt mourn the euthanized mice, so much as the science the mice represented.

I had to kill mice that I had planned experiments for, that Im still upset theyre dead and not because of their lives, unfortunately for them, but because to do this research its going to be a lot. Its going to take a lot longer.

Untold thousands of mice were sacced in the early weeks of the United States pandemic response. The animals in Allmans lab, and in hundreds of labs like it, are the bedrock of research into human diseases.

Pick a disorder, an illness. Theres a mouse model for that, a mouse created specifically to study that disease.

Cat Lutz is director of the mouse repository at the Jackson Laboratory in Maine.

So whatever disease you can think of, you know, epilepsy, obesity, metabolic syndrome, anything that you can think of, we have a mouse model that you can genetically engineer to recapitulate that particular disease, Lutz said.

The Jackson Lab is a nonprofit where many labs get founder mice to start colonies of their own for research. It has about 11,000 strains of designer mice cryopreserved in its repository 80% of which dont exist anywhere else.

Mice first found their way into labs by way of so-called mouse fanciers.

They would keep mice as pets, and they would also select those mice that had spontaneous mutations, for example, coat color or ears or craniofacial features, long tails, kinky tails, maybe spotted mice or things like that, and they would start inbreeding them, Lutz said.

Mice breed very quickly and very often, so mutations tend to spring up fairly regularly. Fanciers were after aesthetic mutations, but scientists quickly found fanciers could provide mice with more utilitarian mutations. This mouse with a kinky tail, it can develop diabetes, or colon cancer, or this rare neurological disease.

Between mouse and humans, the gene conservation is incredibly high at the level of the coding sequence, so it was really quite translational, Lutz said.

Mice and people share about 98% of their genetic code.

The mutations that you would see in the mice would often translate to the mutations that you see in people, she said. They really have become the model animal for humans.

So if you can cure a cancer in a mouse, thats a step closer toward curing it in a person.

Editors note: In a previous version of this story, the term saccing was misidentified. Saccing is short for sacrificing.

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The great research mouse rescue amid the pandemic - WHYY

By Mike Baker

SEATTLE: In a county north of Seattle, two people who came down with respiratory illnesses in December now have antibodies for the coronavirus. In Florida, a public health official who got sick in January believes he had COVID-19.

And in California, a surprising discovery that an early-February death in San Jose was linked to the coronavirus has triggered a broader search for how that person was exposed.

Those cases have contributed to growing questions about when the virus first reached the United States and how long it had been circulating by the time its arrival was publicly confirmed in Washington state at the end of February.

While there was limited testing to uncover specific cases before then, researchers have other tools to trace the path of the coronavirus. That includes genomic sequencing of the virus to help scientists build an ancestral tree of cases, a re-examination of specific deaths, and thousands of old flu samples that have been repurposed to look for coronavirus.

Heres a look at the evidence and what it shows:

Q: I got really sick in February. Did I have coronavirus?

A: Its possible, but it was most likely something else.

The Seattle area emerged as an early epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak at the end of February, but there is compelling evidence that, even there, the virus didnt yet have much of a foothold compared to the flu, which had a particularly potent season.

A team that analyzes flu trends in the region has been able to review nearly 7,000 old flu samples collected from around the region in January and February, re-examining them for coronavirus. All of the samples from January were negative. The earliest sample that tested positive was February 20.

Based on that and later case counts, Trevor Bedford, who studies the evolution of viruses at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, and who was part of the flu study team, estimated that there were probably a few hundred cases in the area by that point in February.

But even that would still be a small fraction perhaps less than 1% of the many thousands of people who had flu symptoms at the time.

Q: When did the coronavirus first reach the United States?

A: The U.S. first identified cases among travelers who had flown in from Wuhan, China, in the middle of January. Officials worked to contain them.

There is some evidence that the virus began getting a bit of traction around the end of January. To seed that late-February emergence in the Seattle area, researchers believe the spread could have begun with a traveler who arrived in the region from Wuhan on Jan. 15, or it may have been another unknown case that arrived in the few weeks that followed.

In San Jose, tissue sampling from a woman who died on Feb. 6 revealed that she was probably the first known person in the U.S. whose death was linked to the coronavirus a strong sign that the virus may have been circulating in that part of Northern California in January.

Q: But was it part of a large, previously unrecognized outbreak?

A: Dr. George Rutherford, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco, theorized that perhaps the woman, who worked for a company that had an office in Wuhan, was one of only a small number of people who contracted the virus at that time and that transmissions probably petered out for some reason. Otherwise, he said, the region would have seen a much bigger outbreak.

With that kind of early introduction, we should be seeing thousands of more cases, Rutherford said.

Dr. Sara Cody, the health officer for Santa Clara County, said local, state and federal officials were continuing to try to answer those questions.

There are other, less concrete signs of earlier infections. In Florida, where the first two official cases were announced on March 1, a state database now lists coronavirus cases in patients who may have had symptoms as far back as January. But the cases are all under investigation, and no one has confirmed that any of those patients had the disease that early.

One of them is Raul Pino, the health officer for the Florida Department of Health in Orange County. He said recently that he suspects he had the virus in the first week of January.

Q: What if the virus quietly arrived in December?

A: Doctors in France have said that a patients sample from late December has since tested positive for coronavirus. But so far, there is no comparable evidence of a similar case in the United States.

The strongest possible indicator so far is new evidence that emerged this week of two people in Snohomish County, Washington, who reported coronavirus-like symptoms in December. Both people later tested positive for antibodies, county health officials announced.

But Dr. Chris Spitters, the countys health officer, said that while it is possible that both people had the coronavirus in December even before officials in China had reported a cluster to the World Health Organization at the end of the month he is doubtful.

Its possible and frankly, I think, more likely that they had a non-COVID respiratory viral illness in December and subsequently had an asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic COVID infection subsequent to that, Spitters said.

Bedford said he also believed this was the more likely scenario, noting that up to half of people with coronavirus infections have no symptoms.

There could have been a tiny number of isolated coronavirus cases among travelers to the United States in December, Bedford said. But its pretty clear that none of them spread.

In part, scientists can tell that by looking at the genomic fingerprints of each case. But another clue is the rapid rate at which the virus spreads, said Rutherford.

It appears that early in the outbreak, one infection was spreading to about four other people, on average, with an incubation period for new infections of about four days. So a case seeded in December would rapidly quadruple through new generations, likely growing exponentially to millions of cases from a single unbroken chain of transmission by the end of February. Researchers arent seeing any chains that appear to go that far back.

Modelers looking back at the growth of outbreaks elsewhere have reached similar conclusions. One estimated that New Yorks outbreak could have begun with perhaps 10 infected people who contracted the virus sometime between the end of January to the middle of February, when the first cases of community transmission were identified and hospitals began seeing more cases.

Q: When did the virus begin in China?

A: The virus first emerged in Wuhan in December after a series of people developed symptoms of a viral pneumonia and an examination found that they had been infected with a new coronavirus.A group of researchers in China later examined the histories of the first 41 lab-confirmed cases at a Wuhan hospital, finding that many of them had connections to a seafood market. But the earliest case, in a person who developed symptoms on Dec. 1, had no connections to the market.

The information suggests that if the virus did originate from the market, it was likely circulating by November, early enough to reach that first person. Bedford said it was conceivable to him that the virus began as early as October, but that November was more likely.

There is no evidence that it started elsewhere. The virus mutates an average of twice a month, something researchers can see in the genomic sequences of individual cases, and all of the cases in Wuhan show close genetic links.

All the other thousands of cases that have been sequenced around the globe show the Wuhan version as an ancestor.

Q: Was the coronavirus made in a lab somewhere?

A: Several unfounded theories that have gained traction suggest that the virus was created or accidentally released in a lab somewhere. The Chinese government speculated that perhaps Americans brought the virus in to China. President Donald Trump has suggested it came from a virology lab in Wuhan.

Bedford said there is no evidence of genetic engineering in the virus, noting that it appears to be a genetic outgrowth of a virus circulating among bats. It likely reached humans through an intermediate animal, such as a pangolin, he said.

Theres no hallmarks of it having been manipulated in a lab, Bedford said. I think thats definitive.

He did not, however, rule out the possibility that some version of the virus being studied by scientists in Wuhan could have somehow escaped and spread from there. But he doubts that is the case. He said that the most prevalent theory about the viruss origins, that it spread naturally among animals at a live animal market in Wuhan, then jumped to humans, is the most likely explanation.

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When did coronavirus arrive in the US? Heres a review of the evidence - Economic Times

The recent exchanges on Ethiopias acceptance of genetically modified (GM) crops and the resulting report of USDA praising the steps our country has taken continue to be informative. My understanding of the debates surrounding GM foods suggests that neat explanations about their usefulness grossly disregard the muddy footprints and messy stories of the technology while the voices of vilification and blanket rejection tend to thrive more on emotional appeal than rigorous science. Lets start with the basics.The 21st century is said to be the century of biology and ecology. Thus, for Ethiopia, as one of the globes top 50 centers of biodiversity, where better to capitalize on than in understanding and developing its crop and animal varieties and fulfill its long-held potential of being Africas breadbasket. Ethiopia is one of the few centers where domestication of crops was practiced at the dawn of agriculture and the country has contributed to the worlds collection of cultivable species such crops as Teff, coffee, enset, sorghum, millet, etc. It means that our farmers are not new to the genetic modification of organisms since every domestication effort involves selective breeding and recombination of desired characteristics. We also have adopted several foreign plant species (maize, wheat, barley, tomatoes, potatoes, pepper, etc.) some of them only a few centuries ago, without much consideration for their effects on our indigenous species.Despite these impressive records, our agricultural system stayed firmly rooted in its ancient practices which suffer from abysmal efficiency and very poor productivity. As a result, Ethiopia remains a net importer of crops both for human consumption and for its expanding industries, and there seems to be no natural end to this depressing trend. The consequence is not only a shrinking of profit base for many of the industries but also the misplaced use of the meager hard currency obtained from the export of some raw materials with all the negative impacts on our capacity in importing more useful technologies.

Ironically, Ethiopia has no shortage of cultivable/irrigable land or population able or willing to participate in modern agricultural practices. In fact, Ethiopias farming community is estimated to be above 80% of the population but is unable to feed itself properly let alone supply raw materials for the manufacturing sector. The production by small scale farmers in Ethiopia is demonstrably incapable of keeping pace with the population growth as tens of millions of our people still depend on food handouts every single year and many more live in precarious situations. Therefore, it is pertinent that the country becomes self-sufficient at least for feeding the population with all possible means. And, this is not a very hard task given the scale of its cultivable land and the disproportionately large population whose livelihood is dependent on farming.The most relevant question is thus how to end this absurdity and persistent tragedy without drastically affecting the livelihood of our farmers and disrupting the biodiversity balance. For a very long period of time, Ethiopia lacked the capacity to introduce mechanized farming and other relevant agricultural technologies. Further, it lagged far behind many (African) countries in developing its policies and relevant practices with regard to the application of plant genetic engineering technology. Arguably the most unhelpful effort on part of the Ethiopian government in the last decade has been the introduction of the Biosafety Proclamation No. 655/2009. It is possible that this proclamation was enacted as a genuine effort to protect the local farmers and the countrys agriculture sector from control by a few foreign biotech industries and create a formidable safeguard against potential fallouts from untended consequences of releasing GM crops. However, it is clear from the outset that the proclamation lacked proper scrutiny by all the relevant stakeholders, not least farmers representatives or experts from agricultural research centers in the country. In addition, it failed to recognize the potential of local agro-biotechnology research and innovation and was oblivious to the rapidly changing focus of the debate and policy shifts surrounding this emerging technology from around the world. Thus, our Biosafety Proclamation No. 655/2009 was, by international standards, relatively outdated as soon as it was hastily passed by the parliament (hence the justification for a later amendment as Proclamation No. 896/2015).It is unclear why modern GM organisms are so divisive and treated as highly toxic materials that should be feared and avoided at all costs. Rigorous analysis done by scientific institutions such as the UK Royal Society and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences has demonstrated that such organisms are at least as safe as their counterparts produced by conventional breeding techniques. For example, the GM cotton that Ethiopia is said to have started cultivating is the widely known Bt variety. In short, Bt is abbreviated from Bacillus thuringiensis, a bacterium species that naturally occurs in soil and produces highly specific insecticidal proteins. This bacterium has been in use, in one form or another, as the most effective, naturally occurring, and environmentally friendly bioinsecticide for more than half-century. Bt spray is currently the dominant bioinsecticide in the world and is authorized for use even by organic farmers worldwide. Therefore, we are talking about a well-characterized gene of a bacterium (which might as well be dwelling in our soils all along). Plants expressing this gene have been tested for more than two decades in several countries and in a wide range of ecological settings for the properties they have been designed for, with no confirmed case of ill effect as food or feed.I suspect that Ethiopia has been misled or pressured into adopting an overly cautious interpretation of the precautionary principle as was the case in the past in some EU countries. In my opinion, the EU and its policies on GM products (even as progressive as they currently are) cannot be a good lead for Ethiopia. For one, farming practices in the EU are already highly productive even without the need for the introduction of GM. In addition, the sheer proportion of the population involved in the agricultural sector in Ethiopia means that unreasonable restrictions on agricultural biotechnology can have far-reaching consequences. For Ethiopia, the better place to look for inspiration is other developing countries around the world in Latin America, Asia, and in the continent of Africa itself for our capacities and needs are likely to be similar.

