SARS-CoV-2 protein caught severing critical immunity pathway

This image shows how SARS-CoV-2 Mpro recognizes and cuts NEMO based on the crystal structure determined using a powerful X-ray beam at SSRL Beam Line 12-2.
Credit: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Over the past two years, scientists have studied the SARS-CoV-2 virus in great detail, laying the foundation for developing COVID-19 vaccines and antiviral treatments. Now, for the first time, scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have seen one of the virus’s most critical interactions, which could help researchers develop more precise treatments.

The team caught the moment when a virus protein, called Mpro, cuts a protective protein, known as NEMO, in an infected person. Without NEMO, an immune system is slower to respond to increasing viral loads or new infections. Seeing how Mpro attacks NEMO at the molecular level could inspire new therapeutic approaches.

To see how Mpro cuts NEMO, researchers funneled powerful X-rays from SLAC’s Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) onto crystallized samples of the protein complex. The X-rays struck the protein samples, revealing what Mpro looks like when it dismantles NEMO’s primary function of helping our immune system communicate.

“We saw that the virus protein cuts through NEMO as easily as sharp scissors through thin paper,” said co-senior author Soichi Wakatsuki, professor at SLAC and Stanford. “Imagine the bad things that happen when good proteins in our bodies start getting cut into pieces.”

The images from SSRL show the exact location of NEMO’s cut and provide the first structure of SARS-CoV-2 Mpro bound to a human protein.

A bio-based solvent for paints and varnishes

In this apparatus, the production of the new solvent dimethylfuran is being tested on a small scale at the RUB.
Credit: Mareile Silvia Rohlf

So far, only a small part of the established solvents has been bio-based. The project team wants to change that - rethinking the entire process chain from start to finish.

Around 20 million tons of solvents are consumed worldwide every year, of which only a small part has been produced bio-based to date. An international project team wants to provide an alternative to established solvents with dimethylfuran. The substance is bio-based and biodegradable. The Ruhr University Bochum (RUB), the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial and Bioprocess Engineering IGB in Straubing and the industrial partner AURO Plant Chemistry AG are cooperating for the project. The German Research Foundation is funding the project from October 2022 to September 2025 with 214,200 euros.

The starting point for the work is the substance 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), which can be obtained from biomass and converted into dimethylfuran (DMF). Researchers at RUB around Prof. Dr. Martin Muhler and Dr. Baoxiang Peng from the Chair of Technical Chemistry has already been established in a previous project. In the current research project, they want to optimize the catalyst and the reaction conditions in order to lay the foundation for an industrial production of DMF. The IGB team around Dr. Harald Strittmatter and Ferdinand Vogelgsang from the innovation fields "Bioinspired Chemistry" and "Sustainable Catalytic Processes" will scale up the catalytic reaction to a 40-fold larger scale. Together with the industrial partner AURO, the scientists will finally provide ready-made recipes for the use of DMF as a solvent and test them in the production of natural colors.

Propelling wind energy innovation

Sandia National Laboartories’ Twistact technology proves beneficial in lowering costs, improving sustainability and reducing maintenance for next-generation direct-drive wind turbines.
Photo credit: Zhang Fengsheng

Motivated by the need to eliminate expensive rare-earth magnets in utility-scale direct-drive wind turbines, Sandia National Laboratories researchers developed a fundamentally new type of rotary electrical contact. Sandia is now ready to partner with the renewable energy industry to develop the next generation of direct-drive wind turbines.

Sandia’s Twistact technology takes a novel approach to transmitting electrical current between a stationary and rotating frame, or between two rotating assemblies having different speeds or rotational direction, ideal for application in wind turbines.

“Twistact originated by asking ourselves some really challenging questions,” said Jeff Koplow, Sandia research scientist and engineer. “We knew it could be game-changing if we could find a way to get around the limited-service lifetime of conventional rotary electrical contacts.”

“I started thinking that maybe not every conceivable rotary electrical contact architecture has been thought of yet,” Koplow said. “We spent a lot of time considering if there was another plausible way.”

