How ‘viral dark matter’ may help mitigate climate change

A network-based ecological interaction analysis showed the diversity of RNA viral species was higher than expected in the Arctic and Antarctic.
Photo Credit: Tara Ocean Foundation

A deep dive into the 5,500 marine RNA virus species scientists recently identified has found that several may help drive carbon absorbed from the atmosphere to permanent storage on the ocean floor.

Ahmed Zayed

The analysis also suggests that a small portion of these newly identified species had “stolen” genes from organisms they infected, helping researchers identify their presumed hosts and functions in marine processes.

Beyond mapping a fount of foundational ecological data, the research is leading to a fuller understanding of the outsize role these tiny particles play in the ocean ecosystem.

“The findings are important for model development and predicting what is happening with carbon in the correct direction and at the correct magnitude,” said Ahmed Zayed, a research scientist in microbiology at The Ohio State University and co-first author of the study.

The question of magnitude is a serious consideration when taking into account the vastness of the ocean.

Lead author Matthew Sullivan, professor of microbiology at Ohio State, envisions identifying viruses that, when engineered on a massive scale, could function as controllable “knobs” on a biological pump that affects how carbon in the ocean is stored.

Anti-Aging Clues Lurk in Lysosomes, the Recycling Centers of the Cell

HHMI Investigator Meng Wang is studying the secrets to longevity. Her team has shown how the lysosome plays a role in aging.
Credit: Anthony Rathbun/AP Images for HHMI

For decades, biology students have learned that lysosomes – tiny sacs found within nearly all cells – had a singular task: to gobble up bits of foreign material and worn-out cell parts. The aim? To break them down for recycling.

But that lesson might soon need revising. Now, scientists are learning that molecules produced during the recycling process can also serve as signals that talk to other parts of the body.

These signals seem to play a role in determining how and when organisms grow old. Cells in different organs and tissues around the body send signals to one another constantly, says Meng Wang, an HHMI Investigator at Baylor College of Medicine. “When we’re young, everything is connected and communicating. But as we age, some of these connections are lost and function declines.”

Wang has spent the past seven years exploring the link between longevity and the signals lysosomes produce. Her team previously discovered that such signaling occurs within cells. Now, they have found evidence that the anti-aging messages are transmitted between cells too, and among different tissues, Wang and her colleagues reported in a preprint on bioRxiv.org and later on June 9, 2022, in the journal Nature Cell Biology. The results suggest that lysosome signals help coordinate the body’s aging process – and prolong the lives of some organisms.

‘Fantastic giant tortoise,’ believed extinct, confirmed alive in the Galápagos

Fernanda, the only known living Fernandina giant tortoise, now lives at the Galápagos National Park’s Giant Tortoise Breeding Center on Santa Cruz Island. Princeton geneticist Stephen Gaughran recently confirmed that she comes from the same species as a tortoise collected from the island more than a century ago, and those two are genetically distinct from all other Galápagos tortoises. 
Photo Credit: Galápagos Conservancy

A tortoise from a Galápagos species long believed extinct has been found alive and now confirmed to be a living member of the species. The tortoise, named Fernanda after her Fernandina Island home, is the first of her species identified in more than a century.

The Fernandina Island Galápagos giant tortoise (Chelonoidis phantasticus, or “fantastic giant tortoise”) was known only from a single specimen, collected in 1906. The discovery in 2019 of a female tortoise living on Fernandina Island provided the opportunity to determine if the species lives on. By sequencing the genomes of both the living individual and the museum specimen, and comparing them to the other 13 species of Galápagos giant tortoises, Princeton’s Stephen Gaughran showed that the two known Fernandina tortoises are members of the same species, genetically distinct from all others. He is co-first author on a paper in the current issue of Communications Biology confirming her species’ continued existence.

“For many years it was thought that the original specimen collected in 1906 had been transplanted to the island, as it was the only one of its kind,” said Peter Grant, Princeton’s Class of 1877 Professor of Zoology, Emeritus and an emeritus professor of ecology and evolutionary biology who has spent more than 40 years studying evolution in the Galápagos islands. “It now seems to be one of a very few that were alive a century ago.”

Europe’s Largest Land Predator Unearthed

Illustration of White Rock spinosaurid.
Credit: Anthony Hutchings 

Research involving paleontologists from the Universities of Portsmouth and Southampton has identified the remains of one of Europe’s largest ever land-based hunters: a dinosaur that measured over 10m long and lived around 125 million years ago.