India, for example, started commercial farming of Bt-cotton in 2002 and at the moment, about 25% of its agricultural land is covered with this variety, the highest proportion in the world. In our continent, South Africa is the pioneer in providing permits for the commercial cultivation of GM crops for GM cotton and maize starting in 1997. Egypt has been commercially farming Bt-maize hybrid since 2008, using seeds procured from South Africa (it has since suspended the cultivation due to the lack of proper biosafety laws and other local issues). Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, and, our neighboring countries, Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Mozambique have all tested and/or adopted the cultivation of GM crops. Furthermore, Nigeria, Kenya, and Uganda are pursuing various genetic modifications to the cassava plant, a staple crop for over half a billion people around the world. It is disingenuous, to say the least, to assert that all of these countries are either threatened or duped into accepting this technology to the detriment of the wellbeing of their population and ecosystems.Ethiopia, on the other hand, despite having several, experienced agricultural research institutions, is missing out for far too long on the development of its genetic research capacity and utilization of available biotechnologies, especially as compared to many of these African countries. As a commentary on this site made it clear, the Ethiopian team negotiating the Cartagena Protocol, led by Dr. Tewolde-Birhan Gebre-Egziabher, played a key role in formulating a strong African position and had become the continents de-facto representative. This had been appreciated and acknowledged by several African countries at that time. Whether this fact can make Ethiopia assume a Pan-Africanist leadership position in the environmental issues is completely irrelevant to the issue at hand. What is important is the fact that the Cartagena Protocol aims mainly to provide an adequate level of protection to worldwide biodiversity by placing a stringent control on the transboundary movement, transit, handling and use of all living modified organisms that may have adverse effects on the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity. What it is not is an outright ban on the development, test or use of GM organisms for food or feed. In addition, several of the major African countries have since moved on and have come to realize that application GM crops, transgenic technology, and genetic engineering know-how could have a transformative effect on parts their economies provided that these are supported by a strong monitoring regimen. As a result, and contrary to its supposed pan-African leadership, Ethiopia is currently an outlier in the continent when it comes to the exploration of this powerful technology that can potentially transform the living standards of millions of people. Many of the countries that are said to be hesitant in accepting this agricultural biotechnology lack either the capacity to adapt and manage it or the actual need for a rapid transformation of their agricultural practices (they are either food self-sufficient or have no industrial base to supply to or both). In other words, we may as well have once been the continents leading voice against GM organisms but it has become apparent that we are leading the wrong league and it is not where we belong it is unbecoming to our great nation.What Ethiopia urgently needs is a dynamic regulatory system and strong scientific capacity for the evaluation, authorization, and monitoring of imported GM crops. It also needs to rebuild and expand its capability for fundamental research with the aim of developing local GM species using state-of-the-art methodology. Public-private biotechnology partnerships should be encouraged to work on genetic identification and improvements even in our own indigenous species of plants and animals. Furthermore, since we are negotiating for accession to the World Trade Organization, it is the most relevant time to substantially revise or repeal the Biosafety Proclamation No. 655/2009 (including its latest incarnation, Proclamation No. 896/2015) and streamline other relevant laws in accordance with international standards.

To this writer, the question is not to be why Ethiopia allowed the commercial cultivation of Bt-cotton and has authorized a confined field trial of Bt-maize. It is whether it had conducted a thorough analysis of the existing problems in the sector and identified the effectiveness of these particular strains of GM crops as cost-effective and sustainable solutions. It is not a case of re-inventing the wheel but of identifying our desirable targets and requirements, learning from the front-runners, and applying an appropriate level of precautionary principles. The temporary setbacks in Burkina Faso, Africas largest producer of cotton at one point, and some regions in India demonstrate that the process of introducing GM crops is far from being a turn-key situation. It requires the collaboration of laboratory scientists, policymakers, market leaders, and farmers (end-users) in identifying the required crop characteristic and quality that is suitable for the specific condition of the locality.In conclusion, agricultural gene-modification technology has sufficiently demonstrated its worth after more than two decades of commercial application and this is reflected in its widespread global adoption.Therefore, the excessive hesitance of its acceptance by Ethiopia and campaigners that support this stance is unjustifiable either socially, economically, or more importantly, scientifically.

Main Image: Children at a farm in Hawzen, Tigray region. Ethiopia Observer file.

This article is published under aCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. Please cite Ethiopia Observer prominently and link clearly to the original article if you republish. If you have any queries, please contact us at ethiopiaobserver@protonmail.com. Check individual images for licensing details.

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Why Ethiopia needs to embrace gene-modification technology - ethiopiaobserver.com

SARS-CoV-2 has so far infected more than 4,500,000 people in 187 countries and caused over 300,000 deaths, but no drug or vaccine is yet available. In Bangladesh, over 20,000 people have been infected and 250 died. Lockdown can provide a temporary solution but we need a sustainable solution for this.

Although there are three (A,B,C) SARS-CoV-2 variants, we still don't know which one is prevailing in our country, how and through which route it has been transmitted here; if it has acquired any mutations by now and how deadly it has become. Also, we do not know why some people are affected more, showing serious symptoms, while others remain asymptomatic. We do not know why and how this has created serious havoc in some countries whereas others are only mildly affected.

In the modern era, problems in biological sciences are tackled by a bottom up approach, where we do genome sequencing of the relevant organism and associate it with other metadata to address the problem and find solutions. For the same reason so far 80 countries have deposited more than 24,000 genome sequences of this virus, which includes even countries like Nepal and Vietnam where the coronavirus problem is comparatively less severe. Since the first cases were reported on March 7, 2020 by the country's epidemiology institute IEDCR, we have been repeatedly advocating the need for genome sequencing of this virus. We also ensured that we make substantial advancement in science and technology, especially with the special attention of the prime minister in this sector.

Now we are able to do genome sequencing by Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) in our country. There are some institutes and private organisations where NGS machines are available and virus genome sequencing can be done, and also we have expert and experienced Bioinfomaticians who can perform complete genome sequence analysis. The ground-breaking work has finally been done by the Child Health Research Foundation (CHRF). Dr Senjuti Shaha and Dr Samir Kumar Shaha, along with their team from CHRF, collected samples from a 22-year-old coronavirus infected female patient and arranged to do whole genome sequencing of the virus using Illumina iSeq 100 NGS platform. As soon as the news of deposition of genome sequence data became available on May 12, Tuesday afternoon, we sought to extract this sequence and information from the public repository GISAID and CNCB, and started to explore it.

Lead by me at the Department of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Dhaka, the Epigenetic and Bioinformatics team on nCoV research has done basic analysis of the genome. My team member Mr Abdullah Al Kamran Khan was with me in this analysis. We compared the sequence with that of the first reported coronavirus genome sequence from Wuhan, Chinawhich is globally considered as "reference". Strikingly, we have found that this genome is very similar (99.7 percent similarity) to that of reference SARS-CoV-2 isolated from Wuhan. There are changes only in nine places and these changes are single nucleotide change (SNP). There are no deletion or insertion/addition of any large sequence compared to the original reference.

However, with great surprise, we observed that this genome has acquired two new mutations which have not been seen among the viruses reported so far and that we have observed closely. At position 1163 (genes orf1ab) a new mutation from A to T has been detected. Previously at the same position nucleotide A to C in one virus and nucleotide A to G changed in another genome reported. Also, there is a brand new mutation position at 17019 detected in our Bangladeshi isolated virus which has not been reported so far. This means that these are the new changes that the virus has acquired after entering into Bangladesh. Out of nine, seven other mutations were very common among the sequenced viruses so far. We can further study what trouble or benefit these new mutations have brought us.

Very interestingly, of these nine mutations, it contains a mutation (Single Nucleotide Mutation or SNP) in its Spike protein. There is non-silent (non-synonymous), amino acid changing (Aspartate to Glycine) mutation at the 614th position of the Spike protein (D614G). This is of particular interest because it is probably due to this mutation that the virus could spread quickly among the European and American populations compared to the original virus from China. This creates an additional serine protease (Elastase) cleavage site near the Open Reading Frame (ORF) S1 and S2 junction of the Spike protein.

The interesting aspect is that in human, a single nucleotide mutation (deletion of C nucleotide, delC) (rs35074065 variant site) in the TMPRSS2 receptor gene facilitates the entry of SARS-CoV-2 with D614G mutation to the cell very effectively. Dr Hemayet Ullah from Howard University, USA, also informed us that this delC mutation is very common in the American and European population but very rare in the East Asian/Asian populationshence the change of amino acid aspartic acid to glycine in the S protein of the virus may be helpful for Asian countries but more infectious in the American and European populations. We do see a less severe effect in Asian countries compared to that in Europe and America. Any deleterious mutation from the perspective of an organism gets lost through natural selection and we hope more virulent mutation does not appear in Asian countries later on. Several research papers are also available on this mutation.

To understand the origin, we have constructed phylogenetic tree (UPGMA and Neighbour-Joining) in MEGA with default parameters, with representative sequences from 60 other countries and the reference sequence, totalling 350 sequences. Phylogenetic tree shows that this Bangladeshi SARS-CoV-2 genome isolate seems closer to European clustermost likely the person got infected from someone who returned from Europe or maybe she herself returned from there. We are fine-tuning the phylogenetic tree. And are also in the process of making phylogenetic tree with 10,000 high quality sequences selected from 80 countries to better explain the origin and route of transmission of this particular virus.

To understand the pattern of infection in Bangladesh, only one genome sequence is not enough. We need sequence of at least 100 isolates. We have made a proposal to the ICT ministry in response to their "Call for Nation (Hakathon)". In this study proposal we aim to create a dataset by combining 100 coronavirus genomes from Bangladeshi patients and integrate this genome information with patient's personal/clinical/treatment/diagnostic and other information. This information will be analysed extensively by computational methods to do clustering, phylogenetic and pharmacogenomics studies, and will compare data with other globally available data to make a concrete information-base that will help pharmaceutical industries produce appropriate drugs and vaccines for our population.

Also, the ICT ministry will be able to announce that Bangladesh has uncovered the genome mystery of the coronavirus circulating in the country and trace back the transmission. This project will be a multicentre research where essential help from ICT/Bangladesh government, and help of IEDCR through the government will be required to get patients' samples and relevant clinical data. We will carry out sequencing (Next Generation Sequencing) of the viral genome and other analyses with our own resources in Bangladesh. If ICT/government support us, it is also possible to do further research in future where in addition to the viral genome we can sequence genome of some individuals who were infected and developed the disease as well as healthy individuals who did not develop the disease. This may also let us know the factors (if any) that conferred resistance to them.

Dr ABMM Khademul Islam, associate professor, Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Dhaka.

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Mystery of SARS-CoV-2 genome isolated in Bangladesh - The Daily Star

President Donald Trump is doubling down on his claim that Americans could see a vaccine for the novel coronavirus by the end of the year.

"Another essential pillar of our strategy to keep America open is the development of effective treatments and vaccines as quickly as possible. I want to see if we can do that very quickly," Trump said Friday at an event to highlight his administration's effort to expedite a vaccine, dubbed "Operation Warp Speed." "When I say 'quickly,' we're looking to get it by the end of the year if we can. Maybe before."