The resulting innovation, Twistact, uses a pure-rolling-contact device to transmit electrical current along an ultra-low-resistance path. The technology proves beneficial in lowering costs, improving

New knowledge about the link between infection during pregnancy and autism

Credit: Mart Production

Infections in pregnant women have been linked to increased risk of neuropsychiatric conditions, such as autism, in the child later in life. But it does not appear to be the infections themselves that cause autism, researchers from Karolinska Institutet show in a study published in The Lancet Psychiatry.

Our results can reassure future parents by showing that infections during pregnancy may not pose as much risk to the child's brain as previously thought, say Håkan Karlsson, researchers at Department of Neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet and the study's last author.

Previous studies have shown a link between infections of the future mother during pregnancy and increased risk of autism and intellectual disability in the child later in life.

But they have not been able to say whether it is really the infection of the mother that is the cause, or whether other factors are behind it. Researchers from Karolinska Institutet have now studied this more closely.

Three New Lichen Species Discovered by Scientists

Now the team, which includes Aleksandr Paukov, is studying lichens in cities in Iran.
Photo credit: Anna Babikova

An international team of biologists has discovered and described three lichen species new to science from Pakistan. According to the scientists, by finding areas where there is a high degree of biodiversity, examining the characteristic features of species and determining the route of their distribution across the planet, they are able to figure out how geological and climatic changes over time have affected the vegetation and flora of the planet. A description of the new species is published in the journal Mycological Progress.

"The species found belong to the same genus Lobothallia, and we can compare them with each other. The new lichens are ancient within their family according to the totality of morphological and anatomical characters. By comparing their characteristics with data on evolutionarily younger species, we can identify territories that preserved biodiversity during long periods of global glaciation. Such areas are called refugiums - they do not have major climatic and geological changes, and it is from there that plants and animals disperse after unfavorable periods. If further research also finds these new species in other parts of the planet, we will be able to determine whether there were geological crossings that allowed lichens to move from East to West and vice versa after ice ages," explains Aleksandr Paukov, Associate Professor at the Department of Biodiversity and Bioecology of UrFU.

Cli­mate change threat­ens ice caves in Aus­tria

Charlotte Honiat and Tanguy Racine from the Department of Geology pack ice samples in the Tyrolean Guffert Eisschacht for further analysis in the laboratory.
Credit: Christoph Spötl

Eight ice caves in four Austrian federal states: A team of geologists from the University of Innsbruck has comprehensively documented the loss and gain of ice in Alpine ice caves over the last 2000 years for the first time. The geologist Tanguy Racine warns: The ice of smaller caves especially is in danger of disappearing in the near future and with it a valuable climate archive. The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports.

There are several thousand documented ice caves worldwide, and Austria is one of the countries with the highest density of ice caves - but only a few have been studied in detail. Over the past few years, a team of researchers from the Universities of Innsbruck and Belfast has now analyzed in detail eight ice caves with a descending morphology in Tyrol, Styria, Upper Austria and Carinthia, choosing a comparative research approach. "There are already some good studies on single ice caves. However, this was the first time a comparative analysis was carried out and we focused on the ice development in several caves that are also in comparable settings: similar altitude and a steep to vertically sloping geometry," explains Tanguy Racine from the Quaternary Research Group around Christoph Spötl at the Department of Geology. His dissertation dealt with the topic in detail. Ice bodies in these caves are formed from solid precipitation: snow falls and slides into the cave in winter and then subsequently turns to ice at low temperatures.

More than 1.1 million sea turtles poached over last three decades

A new ASU study shows during a 30-year period, 95% of poached sea turtles came from two species — green and hawksbill turtles — both of which are listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Also, Southeast Asia and Madagascar emerged as major hot spots for illegal sea turtle take and trade, particularly for critically endangered hawksbills, which are prized in the illicit wildlife trade for their beautiful shells. The East Pacific hawksbill turtle is among the most endangered sea turtle populations.
 Photo Credit: Lindsay Lauckner Gundlock

One of the most serious threats to wildlife biodiversity, in addition to the climate crisis, is the illegal killing and trafficking of animals and plants. Despite many laws against the black-market wildlife trade, it is considered to be one of the most lucrative illicit industries in the world.