Several prehistoric bones, uncovered on the Isle of Wight, on the south coast of England, and housed at Dinosaur Isle Museum in Sandown, belonged to a type of two-legged, crocodile-faced predatory dinosaur known as spinosaurids. Dubbed the ‘White Rock spinosaurid’ – after the geological layer in which it was found – it was a predator of impressive proportions.

“This was a huge animal, exceeding 10 m in length and probably several tons in weight. Judging from some of the dimensions, it appears to represent one of the largest predatory dinosaurs ever found in Europe – maybe even the biggest yet known”, said University of Southampton PhD student Chris Barker, who led the study. “It’s a shame it’s only known from a small amount of material, but these are enough to show it was an immense creature.”

The discovery follows previous work on spinosaurids by the University of Southampton team, which published a study on the discovery of two new species in 2021.

Social isolation may impact brain volume in regions linked to higher risk of dementia

Elderly woman in the middle stages of Alzheimer 
Credit: Steven HWG

Social isolation is linked to lower brain volume in areas related to cognition and a higher risk of dementia, according to research published today in Neurology. The study found that social isolation was linked to a 26% increased risk of dementia, separately from risk factors like depression and loneliness.

“Social isolation is a serious yet underrecognized public health problem that is often associated with old age,” said study author Professor Jianfeng Feng of Fudan University in Shanghai, China. “In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, social isolation, or the state of being cut off from social networks, has intensified. It’s more important than ever to identify people who are socially isolated and provide resources to help them make connections in their community.”

The study looked at over 460,000 people across the United Kingdom with an average age of 57 at the beginning of the study who were followed for nearly 12 years before the pandemic. Of those, almost 42,000 (9%) reported being socially isolated, and 29,000 (6%) felt lonely. During the study, almost 5,000 developed dementia.

Researchers collected survey data from participants, along with a variety of physical and biological measurements, including MRI data. Participants also took thinking and memory tests to assess their cognitive function. For social isolation, people were asked three questions about social contact: whether they lived with others; whether they had visits with friends or family at least once a month; and whether they participated in social activities such as clubs, meetings or volunteer work at least once a week. People were considered socially isolated if they answered no to at least two questions.

Visual system brain development implicated in infants who develop autism

Anatomical locations of the splenium (yellow) and right middle occipital gyrus (red) in a representative infant brain.
Source: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

For the first time, scientists have found that brain differences in the visual brain systems of infants who later develop autism are associated with inherited genetic factors.

Published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, this research shows that brain changes in the size, white matter integrity and functional connectivity of the visual processing systems of six-month-olds are evident well before they show symptoms of autism as toddlers. Moreover, the presence of brain changes in the visual system is associated with the severity of autism traits in their older siblings.

Led by Dr. Jessica Girault, assistant professor of psychiatry at the UNC School of Medicine, this is the first research to observe that infants with older siblings who have autism and who themselves later develop autism as toddlers have specific biological differences in visual processing regions of the brain and that these brain characteristics precede the appearance of autistic symptoms. The presence of those visual processing differences is related to how pronounced the autism traits are in the older siblings.

“We’re beginning to parse differences in infant brain development that might be related to genetic factors,” said Girault, who is also a member of the Carolina Institute of Developmental Disabilities. “Using magnetic resonance imaging, we studied selected structures of brain, the functional relationship between key brain regions, and the microstructure of white matter connections between those brain regions. Findings from all three pointed us to the discovery of unique differences in the visual systems of infants who later developed autism.”

Higher rate of COVID-19 death before vaccination linked to certain common inflammatory immune conditions

People with certain inflammatory immune conditions affecting the joints, bowel and skin, such as rheumatoid arthritis, may have been more at risk of dying or needing hospital care if they got COVID-19 before vaccination compared with the general population, according to a new study published in The Lancet Rheumatology with the involvement of researchers from the University of Oxford.

The findings are based on an analysis of 17 million patient GP records in England during the first phase of the pandemic from March-September 2020, when the UK was in lockdown and before vaccines were available. Since then, many of the people treated with medicines analyzed in this study have been specifically targeted for third primary vaccine doses followed by boosters and are on a list of people to offered anti-viral treatments.