But the Trump administration's own medical and scientific experts leading the race to develop a vaccine routinely cast doubt on that timeline.

On Friday, the president tapped Moncef Slaoui, a former pharmaceutical executive, to lead Operation Warp Speed. Even he concedes the goal is formidable.

"Frankly, 12-18 months is already a very aggressive timeline," Slaoui, the former CEO of GlaxoSmithKline, said in an interview with The New York Times. He said he was in agreement with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, about the challenge that timeline poses.

Still, Slaoui, the former CEO of GlaxoSmithKline, did say mass producing a vaccine by January 2021 is a "credible objective." Slaoui maintained he would not have agreed to head up the White House's effort if he did not think Trump's goals were attainable.

Since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis, Fauci has frequently cited the 12- to 18-month timeline. He delivered a reality check at a Senate hearing Tuesday when he said having a vaccine for the start of the next school year is not possible.

"Even at the top speed we're going, we don't see a vaccine playing in the ability of individuals to get back to school this term," Fauci said.

But when Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, pressed Fauci on the likelihood of developing a vaccine within in a year or two, Fauci was said it's "not a long shot."

"I think it's clearly much more likely than not that somewhere within that time frame we will get a vaccine for this virus," he said.

But Dr. Rick Bright, the former head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, emphasized to the House Energy and Commerce's Subcommittee on Health Thursday that such a timeline would be unprecedented.

"Normally it takes up to 10 years to make a vaccine. We've done it faster in emergency situations, when we had starting material in the freezer for Ebola, but for a novel virus, this actually hasn't been done yet that quickly," Bright said. "A lot of optimism is swirling around a 12- to 18-month time frame. If everything goes perfectly -- we have never seen everything go perfectly.

"I still think 12 to 18 months is an aggressive schedule, and I think it's going to take longer than that to do so."

On Friday, Defense Secretary Mark Esper echoed the president's claims that the vaccine will be ready in record time.

"We will deliver by the end of this year a vaccine, at scale, to treat the American people and our partners abroad," Esper vowed at the "Operation Warp Speed" event.

But the Pentagon's chief spokesperson, Jonathan Hoffman, told reporters hours later that the timeline is more like a goal than a certainty.

"You set a goal, you have confidence that you're going to put the resources to it to obtain that goal. And I think that's what the secretary, that's what the president, are saying is that we have a goal," Hoffman said.

Currently there are more than 100 vaccines being studied, and at least eight of those have already progressed outside the laboratory and into human studies, according to the World Health Organization. The furthest along include candidates from the University of Oxford, Pfizer, Moderna Therapeutics, Inovio Pharmaceuticals and China's CanSino Biologics.

Many of these vaccines use different technology -- some new to vaccine science -- and experts still don't know which is the most likely to work.

Other experts interviewed by ABC News have agreed with Bright, saying that developing a vaccine within a 12-month time frame could mean throwing normal scientific standards out the window, but added that a vaccine could be available by the new year if everything goes perfectly.

"It is not impossible," said Paul Duprex, Ph.D., director of the Center for Vaccine Research and professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at the University of Pittsburgh. "It's of course very aggressive -- but it is possible."

"You'd have to be lucky," said Dr. Paul Offit, co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine, who sits on the Food and Drug Administration's vaccine advisory committee. "It would be remarkable, but not completely ridiculous."

Bright also warned Thursday of potential supply chain shortages for necessary materials like vials, needles and syringes, as well as the buffers and solutions used to make the vaccine.

Bright highlighted the importance of a plan to distribute the vaccine, given enough doses for every American will not be ready at once. Creating that plan is one of the goals of Operation Warp Speed.

"If you can imagine this scenario this fall or winter or maybe early next spring when vaccine becomes available; there is no one company that that can produce enough for our country and for the world," Bright said. "It's going to be limited supplies. We need to have a strategy and plan in place now to make sure we can not only fill that vaccine, make it, distribute it, but administer it in a fair and equitable plan."

Trump said Friday his administration is working on a plan to distribute the vaccine, including ramping up production of necessary materials and supplies. The president even mentioned on Thursday the military could be involved in the effort to dispense the vaccine.

"Operation Warp Speed is also making the necessary preparations to distribute these lifesaving treatments at scale. So, we are talking about massive numbers, so that millions of Americans will quickly have access to them," Trump said.

Efforts are already underway to mass produce vaccines that are still being studied, in an attempt to have doses ready to be administered as soon as possible.

"We're going to make production at risk, means we'll start putting hundreds of millions of dollars of federal government money into the development and production of vaccine doses before we even know it works. So that when we do ... ultimately get an effective and safe vaccine, that we will have doses available to everyone who needs it in the United States," Fauci said Tuesday.

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Trump promises coronavirus vaccine by end of the year, but his own experts temper expectations - KXXV News Channel 25

As the UK starts to ease its lockdown restrictions, researchers are developing new techniques that could enable wastewater to be used to locate new infection hotspots or to help track a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic.

The research, which is bringing together some of the worlds leading experts on wastewater management, is establishing a range of new standardised procedures to identify the virus in wastewater and provide a picture of how COVID-19 is spreading, without the need for testing individuals.

Brought together by the Water Research Foundation, the international group is:

- Developing best-practices and standardised procedures for collecting and storing water samples

- Developing best-practices for using molecular genetics tools to identify levels of COVID-19 in wastewater samples

- Developing recommended approaches for using levels of COVID-19 in water samples to inform trends and estimates of the spread of the virus in communities

- Developing strategies to communicate the implications of environmental surveillance results with the public health community, elected officials, wastewater workers, and the public

One key component in enabling wastewater to be used to help track the spread of the pandemic is to monitor the presence of COVID-19 virus genetic markers. Professor Vanessa Speight from the University of Sheffields Department of Civil and Structural Engineering is co-leading efforts to establish new data analysis and modelling techniques that can be used to reliably interpret the data collected from wastewater samples.

These techniques could help create a more accurate map of how the virus is spreading as well as the emergence of a second wave of the pandemic. The use of wastewater monitoring for COVID-19 virus occurrence offers a quick way to get an integrated picture of the level of infection across a whole community without the need for testing individuals.

Professor Speight, who is also a member of the Sheffield Water Centre at the University, which works with industry to solve major challenges in the water sector, said: There is great potential for wastewater to provide valuable information about the occurrence of COVID-19 across communities. But given that this is a very new field of investigation, we have identified a number of areas where future research efforts should be concentrated to maximise the value of this data.

The group of water experts recently gathered virtually for an International Water Research Summit to share recommendations and exchange early findings.

Each team is now undertaking their research with a view to having results that could be used to help track a second wave of COVID-19 or other future pandemics.

This article has been republished from the following materials. Note: material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.

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Monitoring Wastewater Could Be Key to Tracking a Second Wave of COVID-19 - Technology Networks

EAST LANSING, Mich. While the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect the world, one Waldoboro native has stepped to the frontlines of the pandemic and trained numerous individuals currently working on COVID-19 testing.

Dr. Rachel Morris, now a teaching specialist and and graduate program director at Michigan State University, volunteered to be a COVID-19 contact tracer and, through her teaching, prepared students for similar work.

Morris, who is also helping by sewing many face masks,attended a now defunct private Christian high school in Warren before earning from the University of Maine at Augusta an associates degree in medical laboratory science and a bachelors degree in biology.

She also earned a doctorate degree in biological sciences, with a concentration in microbiology, from Marquette University. Her postdoctoral research and training was completed through the University of Michigan Medical School (internal medicine and infectious diseases) and Michigan State Universitys Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics.

Living in the Midcoast until the age of 35, Morris noted being a Mainer has influenced her life in a variety of ways, including some she likely does not even recognize.

I guess I would say it has made me a strong person and an independent thinker, she stated, while crediting her time at UMA as shaping her into the professional she is today.

The field of science has captivated Morris since she was a young child.

I was always out in nature exploring things and doing experiments of one kind or another, she said.

Interested in medicine but favoring bench science, she trained as a medical laboratory technician at UMA right after high school and worked at the Togus Veterans Administration Medical Center.

After pausing her education to have children and do some part-time tutoring and teaching, she returned to UMA to earn her bachelors degree in biology, believing she was going to be a high school science teacher.

Her advisor, Dr. Peter Milligan, asked her to join his new research lab. Morris was hooked on microbiology research and had discovered a new passion teaching and conducting research. (Her areas of research interest at Michigan State includethe microbial ecology of anaerobic wastewater treatment, the physiology and ecology of bacteria in low oxygen environments, diagnostic microbiology, and faculty development.)

After earning her doctorate degree, a requirement for her newfound passion, and postdoctoral training, she accepted a position on staff at Michigan State University in 2014. The job, she said, seems to tie all her experience together.

As an educator at Michigan State, Morris teachespathology, molecular diagnostics, and writing, while serving as the graduate school program director for the universitysBiomedical Laboratory Diagnostics (BLD) program.

The program is tasked, according to Morris, with training individuals toperform human diagnostic testing in hospital laboratories, public health labs, and reference labs.

Many of Morris previous students, who are Medical Laboratory Scientists, are performing COVID-19 testing.

Morris offered one note of clarification about COVID-19 testing.

The drive-through testing process many may have heard of is really drive-through specimen collection.

The swabs are not being tested for the virus by the people who collect them at these sites, she said. They are put into a transport medium that stabilizes the virus and sent to a laboratory for testing.

To become a MLS, you need a bachelor's degree which includes a lot of science, lab classes, and math, Morris detailed. These rigorous courses include multiple classes in things like statistics, chemistry, microbiology, hematology, immunology, and molecular diagnostics. You must also complete a laboratory internship in an actual hospital lab setting that lasts about six months to a year. Most people who complete this training sit for a board of certification exam overseen by the American Society for Clinical Pathology, and they must complete continuing education to maintain their certification.

Becoming a MLS requires an abundance of training, Morris noted, while adding she is very proud of her students.

I taught them that the patient comes first, and they are out on the front lines living it right now, she said.There are now many types of tests for the virus on the market with different methodologies. My students are qualified to run them all, but some are designed to be run by people with less training than my students have. Some of my students oversee this testing, however, to assure that they produce quality results.

Talk of contact tracers has been a recurring point of Maine CDC Director Dr. Nirav Shahs weekday press briefings, where he discusses the latest pandemic updates in the state.

What exactly is a contact tracer and what are their responsibilities?

The volunteers work with local public health departments, Morris detailed, and talk to people who have been reported to have had contact with an individual that has tested positive for COVID-19.

These people, who may now be at risk for COVID-19 themselves, need information, she explained. So, they are contacted, told that they have been in contact with someone with the virus, and provided with information for what they should do next. This whole process maintains the confidentiality of the person who tested positive and their contacts. In general, people are going to be asked to self-isolate and watch for symptoms. They are told what to do if they do have symptoms and are also provided with resources for any sort of help that they might need related to their situation.

Thanks to her professional background, Morris decided to undergo training necessary to be a COVID-19 contact tracer in Michigan.

Despite completing the training, she has not had the opportunity to participate, as of yet, due, in part, to needing to assist her colleagues at Michigan State shift to virtual teaching.

It has been quite a challenge for educators all over the nation to transition away from face-to-face instruction, Morris said.

As the director of the graduate school program that offers three online degrees, Morris holds virtual instruction most semesters and virtual education is constantly on her mind, even before the pandemic forced virtual education to become more prevalent.

I have also had some training in this area, so when the switch to remote learning happened I had three hours from when I found out until my first online class meeting it was pretty easy for me, she stated. But for others with less experience and for the students who didnt sign up for that huge change, it was more difficult.

As part of her work in assisting her colleagues shift to virtual education, she has answered questions, shared tutorials on using technology in teaching and helped lead a week-long workshop for colleagues moving entire programs to virtual learning for Michigan States summer term.

Morris is also the co-host of a podcastSpeaking Science that aims to translate the science affecting ones daily life.

Click here to listen to the episodes.

As a professor, Morris, naturally, is also tasked with helping her students adapt and cope with their educational, and life, experiences being altered by the pandemic.

I will be getting additional training and continuing to provide help and guidance for my peers on the MSU faculty over the summer, she said. I give out advice to the broader community now and then on Twitter. I was pretty excited when the learning management system that we use asked if they could use some of my advice in their advertising materials.

Morris noted she hopes to assist the local health department during the summer.