Animals, especially endangered and threatened species, are often exploited and sold for their pelts or used as medicine, aphrodisiacs, curios, food and spiritual artifacts.

In a new study published in “Global Change Biology,” Arizona State University researchers estimate that more than 1.1 million sea turtles have been illegally killed and, in some cases, trafficked between 1990 and 2020. Even with existing laws prohibiting their capture and use, as many as 44,000 sea turtles were exploited each year over the past decade in 65 countries or territories and in 44 of the world’s 58 major sea turtle populations.

Despite the seemingly large number of poached turtles, the study shows that the reported illegal exploitation of sea turtles declined by approximately 28% over the last decade — something that surprised the researchers. They initially expected to see an overall increase in reported poaching.

Upgraded Laser Facility Paves the Way for Next-Generation Particle Accelerators

Accelerator Technology & Applied Physics Division scientists Marlene Turner and Anthony Gonsalves perform work on the laser table where the petawatt laser is split into the two beamlines. Well-positioned mirrors enable femtosecond overlap of the two lasers on target.
Credit: Marilyn Sargent/Berkeley Lab

Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have completed a major expansion of one of the world’s most powerful laser systems, creating new opportunities in accelerator research for the future of high-energy physics and other fields. The expansion created a second beamline for the petawatt laser at the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA) Center, enabling the development of next-generation particle accelerators for applications in science, medicine, security, and industry. The second beamline came online this summer and is the culmination of several years of planning, design, and engineering by the BELLA and engineering teams.

“We are happy to see construction completed and are very eager to begin the wide variety of exciting experiments that are enabled by the second beamline,” said Eric Esarey, Director of the BELLA Center.

Using light to move particles

Traditional accelerators use radio-frequency electromagnetic fields to gradually speed particles up over distances of tens of kilometers and tend to be huge and very expensive as a result. For example, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the famous international particle accelerator, accelerates particles along a circular path over 16 miles long, a monumental achievement costing billions of dollars to build and operate.

Elevated Cholesterol Found in GenX Exposure Study Participants

Photo credit: Luis Tosta on Unsplash

In a new paper detailing findings from North Carolina State University’s GenX Exposure Study, researchers found that elevated levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) were associated with higher total cholesterol and non-HDL cholesterol in participants’ blood. They also found that the legacy PFAS chemicals PFOS and PFNA were most strongly associated with elevated cholesterol compared to the other chemicals, and that the effects were more pronounced in older people.

“Previous studies had established links between PFAS and elevated cholesterol,” says Jane Hoppin, professor of biological sciences, director of NC State’s Center for Human Health and the Environment (CHHE), member of NC State’s Center for Environmental and Health Effects of PFAS, and corresponding author of the paper describing the work. “However, most of the previous work had focused on PFOA and PFOS, though we know that people are exposed to many other chemicals in the PFAS family. So, we wanted to look not just at legacy PFAS, but also at certain fluoroethers, a family of chemicals that include GenX and that have similar chemical structure to PFAS.”

The blood samples came from 344 Wilmington residents (289 adults and 55 children) across two sampling efforts in November 2017 and May 2018.

More than 10 million children were affected by COVID-19-associated parental and caregiver deaths

According to a new modeling study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, the number of children estimated to have experienced the death of a parent or caregiver as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic has climbed to more than 10.5 million globally as of May 1, 2022.

The new study, involving the University of Oxford, Imperial College, the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the World Health Organization (WHO), builds on the best available and most conservative data recently published by WHO on excess COVID-19 deaths (14.9 million as of Dec 31, 2021), to establish estimates of orphaned children in every country. This is the first-time availability of these comprehensive data on excess deaths for every country, and it enabled the data modelers to update global minimum estimates of pandemic orphanhood and caregiver death among children based on these excess deaths.

Excess deaths are typically defined as the difference between the observed numbers of deaths in specific time periods and expected numbers of deaths in the same time periods. Estimates of excess deaths can provide information about the burden of mortality potentially related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including deaths that are directly or indirectly attributed to COVID-19.

In this study, authors analyzed country-level deaths, fertility rates, and national excess mortality data provided by the WHO, the Economist, and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, and used mathematical modelling to develop global estimates based on the WHO estimates, which were the most conservative.