The study was conducted by a team from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and the University of Oxford using the OpenSAFELY platform along with colleagues from St John’s Institute of Dermatology at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, King’s College London, the University of Exeter and University of Edinburgh.

More than 1 million patients in the analysis had immune mediated inflammatory diseases (IMIDs). These included inflammatory bowel disease such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, conditions affecting the joints such as rheumatoid arthritis, and skin conditions including psoriasis.

Invasive Insect that Kills Grapes Could Reach California Wine Region by 2027

The invasive insect, the spotted lanternfly.
Credit: U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The spotted lanternfly, an invasive insect that can kill grapevines and damage other crops, has a chance of first reaching the wine-producing counties of California in five years, according to a new analysis from North Carolina State University researchers.

In the study published in Communications Biology, researchers used a computer simulation tool to predict the timing of the spread of the spotted lanternfly, Lycorma delicatula, across the United States if efforts to control its spread are stopped. They predicted there is a high probability of the insect spreading to North Carolina by 2027, and a chance of the insect first reaching California’s grape-producing counties that same year.

“This is a big concern for grape growers; it could lead to billions of dollars of losses in the agricultural sector,” said the study’s lead author Chris Jones, research scholar with the NC State Center for Geospatial Analytics. “With this study, we have a baseline that we can use to evaluate the effect of different management strategies.”

The spotted lanternfly is native to Asia. It was first identified in the United States in Pennsylvania in 2014. Since then, it has spread to at least 11 other states. The invasive insect can damage or destroy commercially valuable crops such as grapes, apples, almonds, walnuts, cherries, hops, and peaches, as well as certain trees. It kills plants by directly feeding on them, and can also damage them by leaving behind a residue known as “honeydew” that helps mold grow. California, which produces 82% of the nation’s grapes, has been identified along with Washington state as a “highly suitable” climate for the spotted lanternfly.

Multi-scale imaging confirms protein’s role in neuronal structure, dynamics

A whole, live cell time-lapse image (2.5 min) of a neuron expressing fluorescently tagged actin (green) and cofilin (red).
Credit: Penn State College of Medicine.

Protein structures are typically determined by studying them in their purified form, outside of the busy inner workings of the cell, and because of this, their biological relevance is often called into question. In a new study by Penn State College of Medicine researchers, the long-observed protein structure cofilactin, a form of the filamentous protein actin that contains numerous connections to cofilin proteins, was shown to be a major component of neuronal growth cone filopodia — small dynamic “antennae” at the tips of growing neurons.

“The effects of cofilin on actin structure and its physical properties have been studied for more than 20 years, but now we can confidently see that this structural alteration serves some biological function in the cell,” said Matt Swulius, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology. “We’re still trying to determine the mechanistic details of its function, but we have strong evidence that cofilactin regulates the flexibility of searching filopodia.”

According to Swulius, understanding how filopodial dynamics are controlled at the molecular level could open therapeutic avenues into nerve regeneration as well as some developmental diseases. His lab is studying how the proteins fascin and cofilin function together to regulate the structure and movement of neuronal filopodia as they navigate their environment to eventually form cellular connections.

New Light on Magnetic Massive Stars

Video Credit: Jeffrey C. Chase

Oh, those twinkling, twinkling little stars. They make the night sky seem so peaceful, so idyllic, so quiet. It’s hard to believe that they are actually powerful furnaces, where explosive power, extreme heat and swirling, energized gases make them something more like a hydrogen bomb than anything imagined in that child’s lullaby.

Some of us settle for the wistful bit of that lullaby: “How I wonder what you are.” Others press on with increasingly challenging questions in a lifelong quest to learn, discover and inform the rest of us about what those twinkling little stars really are.

Matt Shultz does that as the Annie Jump Cannon Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Delaware. Stan Owocki does that as professor of physics and astronomy at UD. With collaborators at UD and around the world, they recently joined forces on three articles printed by the Royal Astronomical Society, pointing to important new discoveries that could change how measurements of stars are done and how their brightness can be predicted.

It started a few years ago. Shultz was minding his astronomy at UD and Paolo Leto, a researcher at the Catania Astrophysical Observatory, was doing the same in Italy. Both were studying magnetic massive stars — a rare variety of bright, hot stars with magnetic fields thousands of times stronger than the sun’s. These stars are emerging as promising laboratories for studying plasmas under extreme conditions, Shultz said.