Though she has not yet been able to participate in the contact tracing program, she stressed it is vital that those who are qualified, and able to, participate as a contact tracer do so in order to control the virus and restore some sense of normalcy.

Knowledge is power in this situation, especially until we have a treatment or vaccine, she said. We need to have enough testing and contact tracing to help isolate people who may pass on the virus to others. In this way, we can limit the spread of the SARS-Cov-2 virus.

Speaking on why she opted to volunteer, Morris said it was a logical decision given her background.

I volunteered because, while I don't do diagnostic testing anymore, I have been trained in things like medical confidentiality and patient interaction, and so it seemed a logical thing to do when the governor put out the call, she said. We all want to get our country running again, at least as much as possible. I want to do what I can to help.

Asked to provide final words of wisdom amid the pandemic, Morris offered:Wash your hands. Don't touch your face or other people. Listen to [Director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases] Dr. [Anthony] Fauci. Be kind.

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Waldoboro native discusses how she has trained many on the frontlines of COVID-19 testing - PenBayPilot.com

The Developmental Studies Hybridoma Bank housed at the University of Iowa distributes and stores antibodies for biological research.

The Developmental Studies Hybridoma Bank, housed at the University of Iowa, stores and distributes antibodies that now are being distributed to help researchers study the novel coronavirus.

Originally created by the National Institutes of Health 34 years ago, the Developmental Studies Hybridoma Bank is a self-funded entity that keeps antibodies, proteins produced by the immune system to fight viruses and diseases, for companies worldwide for basic research.

David Soll, the banks director, brought the entity to the UI from Johns Hopkins University. The entity sends about 60,000 samples a year worldwide for biological and cancer research, he said.

The bank sells its antibodies to researchers for $40, Soll said. None of the antibodies can be used for commercial purposes, however, as the bank doesnt own the antibodies, it just stores them for researchers, he said.

Although it did not have antibodies specifically for COVID-19, the bank did have a large number of antibodies that react similarly to the coronavirus and could allow researchers to study the interaction between the virus and human cells, Soll said.

The antibodies the bank has can help researchers study the cytokines proteins that are important to cell signaling which sometimes cause the body to react violently to a virus, he said.

We have a very large footprint inside the research community, and the way we do it is we dont own any of the antibodies, people from all over the world bank their antibodies with us, Soll said.

The bank also makes antibodies, Soll said. Its currently producing plasmids and then inserting a piece of DNA into them that codes them for targeted viruses, he added.

The plasmids are injected into mice, Soll said, and then the mouse will make the proteins of the virus and then make antibodies against it.

RELATED: University of Iowa molecular genetics researcher studying COVID-19 testing methods to alleviate test shortages

Diane Slusarski, UI biology department head, is a member of the Developmental Studies Hybridoma Banks advisory board, which meets with Soll to discuss the entitys inventory and work.

The bank provides antibodies for biomedical research and basic research at a good price, Slusarski said. This allows basic research to move forward, she said, because often the budgets arent very large.

The bank has accumulated a lot of antibodies over its years of operations, which makes it so they have the immune response for viruses as well as the antibodies, she said.

The immune responses can be used to understand how the body reacts to other viruses even though the bank doesnt have coronavirus specific antibodies, Slusarski said.

Because the bank is housed at the UI, the biology department is able to give graduate students an opportunity to learn what it takes to make an antibody, Slusarski said.

Now youre going to have people interested in these immune [antibodies] that they have, Slusarski said. So theyre very strategic in looking at how we can help.

Kevin Campbell, UI professor of molecular physiology and biophysics, keeps some of the antibodies his lab has created in the bank.

When he first started teaching at the UI, Campbell said his lab made proteins to study muscles and have been helpful in the productivity of his work, which focuses on muscle physiology and muscular dystrophy.

Campbell said the bank functions as a storage facility to prevent researchers from losing their antibodies if a freezer fails them, and the bank grows the supply of the antibody.

The biggest [benefit] is that now you can make [the antibodies] available to everybody in the world doing research, he said. So that really frees you up from having to send the antibodies out to laboratories.

Continued here:
UI research entity distributes antibodies to those studying COVID-19 - UI The Daily Iowan

The FBI claims Dr. Qing Wang received more than $3.6 million in grants from the NIH while also collecting money for the same research from the Chinese government. Jose Luis Magana/AP hide caption

The FBI claims Dr. Qing Wang received more than $3.6 million in grants from the NIH while also collecting money for the same research from the Chinese government.

A former Cleveland Clinic Foundation doctor was arrested Wednesday and appeared in court on Thursday on charges of wire fraud and making false claims to obtain millions in federal grant funding.

It is the latest move in a federal crackdown on alleged participants in China's Thousand Talents Plan. The government believes the program may recruit U.S.-based scientists and researchers to steal intellectual property and scientific advances paid for with American funding.

The FBI claims Qing Wang, a U.S. citizen born in China, lied to receive more than $3.6 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health while also collecting money for the same research from the Chinese government.

"This is not a case of simple omission," FBI Cleveland Special Agent in Charge Eric Smith said in a statement.

Wang knowingly withheld information that he was employed and served as Dean of the College of Life Sciences and Technology at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, according to Smith.

"Dr. Wang deliberately failed to disclose his Chinese grants and foreign positions and even engaged in a pervasive pattern of fraud to avoid criminal culpability," Smith said.

Had he revealed the connection, the FBI and Department of Justice say the doctor and his research group at the clinic would have been denied the NIH grants.

Officials at the Cleveland Clinic said Wang was fired after his ties to China were uncovered.

"Cleveland Clinic has cooperated fully with the NIH and with federal law enforcement as they conducted their own investigations into these same subjects and will continue to do so," it said in a statement.

Wang's work is dedicated to molecular medicine and the genetics of cardiovascular and neurological diseases.

As a result of his alleged participation in the Thousand Talents Plan, the Justice Department asserts Wang received $3 million in research support to improve operations at Huazhong University. In addition to a salary, he allegedly benefited from "free travel and lodging for his trips to China, to include a three-bedroom apartment on campus for his personal use."

The question of whether or not Wang and other academics are serving as spies for the Chinese government is one of the issues at the heart of President Trump's trade war with China.

The doctor's arrest comes just days after Dr. Xiao-Jiang Li, a former Emory University professor, pleaded guilty and was sentenced for failing to report foreign income from Chinese universities on his tax returns. Li is also accused of participating in the TTP.

The same day, a professor from the University of Arkansas, Dr. Simon Saw-Teong Ang, was arrested on charges of wire fraud for allegedly failing to disclose his ties to the Chinese government despite being required to do so as a recipient of grant money from NASA.

Robert Wells, acting assistant director of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division, said the cases demonstrate "Chinese government-supported talent plans continue to encourage people, regardless of nationality, to commit crimes, such as fraud to obtain U.S. taxpayer-funded research."

"The FBI and our partners will continue to rigorously investigate these illegal activities to protect our government, educational, and research institutions," Wells added.

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Researcher Qing Wang Arrested, Allegedly Failed To Disclose China Ties - NPR

Plants can produce energy-rich biomass with the help of light, water and carbon dioxide. This is why they are at the beginning of the food chains. But the carnivorous plants have turned the tables and hunt animals. Insects are their main food source.

A publication in the journal Current Biology now sheds light on the secret life of the green carnivores. The plant scientist Rainer Hedrich and the evolutionary bioinformatician Jrg Schultz, both from Julius-Maximilians-Universitt (JMU) Wrzburg in Bavaria, Germany, and their colleague Mitsujasu Hasebe from the University of Okazaki (Japan) have deciphered and analyzed the genomes of three carnivorous plant species.

They studied the Venus flytrap Dionaea muscipula, which originates from North America, the globally occurring waterwheel plant Aldrovanda vesiculosa and the spoon-leaved sundew Drosera spatulata, which is widely distributed in Asia.

The genomes of the carnivorous plants Venus flytrap, spoon-leaved sundew and waterwheel (from left) are decoded. Credit: Dirk Becker and Snke Scherzer / University of Wrzburg

All three belong to the sundew family. Nevertheless, they have each conquered different habitats and developed their own trapping mechanisms. In Dionaea and Aldrovanda, the ends of the leaves are transformed into folding traps. The sundew, on the other hand, attaches its prey to the leaf surface with sticky tentacles.

The first thing the international research team found out was that, despite their different lifestyles and trapping mechanisms, Venus flytrap, sundew and waterwheel have a common basic set of genes that are essential for the carnivorous lifestyle.

The function of these genes is related to the ability to sense and digest prey animals and to utilize their nutrients, explains Rainer Hedrich.

We were able to trace the origin of the carnivory genes back to a duplication event that occurred many millions of years ago in the genome of the last common ancestor of the three carnivorous species, says Jrg Schultz. The duplication of the entire genome has provided evolution with an ideal playing ground for developing new functions.

To their surprise, the researchers discovered that the plants do not need a particularly large number of genes for carnivory. Instead, the three species studied are actually among the most gene-poor plants known. Drosera has 18,111, Dionaea 21,135 and Aldrovanda 25,123 genes. In contrast, most plants have between 30,000 and 40,000 genes.

How can this be reconciled with the fact that a wealth of new genes is usually needed to develop new ways of life? This can only mean that the specialization in animal food was accompanied by an increase in the number of genes, but also a massive loss of genes, concludes developmental biologist Hasebe.

Most of the genes required for the insect traps are also found in slightly modified form in normal plants. In carnivorous plants, several genes are active in the trapping organs, which in other plants have their effect in the root. In the trapping organs, these genes are only switched on when the prey is secure, explains Hedrich. This finding is consistent with the fact that the roots are considerably reduced in Venus flytrap and sundew. In the waterwheel they are completely absent.

The researchers now have an insight into the evolution of carnivory in plants and hold three blueprints for this particular way of life in their hands. Their next goal is to gain an even better understanding of the molecular basis of the trapping function.

We have found that the Venus flytrap counts the electrical stimuli triggered by the prey, can remember this number for a certain time and finally makes a decision that corresponds to the number, says Hedrich. Now it is important to understand the biophysical-biochemical principle according to which carnivorous plants count.

Reference: Genomes of the Venus Flytrap and Close RelativesUnveil the Roots of Plant Carnivory by Gergo Palfalvi, Thomas Hackl, Niklas Terhoeven, Tomoko F. Shibata, Tomoaki Nishiyama, Markus Ankenbrand, Dirk Becker, Frank Frster, Matthias Freund, Anda Iosip, Ines Kreuzer, Franziska Saul, Chiharu Kamida, Kenji Fukushima, Shuji Shigenobu, Yosuke Tamada, Lubomir Adamec, Yoshikazu Hoshi, Kunihiko Ueda, Traud Winkelmann, Jrg Fuchs, Ingo Schubert, Rainer Schwacke, Khaled Al-Rasheid, Jrg Schultz, Mitsuyasu Hasebe, Rainer Hedrich, 14 May 2020, Current Biology.DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.04.051

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Intriguing Genetics That Flipped the Food Chain to Allow Carnivorous Plants to Hunt Animals - SciTechDaily

Transmission electron micrograph of SARS-CoV-2 virus particles, isolated from a patient. Image: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Flickr

For the sake of both science and action in the COVID-19 pandemic, we need collaboration among specialists, not sects.

The Brazilian-British biologist Peter Medawar won the Nobel Prize in 1960 for his study of acquired immune tolerance. Beyond his scientific work, he was also a gifted writer and expositor of scientific culture. One of the many treasures of his Advice to a Young Scientist (1979) is a passage in his chapter on Aspects of Scientific Life and Manners where he discusses techniques used in the hope of enlarging ones reputation as a scientist or diminishing the reputation of others by nonscientific means.

One such trick, Medawar writes, is to affect the possession of a mind so finely critical that no evidence is ever quite good enough (I am not very happy about. . . .; I must say I am not at all convinced by. . . .). After all, as he writes in a different passage, no hypothesis in science and no scientific theory ever achieves . . . a degree of certainty beyond the reach of criticism or the possibility of modification.

Scientists must resist the temptation to excessive skepticism: the kind that says no evidence is ever quite good enough. Instead they should keep their eyes open for any kind of information that can help them solve problems.

I share Medawars pragmatic vision of scientific reasoning. Scientists must resist the temptation to excessive skepticism: the kind that says no evidence is ever quite good enough. Instead they should keep their eyes open for any kind of information that can help them solve problems. Deciding, on principle, to reject some kinds of information outright, or to consider only particular kinds of studies, is counterproductive. Instead of succumbing to what Medawar calls habitual disbelief, the scientist should pursue all possible inputs that can sharpen ones understanding, test ones preconceptions, suggest novel hypotheses, and identify previously unrecognized inconsistencies and limitations in ones view of a problem.

This conception of science leads me to disagree with some elements of the philosopher of medicine Jonathan Fullers recent essay about two sects within epidemiology, defined by what kinds of evidence they consider meaningful and how they think decisions should be made when evidence is uncertain. Fuller sees in the contrast two competing philosophies of scientific practice. One, he says, is characteristic of public health epidemiologists like me, who are methodologically liberal and pragmatic and use models and diverse sources of data. The other, he explains, is characteristic of clinical epidemiologists like Stanfords John Ioannidis, who draw on a tradition of skepticism about medical interventions in the literature of what has been known since the 1980s as evidence-based medicine, privilege gold standard evidence from randomized controlled trials (as opposed to mere data), and counsel inaction until a certain ideal form of evidenceEvidence with a capital Ejustifies intervening.

Fuller rightly points out that this distinction is only a rough approximation; indeed, there are many clinical epidemiologists who do not share the hardline skepticism associated with the most extreme wing of the evidence-based medicine community. But the distinction is also misleading in a subtle way. If the COVID-19 crisis has revealed two competing ways of thinking in distinct scientific traditions, it is not between two philosophies of science or two philosophies of evidence so much as between two philosophies of action.

If the COVID-19 crisis has revealed two competing ways of thinking, it is not between two philosophies of science or two philosophies of evidence so much as between two philosophies of action.

In March, as health systems in Wuhan, Iran, and Northern Italy teetered under the weight of COVID-19 cases, Ioannidis cautioned that we really didnt know enough to say whether a response was appropriate, warning of a once-in a-century evidence fiasco and suggesting that the epidemic might dissipate on its own. (I replied to that argument, explaining why we do know enough to act decisively against this pandemic.) To my knowledge, Ioannidis has never stated that early interventions should have been avoided, but by repeatedly criticizing the evidence on which they were based, he gives that impression.

On the question of how we interpret evidence, Fuller concludes that to understand the scientific disagreements being aired about COVID-19, we need to blend the insights of each camp. Cooperation in society should be matched by cooperation across disciplinary divides, he writes. I dont understand what this kind of bothsidesism means when one side is characterized as accepting many types of evidence and the other as insisting on only certain kinds. On the question of how we should make decisions under uncertainty, of course more data are better. But decisions are urgent and must be made with the evidence weve got.

This is not to deny that there are different and valuable perspectives on epidemiology. Like any other field, there are many specialties and subspecialties. They have different methods for how they study the world, how they analyze data, and how they filter new information. No one person can keep up with the flood of scientific information in even one field, and specialization is necessary for progress: different scientists need to use different approaches given their skills, interests, and resources. But specialization should not lead to sectsin this case, a group of scientists who accept only certain kinds of evidence and too rigidly adhere to a philosophy of non-interventionism.

Infectious disease epidemiologists must embrace diverse forms of evidence by the very nature of their subject. We study a wide range of questions: how and under what conditions infectious diseases are transmitted, how pathogens change genetically as they spread among populations and across regions, how those changes affect our health, and how our immune systems protect us and, sometimes, make us vulnerable to severe illness when immune responses get out of control. We also seek to understand what kinds of control measures are most effective in limiting transmission. To understand these issues for even one type of diseasesay, coronavirus diseasesrequires drawing on a wide range of methodologies and disciplines.

On the question of how we should make decisions under uncertainty, of course more data are better. But decisions are urgent and must be made with the evidence weve got.

We consider evidence from classical epidemiological studies of transmission in households and other settings. We consider immunological studies that show us how markers of immunity develop, whether they protect us against future disease, and how particular markers (say a certain type of antibody directed at a certain part of the virus) change infection and mortality rates. We consider molecular genetics experiments, including those conducted in animal models, that tell us how changes in a viruss genome affect the course of disease. We consider evolutionary patterns in the viruss genetic code, seasonal patterns in its transmission and that of other related viruses, and observational studies of the risk factors and circumstances favoring transmission. And, of course, we also consider randomized trials of treatments and prevention measures, when they exist, as we seek to understand which interventions work and which ones may do more harm than good.

The upshot is that, done well, epidemiology synthesizes many branches of science using many methods, approaches, and forms of evidence. No one can be expert in all of these specialties, and few can even be conversant in all of them. But a scientist should be open to learning about all of these kinds of evidence and more.

Thinking about evidence from diverse specialties is critical not only for weighing evidence and deciding how to act but also for developing hypotheses that, when tested, can shed light across specialties. Appropriate humility dictates that molecular virologists should not assume they are experts in social epidemiology, and vice versa. To say Im a virologist, so Im not going to account for any findings from social epidemiology in my work gives up the chance to understand the world better.

Heres an example. In the case of a new virus like SARS-CoV-2, the fact that socioeconomically disadvantaged people get sick more often than the wealthy gives clues, which we dont yet know how to interpret, about the way the virus interacts with hosts. It would be informative to a virologist to distinguish the following two hypotheses (among others): (a) exposure to high doses of virus tends to cause severe disease, and disadvantaged people are often exposed to higher doses due to confined living and working conditions, or (b) comorbidities such as heart disease and obesity are higher among disadvantaged people, and lead to more severe outcomes. Of course, either, both, or neither of these hypotheses may turn out to be important explanations, but the canny virologist should wonder and think about how to distinguish them experimentally and test results against data from human populations. Reciprocally, a canny social epidemiologist should look to virological studies for clues about why COVID-19, like so many other illnesses, disproportionately harms the least advantaged in our society.

Done well, epidemiology synthesizes many branches of science. No one can be expert in all of these specialties, and few can even be conversant in all of them, but a scientist should be open to learning about all of these kinds of evidenceand more.

In practice, virologists, immunologists, and epidemiologists are different specialists who often work far apart and almost never attend each others seminars. I do not think we should spend all our time learning each others disciplines. But I do think that a scientist who genuinely wants to solve an important problem should be open to evidence from many sources, should welcome the opportunity to expand their list of hypotheses, and should seek to increase their chances both of making a novel contribution to their field and of being right. Central to this effort is considering information from diverse kinds of studies performed by people with diverse job titles in diverse departments of the universityas well as their diverse forms of data and argumentation.

When we move from the realm of understanding to the realm of intervention, the need for openness to different sources of evidence grows further. In some cases, like whether to use a drug to treat infection or whether to use a mask to prevent transmission, we can draw on evidence from experiments, sometimes even randomized, controlled, double-blind experiments. But in deciding whether to impose social distancing during an outbreak of a novel pathogenand in thinking about how the course of the epidemic might play outit would be crazy not to consider whatever data we can, including from mathematical models and from other epidemics throughout history. With infectious diseases, especially new and fast-spreading pandemics, action cant wait for the degree of evidentiary purity we get from fully randomized and controlled experiments, or from the ideal observational study. At the same time, we must continue to improve our understanding while we act and change our actions as our knowledge changesleaving both our beliefs and our actions open, as Medawar says, to the reach of criticism and the possibility of modification.

Where does the skepticism so characteristic of the evidence-based tradition come from? One reason may be the habits and heuristics we absorb from textbooks, colleagues, and mentors.

In supervising students and postdocs, inculcating these habits is one of the most challenging, gratifying, and time-consuming parts of scientific trainingfar more than teaching technical skills. Some of these rules of thumb are well suited to science in general and serve us well throughout our careers, no matter the field. Among these are workaday but important heuristics like: consider alternative hypotheses; look at raw data whenever possible before looking at processed data; and repeat experiments, especially those whose results surprise you. Indeed, these heuristics can be summarized as a form of intense skepticism directed at ones own work and that of ones team: find all the flaws you can before someone else does; fix those you can and highlight as limitations those which are unfixable. Recently an advanced PhD student said to me: I read your new idea that you shared on Slack this morning and Ive been doing my best all afternoon to break it. It made my day, and made me think I probably had very little left to teach her.

Scientists of all stripes should work together to improve public health, and none should mistake a professional tendency or a specialists rule of thumb for an unshakable epistemological principle.

Other heuristics, however, are more specific to a narrow field and may be ill suited to other contexts. Insisting on gold standard, randomized trial evidence before prescribing drugs to prevent heart attacks or before performing a certain surgical operation may be a good rule of thumb in medicine (though not all physicians or even philosophers agree). But randomized controlled trials are not available for huge swaths of scientific inquiry, and the narrow populations often studied in such trials can limit their applicability to real-world decision making. Nor are they always available when we need them: they require a lot of time and administrative resources to execute (and money, for that matter). Stumping for Evidence is thus useful in many parts of clinical medicine but impractical in many other aspects of science-informed decision making. Applying this doctrine indiscriminately across all areas of science turns the tools of a specialist into the weapons of a sectarian.

This point was appreciated by some of the pioneers of evidence-based medicine: David Sackett, William Rosenberg, J. A. Muir Gray, R. Brian Haynes, and W. Scott Richardson. Evidence-based medicine is not restricted to randomized trials and meta-analyses, they wrote in 1996. It involves tracking down the best external evidence with which to answer our clinical questions. And last week the Oxford professor of primary care Trisha Greenhalgh, another major contributor to this field and author of a popular textbook on evidence-based medicine, suggested that in the realm of social interventions to control the spread of COVID-19, the evidence-based clinical paradigmwaiting for the definitive [randomized controlled trial] before taking actionshould not be seen as inviolable, or as always defining good science.

Indeed, on the question of how we ought to act during an outbreak, two leading epidemiologists in the clinical tradition, Hans-Olov Adami and the late Dimitrios Trichopoulos, argued that the non-interventionist rule of thumb is suitable for chronic, noncommunicable diseases but foolish for fast-moving infectious diseases. In an editorial accompanying an article that showed that the impact of cell phones in causing brain cancer was not large but might be larger than zero, they counseled cautious inaction in regulating cell phones. But they noted this is not how you would reason in the case of a transmissible disease:

There is another lesson to be learned about the alarms that have been sounded about public health during the past few years. When the real or presumed risk involves communicable agents, such as the prions that cause bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease), no precaution, however extreme, can be considered excessive. By contrast, for noncommunicable agents, such as radio-frequency energy, the lack of a theoretical foundation and the absence of empirical evidence of a substantial increase in risk legitimize cautious inaction, unless and until a small excess risk is firmly documented.

In my ideal public health world wed have a lot more good sense like that proposed by Adami and Trichopoulos, acting not only on the strength of the evidence we have but on the relative harms of being wrong in each direction. And whether waiting or acting, wed work hard to get the evidence to meet the challenges of skeptics and improve our decision-making, all with an eye to the possibility of criticism and modification Medawar describes.

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Good Science Is Good Science - Boston Review

Scientists are developing ways of using sewage to locate new infection hotspots and track a second wave of Covid-19.

An international group of waste water experts are researching new techniques that could identify the level of infection in a community without the need for testing individuals.

New standardised procedures could identify the virus in waste water and provide a picture of how coronavirus is spreading, the researchers said.

The group, who were brought together by the Water Research Foundation and include engineers from the University of Sheffield, are developing a range of best practices concerning the use of sewage.

These include collecting and storing waste water samples and using molecular genetics tools to identify levels of Covid-19 in sewage samples.

The scientists are also developing recommended approaches for using levels of coronavirus in waste water samples to inform trends and estimates of the spread of the virus in communities and developing strategies to communicate the implications of the results with the public.

There is great potential for waste water to provide valuable information about the occurrence of Covid-19 across communities

Professor Vanessa Speight, from the University of Sheffields Department of Civil and Structural Engineering, is researching techniques to reliably interpret the data collected from sewage samples.

Her results could help create a more accurate map of how the virus is spreading and show the emergence of a second wave of the pandemic.

She said: There is great potential for waste water to provide valuable information about the occurrence of Covid-19 across communities.

On Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said a new alert system to monitor the threat posed by coronavirus could eventually identify local flare-ups if Covid-19 is detected in the waste water from a local area.

The PMs official spokesman said: Some studies have been carried out overseas on this and I think it is something we are looking at as a possible way of seeing if you could track the rate of infections locally.

The Downing Street spokesman said officials are investigating whether sewage samples would allow them to track if the virus is more prevalent in some parts of the country than in others.

Experts said some countries are testing waste water to see if there is infection in the community.

We are actively engaging with the research community and Government scientific advisers to investigate whether monitoring waste water could be used as a way of tracking the prevalence of the virus

And, while there is no evidence of the live virus being found in sewage or that the virus has been spread through sewerage systems, one study from the Netherlands found viral genetic material in waste water samples several weeks before the first case was detected.

A spokesman from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said: We are actively engaging with the research community and Government scientific advisers to investigate whether monitoring waste water could be used as a way of tracking the prevalence of the virus.

Last month, scientists from Newcastle University said they were collaborating with Spanish academics to monitor sewage in their local networks in both countries to estimate the prevalence of Covid-19 in north-east England and across Spain.

The rest is here:
Sewage could be key to tracking second wave of coronavirus - Irish Examiner

Nafeez Ahmed explores the troubling implications and assumptions of the Governments AI-driven gene programme.

In Part 1 of this investigation, I looked at how the convergence of an AI Superstate and corporate interests with health data lies at the heart of a new frontier for profit and surveillance. But the Governments response during the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed something even more profoundly disturbing: a fascination with genomics which moves from a merely descriptive tool to something so prescriptive it verges on eugenics.

The NHSX app is simply one project with a questionable design which appears to result from the Governments much wider project to remake the NHS.

At the core of the new NHSX AI drive is the goal of predictive, preventive, personalised and participatory medicine, according to an NHSX document published in October 2019. Pivotal to this AI-driven transformation is genetics:

Key to unlocking the benefits of precision medicine with AI is the use of genomic data generated by genome sequencing. Machine learning is already being used to automate genome quality control. AI has improved the ability to process genomes rapidly and to high standards and can also now help improve genome interpretation.

The NHS Genomic Medicine Service is starting with a focus on cancer, rare and inherited diseases,but its broader goal is far more comprehensive. Initially, the hope is that genomics will expand to cover other areas, such as pharmacogenomics, which looks at how an individuals genes influence a particular biological process that mediates the effects of a medicine, according to The Pharmaceutical Journal.

But the end-goal is to convert the NHS into a health service oriented fundamentally around the role of genetics in disease. The aspiration is that from 2020, and by 2025, genomic medicine will be an embedded part of routine care to enable better prediction and prevention of disease and fewer adverse drug reactions. The GMS aims to complete five million genomic analyses and five million early disease cohorts over the next five years.

By 2025, genomic technologies will be embedded through multiple clinical pathways and included as a fundamental part of clinical training. As a result, it is hoped that there will be a new taxonomy of medicine based on the underlying drivers of disease.

But, this entire premise is deeply questionable. There is little evidence that the underlying drivers of disease are primarily genetic.

Last December, a study in the journal PLOS One found that genetics usually explains no more than 5-10% of the risk for several common diseases. The study examined data from nearly 600 earlier studies identifying associations between common variations in the DNA sequence and more than 200 medical conditions. But its conclusion was stark: more than 95% of diseases or disease risks including Alzheimers, autism, asthma, juvenile diabetes, psoriasis, and so on could not be predicted accurately from the DNA sequence. A separate meta-analysis of two decades of DNA science corroborated this finding.

The implication is startling: that the entire premise for the billions of pounds this Government is investing in building a new privatised NHS infrastructure for AI-driven genomic medicine is scientifically unfounded.

The obsession with genetics can be traced directly back to the Prime Ministers chief advisor, Dominic Cummings.

Cummings set out his vision for the NHS in a February 2019 blog, which although previously reported on has not been fully appreciated for its astonishingly direct implications. While focusing on disease risk, the blog flagged-up Cummings hopes that a new NHS genomics prediction programme would ultimately allow the UK to, not just prevent diseases, but to do so before birth in effect a nod toward the selective breeding techniques at the core of eugenics.

They are using the COVID-19 crisis to erect a corporate superstate powered by mass surveillance and AI. Their grim ambition is to reach into the very DNA of every British citizen.

His vision for what a genomics-focused NHS would look like bears startling resemblance to the core ideas of eugenics the discredited pseudoscience aiming to improve the genetic quality of a human population by selecting for superior groups and excluding those with inferior genes. Its worst manifestations were exemplified by the Nazis.

In the blog, Cummings wrote:

Britain could contribute huge value to the world by leveraging existing assets, including scientific talent and how the NHS is structured, to push the frontiers of a rapidly evolving scientific field genomic prediction. He called for free universal SNP [single-nucleotide polymorphis] genetic sequencing as part of a shift to genuinely preventive medicine, to be rolled-out across the UK. This approach holds the promise of revolutionising healthcare in ways that give Britain some natural advantages over Europe and America.

Later in the post, Cummings allowed himself to speak more directly to what natural advantages could actually entail. He claimed that a combination of AI-driven machine learning with very large genetic sampling could enable the precise prediction of complex traits such as general intelligence and most diseases.

The two scientists Cummings cited as the primary sources for his vision were educational psychologist Robert Plomin and physicist Steven Hsu.

Plomin, described by Cummings as the worlds leading expert on the subject, is a renowned scientist. But he also has a history of association with the eugenics movement, according to Dr David King, founder of Human Genetics Alert and previously a molecular biologist. (Sir David King, the former chief scientific adviser to the UK Government, has also criticised the genome sequencing goldrush).*

When The Bell Curve a book advocating the genetic inferiority of African Americans was published, Plomin was a key signatory to a statement defending the science behind the book, explained Dr David King in a paper for the non-profit watchdog Human Genetics Alert. The statement carefully avoided explicitly endorsing The Bell Curves racist conclusions (aptly summarised by Francis Wheen as black people are more stupid than white people: always have been, always will be. This is why they have less economic and social success), while failing to repudiate them. Plomins fellow co-signatories included several self-proclaimed scientific racists, Philippe Rushton and Richard Lynn. Plomin has also published papers with the American Eugenics Society and spoken at several meetings of the British Eugenics Society (the latter rebranded itself as the Galton Institute in 1989) both of which advocated racial science.

In December 2013, Plomin was called as an expert witness to the House of Commons Education Select Committee, where he called for the Government to focus on the heritability of educational attainment. Twenty-five minutes into the session, Dominic Raab who as Foreign Secretary and First Secretary has stood in for Boris Johnson during his period of absence due to COVID-19 prompted Plomin to focus more specifically on explaining his views about genetics, intelligence and socio-economic status.

Just two months before Plomins parliamentary testimony, a 237-page dossier by Cummings then a top advisor to Education Secretary Michael Gove was leaked to the press. The paper claimed that genetics plays a bigger role in a childs IQ than teaching and called for giving specialist education as per Eton to the top 2% in IQ. Pete Shanks of the Centre for Genetics and Society described Cummings policy proposal as a blatantly eugenic association of genes with intelligence, intelligence with worth, and worth with the right to rule.

The Cummings dossier which cites Plomin extensively further reveals that, according to Cummings, he had invited Plomin into the DfE [Department for Education] to explain the science of IQ and genetics to officials and ministers.

The Education Select Committees report shows that, at the time of Plomins testimony, the Government was resistant to these views. But, the position appears to have changed since then, with figures such as Cummings, Raab and Gove now at the seat of power under Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Plomin would go on to work with Steven Hsu, who was involved in a major Chinese genome sequencing project based on thousands of samples from very high-IQ people around the world. The goal was to identify genes that can predict intelligence. Hsu went on to launch his own company, Genomic Prediction. In slide presentations about his work from 2012, Hsu approvingly quoted British eugenicist Ronald Fisher, closing his slides with the following quotation: but such a race will inevitably arise in whatever country first sees the inheritance of mental characters elucidated. Hsus slides, wrote David King, include plans for a eugenic breeding scheme using embryo selection to improve the overall IQ of the population.

Yet, on his blog, Cummings confirmed that Hsu has recently attended a conference in the UK where he presented some of these ideas to UK policy-makers. Among the ideas Hsu presented to Cummings colleagues in Government was that the UK could become the world leader in genomic research by combining population-level genotyping with NHS health records. Hsu further claimed that risk prediction for common diseases was already available to guide early interventions that save lives and money.

Hopefully the NHS and Department for Health will play the Gretzky game, take expert advice from the likes of Plomin and Hsu and take this opportunity to make the UK a world leader in one of the most important frontiers in science, enthused Cummings.

Plomins claim that intelligence is determined primarily by genes contradicts a vast body of scientific literature, and is largely overblown. One of the latest studies debunking Cummings hopes was led by the University of Bristol and published in March. Based on a sample size of 3,500 children, the study found that polygenic scores (which combine information from all genetic material across the entire genome) have limited use for accurately predicting individual educational performance or for personalised education.

The study did not dismiss a role for genes outright, noting genetic scores modestly predictededucational achievement. The problem was that these predictions were less accurate than using standard information known to predicteducational outcomes, such as achievement at younger ages, parents educational attainment or family socio-economic position.

Last November, Hsus Genomic Prediction began touting new report cards to its customers. The cards displayed alleged results of genetic tests containing warnings that embryos might have low intelligence, grow up to be short, or have other conditions such as diabetes. But, according to the MIT Technology Review, the company has struggled both to validate its predictions and to interest fertility centres in them. In the month prior to Hsus grand announcement, the first major study to test the empirical viability of screening embryos, led by statistical geneticist Shai Carmi of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, concluded that the technology is not plausible.

The lack of scientific substantiation has not stopped Cummings from suggesting a more interventionist vision for the NHS, which could be accused of paving the way for a new form of eugenics. In his February 2019 blog, he wrote: We can imagine everybody in the UK being given valuable information about their health for free,truly preventive medicinewhere we target resources at those most at risk, and early (evenin utero) identification of risks. This passage appears to nod to the core eugenics notion of selective breeding using embryo selection. Cummings even went further to endorse the goal of editing genes to fix problems.

In a further telling but slightly more well-known passage, Cummings characterised the genomics programme as a precursor to more realistic views about IQ and social mobility: It ought to go without saying that turning this idea into a political/government success requires focus on A) the NHS, health, science, NOT getting sidetracked into B) arguments about things like IQ and social mobility. Over time, the educated classes will continue to be dragged to more realistic views on (B) but this will be a complex process entangled with many hysterical episodes. (A) requires ruthless focus.

This passage affirms that Cummings approach is deliberately deceptive. The focus on health and the NHS is revealed as a cover for a longer-term vision to usher in more realistic views about things like IQ and social mobility. The passage also lifts the rock on Cummings weakest point that he fears that public attention on these more realistic views could sidetrack the broader strategy before it reaches fruition.

In the words of Dr David King, Cummings deference to Hsu, who openly advocated eugenics breeding programmes, suggests that the Prime Ministers chief advisor clearly favours this strategy for Britain; of course, this is precisely what all the European countries were trying to achieve in the heyday of eugenics to overcome their imperialist competitors by improving the national stock.

This, it seems, is the essence of Cummings ambition to use the NHS genomics prediction programme as a mechanism to provide Britain natural advantages over Europe and America.

And in this context, it is impossible to ignore the implications of Cummings appointment of Andrew Sabisky to a senior role advising Boris Johnson. When Johnsons spokespeople were asked repeatedly whether the Prime Minister would condemn Sabiskys sympathies for racist eugenics, he repeatedly refused. Sabisky later stepped away from the role.

The COVID-19 pandemic has now provided the Government with the opportunity to double down on its goals of extending genome sequencing across the UK population.

While genomic sequencing of the Coronavirus is undoubtedly an important scientific task to map and understand it, the crisis fits neatly into Cummings call for a ruthless focus on the NHS as a vehicle for Britains genetic enhancement.

On 23 March, when the UK finally instituted a lockdown at least three weeks after being informed that hundreds of thousands of people (and potentially up to a million) people were at risk of death from its previous policy of herd immunity, the Government launched a new scientific research consortium coordinated by Cambridge University along with the Wellcome Sanger Institute, the NHS and Public Health England.

The consortium would gather samples from patients confirmed with COVID-19 and send them to genetic sequencing centres across the country to analyse the whole genetic code of the samples. The project was billed breathlessly as an essential step in being able to control the pandemic and prevent further spread.

Unsurprisingly, it has done no such thing. Instead, six weeks later, the UK has ended up with the highest COVID-19 fatality rate in Europe.

As the death toll approaches the same level of British civilian casualties during the Second World War, the Governments strategy has privileged ambiguous, extortionate high technology solutions, pouring hundreds of millions of pounds into powerful private sector players with no transparency or due process. Meanwhile, traditional, proven, public health strategies such as better border controls, or extensive contact tracing and testing by scaling up local capacity, were inexplicably delayed for months.

On 13 March, the Government launched a new partnership between the NHS, Genomics England, the GenOMICC consortium, and US biotech giant Illumina, to conduct a nationwide human whole genome sequencing study targeting COVID-19 patients in 170 intensive care units.

The Governments new genome sequencing partner, Illumina, has previously produced genetic sequencing systems marketed to police agencies in China to facilitate its genetic profiling of the minority Uyghur population in Xinjang the largest system of discriminatory, ethnically-targeted biometric surveillance using DNA ever created.

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Dominic Cummings and his fellow ideologues in Government are hell-bent on pursuing a pseudo-scientific vision that has been years in the making.They are using the COVID-19 crisis to erect a corporate superstate powered by mass surveillance and AI. Their grim ambition is to reach into the very DNA of every British citizen.

Dominic Cummings was contacted for this article, but is yet to reply.

*This article was corrected to remove a confusion between Sir David King, the former government chief scientific adviser, and Dr David King, the molecular biologist who isthefounder and Director of Human Genetics Alert.

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WHITEHALL ANALYTICA THE AI SUPERSTATE: Part 2 Is COVID-19 Fast-Tracking a Eugenics-Inspired Genomics Programme in the NHS? - Byline Times

May 12, 2020

As we prepare to confer their degrees this week, were celebrating this years graduates by highlighting members of the class and their accomplishments. Congratulations to the Class of 2020 on everything you have achieved.

MAKING THEIR MARK: Each year, as our students prepare to receive their degrees, we take a moment to gather some members of the graduating class for some parting thoughts on their time here. This year was not a typical year, as everyone has had to get used to remote learning, social distance, and a virtual degree conferral. Despite these challenges, our students have still managed to find perspective on how they have grown in the last four years and what they will take with them in the next phase of their lives.

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It's Wednesday and week five of remote classes and online learning, so we're checking in with Rochester students to ask: How are you? Starting online classes has definitely been an adjustment, but it is actually going a lot better than I thought it would. While I miss my favorite campus study spots dearly (a piece of my heart currently resides in the Periodical Reading Room), I've been able to set up a nice spot in my dining room where I can focus pretty well. I appreciate how accommodating and creative my professors have been while adapting to zoom. One of my professors even made a class drinking game, where you bring your favorite health beverage to class and have to drink every time a dog barks, a parent walks in, the wifi goes out, etc. While this is not the senior spring I imagined, I'm so grateful for the continued support of my friends, family, and professors despite the distance between us, whether that is six feet or 600 miles. Rachel Goodman 20 (@rgoody21) is a health, behavior and society and psychology double major from Needham, Massachusetts Swipe for a video message from Rachel and her sweet pupper named Pepper! Hi, everyone! Im Rachel Goodman and Im coming to you from Needham, Massachusetts, with my good boy, Pepper. I hope everyone is staying safe, healthy, and practicing social distancing. I know Ive gone through the big list of important activities. I have watched Tiger King, I cleaned my closet, I re-downloaded the House Party app, but Im starting to run out of some ideas, so if you have any quintessential quarantine activities, please let me know. Just a message to my fellow seniors: Im thinking of you right now. It is a tough time, it is weird. I am feeling it, too. But lets continue to hang in there, check in on each other, and support each other through this. So, in the meantime, please stay safe, stay home, and wash your hands.

A post shared by University of Rochester (@urochester) on Apr 22, 2020 at 10:35am PDT

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Class of 2020, we see you. In the weeks leading up to the conferral of their degrees, we meet members of this year's graduating class to hear how they're doing. #UR2020 I'm currently at home with my brother and parents. It's been nice to spend time with my brother, and I have really been enjoying my mom's delicious home cooked South Indian food. I've finally gotten back to reading for pleasure, something that I couldn't do in college. Since leaving the River Campus I've found myself missing unexpected things. I miss the trees on the Academic Quad, and the view of the clocktower from the Douggie steps. Some things I knew I'd miss, like studying with people in Rush Rhees, or those random run-ins with friends around campus. Remote learning has been interesting. The freedom to watch lectures whenever I want has been nice, but I've found that lab classes are difficult to transmit virtually. These past several weeks I've been adjusting to our new reality. I've realized that, moving forward, its up to each person to find the motivation and drive to help others who are affected by the COVID-19 crisis and create the best possible future after this pandemic. I know that the Class of 2020 is up to the task. I've spent four years learning how amazing they are. Vennela Pandaraboyina 20 (@vennela98) is a cell and developmental biology major from Acton, Massachusetts Swipe to see Vennela enjoying one of her favorite remote learning activities.

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Class of 2020, we see you. In the days leading up to the conferral of their degrees, we meet members of this year's graduating class to hear how they're doing. #UR2020 I remember during my college admission process when the University of Rochester asked me what would I contribute to campus to make it Ever Better. I answered with positivity and my annoying knack for optimism. During these trying times, I look to those qualities again to help me and my peers move forward as best as we can. Since being home, I've been able to expand my fleet of plants, try and fail at different cooking masterpieces, and resume my love for art and painting. I know it's not as great as being on campus surrounded by friends, but if Rochester taught us anything during those cold months, it is resiliency, and I know our community will come out stronger and better together. Rita Pecoraro 20 (@rita_pecoraro) is a financial economics major from Cheyenne, Wyoming. She also served as treasurer for the SA Appropriations Committee this year Swipe (and sound on!) to hear the Students Association's Zoom rendition of "YMCA."

A post shared by University of Rochester (@urochester) on May 14, 2020 at 11:52am PDT

THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING: For the last four years, Jamal Holtz 20 has called Rochester his home, and from the moment he set foot on campus, he knew he wanted to make an impact here. I always said, when I step onto any community, says Holtz, who was elected to serve as Students Association president in his senior year. I make it a community that I live in, not a community that I just come for four years and leave.

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Class of 2020, we see you. In the weeks leading up to the conferral of their degrees, we meet members of this year's graduating class to hear how they're doing. #UR2020 "Looking back on my time at the University of Rochester, Im filled with love and gratitude for the incredible people and memories I have made through being on the womens lacrosse team. This team brought me everything, from teaching me to work hard and to never give up, to bringing me my best friends. There was never a dull moment on this team, and in particular, this year we really would had something special. I cant put into words how incredibly grateful I am to have been able to spend the amount of time that I did with this specific group of women; they have helped me grow not only as an athlete, but as a person and that is a credit to each and every person on this team. The fact that the other seniors and I did not have this sport and team to come back to is heartbreaking. There was so much left to accomplish this season, so many laughs to be had, bus rides to take, blue/gold challenges to win. But I am so grateful for the times we did have, and I would not change a thing about these last three and a half years; I know I will always have a family with these people and I cannot wait to see what they achieve in the years to come. " Maggie McKenna 20 (@mags_mckenna) is a financial economics and mathematics double major from Brighton

A post shared by University of Rochester (@urochester) on May 12, 2020 at 11:12am PDT

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Class of 2020, we see you. In the weeks leading up to the conferral of their degrees, we meet members of this year's graduating class to hear how they're doing. #UR2020 Im still living in Rochester, in an off-campus apartment. It has been hard staying motivated, but creating art makes me to feel productive. Im artistically inspired frequently these days. I hate whats going on, but I do my best work when I am sad. I guess its good to know something positive can come from something negativeand have tangible evidence of that idea. I get lonely, but this is the first time Ive ever had a full space to myself and a big fear about graduating and being a real person was how lonely I would be. I used to think I could never lively myself, but I am, and its OK, and even nice at times. I think a big part of why being alone is awful, is FOMO (fear of missing out). But since no one is allowed to see each other, there isnt really anything to miss out on. The hardest part is imagining what life would have been at school. Sitting on the quad in the sun, surrounded by my peers, bopping from one set of friends to the next, just being with each other. Daniela Shapiro 20 (@cds.art) is a philosophy major from West Orange, N.J., and the author of the graphic novel "The Stories of Survivors."

A post shared by University of Rochester (@urochester) on May 11, 2020 at 10:42am PDT

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Class of 2020, we see you. In the weeks leading up to the conferral of their degrees, we meet members of this year's graduating class to hear how they're doing. #UR2020 "Since the abrupt end of my final semester on campus, I've been home in Chicago completing the rest of my coursework. The biggest benefit that I've gotten from being home are the nightly meals my mom prepares, and the quick access I have to talk and laugh with my 16-year-old brother. The biggest challenges have been having the self-discipline to focus in class and not open additional tabs on my laptop while my professor speaks. It can be easy to get relaxed with online classes, so I've been taking extra measures to stay on my toes. What's helped me most with focusing has been playing library white noise to drown out any distractions in my home. This has been the best option for me to feel isolated, and ultimately zone out. As a graduating senior, the biggest takeaway has been to take everything at face value, and to always put in what you want to get out. Rochester indubitably prepared me for the real world and has definitely sharpened my work ethic and who I am as a person. Though it's disappointing knowing my senior year won't end the way I hoped, I have a great sense of closure knowing that the relationships I built will last for years to come." Swipe for more words of wisdom from Eugene Eugene Nichols III '20 (@ginonichols) is a communications and social advocacy major from Chicago, Illinois

A post shared by University of Rochester (@urochester) on May 10, 2020 at 11:30am PDT

MOVE-IN DAY: Four year ago, the Class of 2020 arrived at the Universityready to move in, get started, and make their mark. As we celebrate all that theyve accomplished, lets enjoy this look back on their first day as Yellowjackets so we can appreciate how far theyve come.

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Class of 2020, we see you. In the weeks leading up to the conferral of their degrees, we meet members of this year's graduating class to hear how they're doing. #UR2020 Remote learning has been a really odd adjustment to make. I've taken over my parents dining room table and pretty much made it my own office. I'm just trying to make it through these last few days and find time to get outside and stay active. Of all my college experiences, those related to being a member of Rochesters track and field program easily represent some of my most meaningful and defining ones. That's what made it so bittersweet when my time as an athlete came to an abrupt end in March. While I fully understand the need for the social distancing measures required to contain COVID-19, it will always sadden me that I missed out on some of those pivotal moments and memories with this truly special team. My first year, I tore my ACL early during the indoor season. At the time, I was afraid that along with losing the rest of the year, I had lost the opportunity to join the team culture. Instead, I was met with so much support from my teammates and coaches and ultimately made some of the friendships I hope to carry with me long after college. Being able to come back and represent the team at championship and national meets and trying to push myself to lead by example has been a tremendous privilege for me. I am so proud to have been a member of this team. Swipe to see how Lonnie continues her track and field workouts from home Lonnie Garrett 20 (@lonnie_garrett) Chemical engineering major from Columbia, Maryland

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Class of 2020, we see you. In the weeks leading up to the conferral of their degrees, we meet members of this year's graduating class to hear how they're doing. #UR2020 Switching to remote learning has been smooth for my computer science classes. My professors are able to deliver lectures over Zoom and we can continue to do our programming assignments. Unfortunately, all of my musical performances have been cancelled, and it can be challenging to stay productive during my practice sessions. I'm grateful that I was able to move a marimba from @eastman.school to my apartment in Rochester, so that I can keep practicing. I probably walk past Eastman once a day, and Im used to seeing 100 other students on the street. So its weird to know that the concert halls and practice rooms are empty. My percussion professor is inviting professional percussionists and composers from all around the world to join us for studio class over Zoom, which is a great learning opportunity. I'm looking forward to the day when I can attend a concert and play for people again! Swipe to hear Olivers stylings on the marimba Oliver Xu 20, 20E (@oxuperc) Dual degree student majoring in percussion and computer science from Livonia, Michigan

A post shared by University of Rochester (@urochester) on May 7, 2020 at 12:28pm PDT

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Class of 2020, we see you. In the weeks leading up to the conferral of their degrees, we meet members of this year's graduating class to hear how they're doing. #UR2020 Im at home in Atlanta with my parents and brother, and were all quarantining together. Im comfortable, Im happy, and Im supported by them. Its incredible to see how this pandemic is affecting the world. As an international relations major, Ive always been interested in how certain events are so powerful that they can change how our world works. Most significantly, I think we are being forced to reflect on how much we care about things that we can barely seebe it climate change, the global refugee crisis, or a microscopic virus. Like many, I miss life on campus, whether it be joking with friends in passing, or grabbing lunch with classmates. But, amid these personal struggles and letdowns, I believe it is also important for us to see how we are all part of a bigger whole in this world. By realizing this, perhaps there can be a silver lining to the crisis. Swipe to hear more from Nate Nate Leopold 20 (@nate.leo) International relations and political science double major from Atlanta, and a four-year member of the Yellowjackets mens soccer team

A post shared by University of Rochester (@urochester) on May 6, 2020 at 11:41am PDT

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Class of 2020, we see you. In the weeks leading up to the conferral of their degrees, we meet members of this year's graduating class to hear how they're doing. #UR2020 Transitioning to life at home has been quite the adjustment. Im used to spending many hours a day in a silent library and now Im in upstate New York with my two very cute, but not so very quiet puppies! My mom and brother are also here, and we are all healthy, so I feel very blessed. At first, I was able to spend my extra free time hiking, but now most trails are closed. So, Ive resorted to painting scenes from my favorite hikes instead! Heres a painting Im working on right now of Lake Road in Keene Valley. Finding motivation to finish my senior spring semester online has certainly been a challenge. Plus, Im an extreme extrovert, so I miss being around lots of people! My friends and I hold weekly Zooms to stay connected and we usually end up laughing for about three hours each time. Im looking forward to being able to hug all my friends and family again. Stay safe and healthy everyone! Swipe to see Amandas video: I took at an awesome hike in northern Lake George right before many trails got closed. I went with my friend Lauren. We drove separately and hiked 10 feet apart the whole time. Super views!!" Amanda Guido 20 (@amandaguidoo) Molecular genetics major from Lake George, New York

A post shared by University of Rochester (@urochester) on May 5, 2020 at 1:31pm PDT

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Class of 2020, we see you. In the weeks leading up to the conferral of their degrees, we meet members of this year's graduating class to hear how they're doing. #UR2020 I got the news that school was over when I was in the middle of a match. I felt extremely overwhelmed and sad. Knowing that was going to be my last match ever, I had to pour my heart out to end things with a win. There were so many events to look forward to this season, and so many more memories to make with my teammates. However, looking back at it, I'm grateful to have been part of this experience and have so many good memories and times with my teammates and best friends. Im staying on the River Campus. Ive walked across campus to get mail, and its pretty sad and quiet. I spend most of my time in my dorm, but I go on runs every evening around Genesee Valley Park. Im also trying a lot of different restaurants around Rochester. Nothing feels real anymore. Every day feels the same. Yifan Shen 20 (@yi.f.shen) Microbiology and business double major from Taichung, Taiwan, and a member of the Yellowjackets' tennis team

A post shared by University of Rochester (@urochester) on May 4, 2020 at 12:03pm PDT

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Class of 2020, we see you. In the weeks leading up to the conferral of their degrees, we meet members of this year's graduating class to hear how they're doing. #UR2020 Im staying in the house Ive been renting in Rochester the past year and a half. Before all of this happened, I usually spent only a few hours each day in my room sleeping. If I was awake, Id be on campus going to classes, working at WRUR (as chief engineer), or hanging with friends. Now, Im here all of the time. Remote classes are going well. It really helps that lectures are recorded so I can rewatch something if I need clarification on a topic. And Ive been extremely appreciative of my professors' willingness to conduct class in a way that allows students to ask questions whenever they need. Im also a TA for Engineering in Antiquity, taught by professor Renato Perucchio. I attend Zoom class lectures so I know what students have covered, and Ive expanded my office hours. The events of this semester are shocking. My hope is that our expanded availability will help provide some sense of normalcy and support throughout the rest of this semester. Nathan Nickerson 20 is a mechanical engineering major from Wilmington, Delaware

A post shared by University of Rochester (@urochester) on May 2, 2020 at 12:41pm PDT

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Class of 2020, we see you : NewsCenter - University of Rochester

BERKELEY, Calif., May 14, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --Entering its 17th year as the premier thought leader conference for investors, entrepreneurs and other experts at the intersection of aging and technology, Mary Furlong & Associates addresses the coronavirus global pandemic by taking its What's Next Longevity Venture Summit virtual. The virtual event offers an expanded audience an online learning and networking experience with leading authorities on the future trends in the $8 trillion U.S. longevity economy.

"For almost two decades our conference has been known as the event where deals get done, companies get financed, and great leaders get discovered," said Mary Furlong, a successful entrepreneur and author in aging whose What's Next conferences have been the platform for someparticipating entrepreneurs to go on to build sustainable brands with over $100 millionin revenue,several being financed right at the conference. "This year our focus is on the global disruption of COVID-19 as the key issue of our time - the social isolation of older adults and the role technology can play is going to accelerate innovation in this space and we're thrilled to deliver the key players in a new virtual environment that encourages the collaboration and funding opportunities that will be needed."

The two-day virtual conference offers online participants specially curated live panel discussions on June 24-25 with top investors in venture, private equity, government and corporate and a special panel on female investors; analysts presenting the latest research briefings; entrepreneurs discussing pivots that worked; and other experts analyzing the new lens on telehealth, cannabis, home care, senior housing and other longevity market issues. Keynote speakers include: Ken Dychtwald, author and co-founder of AgeWave, Nancy LeaMond of AARP, David Rhew of Microsoft and Jean Accius of AARP. In addition, virtual attendees receive exclusive access beginning June 24 to the newly created What's Next Academy Sessions of pre-recorded thought leader panel discussions on the impact and opportunities in aging since the coronavirus pandemic.

The virtual conference also includes three competitions looking at innovation to address COVID-19 in the older population including the What's Next Innovation Challenge sponsored by AARP Innovation Labs; the $10,000 Business Competition with an elite judging panel and the Pitch for Distribution where start-up companies hope to earn a chance to meet with organizations that can help scale their business.

A long-term sponsor of the What's Next events, John Hopper, chief investment officerof the Ziegler Link-Age Funds and a 2020 Business Competition judge said, "We're proud to be a 7-year sponsor of the What's Next events and have made numerous investments in companies that have grown out of this competition and conference, including past winners and finalists Life Site, Embodied Labs, Vynca and Vital Tech. In light of COVID-19, we know some of the fastest growing companies providing critical products and services to seniors are in the area of telehealth and virtual training and care coordination."

The What's Next Longevity Venture Summit is produced by Mary Furlong, founder and CEO of Mary Furlong & Associates along with co-producers Lori Bitter, founder of The Business of Aging, and Sherri Snelling, CEO of Caregiving Club.Top sponsors include: AARP Innovation Labs, Ageless Innovation, Great Call, CareLinx, Great Call, Home Instead, Simple Meds, CABHI, Nationwide, VitalTech, Medterra CBD, CareMerge, Movano Inc. iN2L, Hamilton CapTel, Thrive, Ziegler-Linkage, WAHVE, My Family Channel and Bindix. See the event agenda and full list of speakers and sponsors at: https://www.boomerventuresummit.com/

Media Contact:Lori Bitter 415-652-9884[emailprotected]

SOURCE Mary Furlong & Associates

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Leading Conference for Investors and Entrepreneurs in the $8 trillion US Longevity Economy Goes Virtual - PRNewswire

In what I can only assume is a rational response to watching a sweaty Chris Cuomo deliver the news every day from our basement, my father recently suggested that I start studying for the GRE. He is nervous about the vague, nebulous thing we call the economy, and more than that, he is nervous about the prospects that Ihis sociology major daughtermight have in whatevers left of it after the pandemic. Its just good to have options, he says. The University, if its extended deadlines are any indication, agrees. The assumption underlying both of these concerns is a commonplace one: It is the assumption that the academy will stand for a long time. Come hell or high water, the U.S. News and World Reportrankings will be released next year, and they will serve us all well. Education endures.

The very longevity of the institution is precisely what makes Professor Kimberly Kay Hoangs recent op-ed so infuriating. The piece has rightfully been denounced by graduate students and professors alike as arrogant tenure-splaining, an erasure of the years of graduate student organizing it took to get almost the median income in Illinois, and perhaps most simply, just plain bad sociology. No less a member of the sociological cannon than Max Weber once remarked that [w]hether a lecturer ever attains the position of a full professor, let alone a scientific assistant becoming director of an institute, is simply a matter of chance. True, luck is not the only factor, but it plays an unusually predominant roleI can hardly think of another career in the world where chance plays such an outsize part. It is nothing short of outrageous, given the incisive structural analysis that characterizes sociology, to hear a professor in the field make an argument condoning the logics of meritocracy.

This university and those like it will be around for a long time. And given that, shouldnt our imperative be to make it as palatable as it can possibly be? If the academic job market is as punishing as everyone says, doesnt it behoove us to take this unprecedented moment to advocate for its restructuring, or for some collective insulation against precariousness? To quote poet Anne Boyer, This virus makes what has always been the case even more emphatically so. There is always a balancing act between preparing for how the world is and how we wish it were, I know, but in balancing, we must be careful to never legitimize the former and never abandon the latter.

Legitimation, unfortunately, is the least of what Hoangs op-ed does. It does nothing for graduate students, current and aspiring, to hear from a tenured professor that it is our job right now to analyze the situation were trying to survive, or to lower our expectations for the future. It does nothing to hear that we are privileged, because Hoang is more so. (And Im sure that all the graduate students who are planning to write subpar dissertations have been thoroughly moved by her op-ed to do otherwise.)

Writing that [i]f you feel that [producing an outstanding dissertation] is too much of a challenge, or is otherwise detrimental to your mental health, this is the time to think about alternative careers that are suitable to your personal and professional goals is not simply tough loveit is exactly how the market will explain away students who dont make it out of Ph.D. programs, with no thought or regard as to why. Hoangs words are an acquiescencea capitulation and reductive furthering of a deeply flawed system.

In her Sociological Theory class in the fall, Hoang enthusiastically extolled us undergraduates to theorize from a place of conviction. She told us that good sociology came from righteous beliefs. I am of the conviction that the academy needs the people who would be dissuaded from its ranks by her op-ed far more than those people need the academy. I am of the conviction that we should not step over the corpses of others to compete in academia. I am of the conviction that there is space in the ivory tower for people to not just work, but to live and heal and recover and grieve.

Its a shame Hoang is not convinced of the same.

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The Academy's Longevity Should Incentivize Reform - The Chicago Maroon

The New England Patriots have won 11 straight AFC East titles, but some expect that impressive streak to come to an end in 2020 as the post-Tom Brady era begins.

Their biggest competition is expected to be the Buffalo Bills, who finished 10-6 in 2019 and added some talent in the offseason, most notably star wide receiver Stefon Diggs.

With Brady gone and Buffalo seemingly getting better, Hall of Fame Bills quarterback Jim Kelly believes this is the year his former team overtakes New England for the division crown.

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If they dont, then somethings wrong,Kelly said on CBS Sports Radio's The Zack Gelb Show. I mean, Tom Brady is not there to block you anymore. So that, to me, is huge. I think Tom of course is getting older, getting old, but he still can play. I tried to talk him into retirement like two, three years ago, but he just wouldnt listen to me. I dont know why.

"But now that Bradys gone, I definitely do think the Bills are the team to beat, even though you look at the Jets, theyre getting better. Miami with Tua (Tagovailoa) coming in, I think theyre going to be better. And of course, (Bill) Belichick will have his team ready to play. So well see what happens at the quarterback position in New England."

Despite Kelly's confidence, the Bills have been cautiously optimistic as they ready for life without Brady in the division. Head coach Sean McDermott still believes New England should be considered the favorite, and general manager Brandon Beane has been wary of counting out Bill Belichick's team.

Barring any surprises, it'llbe 2019 fourth-round draft pick Jarrett Stidham replacing Brady at quarterback and looking to extend that AFC East title streak to 12.Stidham has taken only a handful of snaps as an NFL QB, but he's made quite the impression on his teammates behind the scenes. His former teammates at Auburn also have raved about his work ethic.

The Patriots (+115) are still favored over the Bills (+145), according to DraftKings Sportsbook.

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Seymour jokes about the real secret to Brady's longevity - NBCSports.com