Study finds the SARS-CoV-2 virus can infect the inner ear

Many Covid-19 patients have reported symptoms affecting the ears, including hearing loss and tinnitus. Dizziness and balance problems can also occur, suggesting that the SARS-CoV-2 virus may be able to infect the inner ear.

A new study from MIT and Massachusetts Eye and Ear provides evidence that the virus can indeed infect cells of the inner ear, including hair cells, which are critical for both hearing and balance. The researchers also found that the pattern of infection seen in human inner ear tissue is consistent with the symptoms seen in a study of 10 Covid-19 patients who reported a variety of ear-related symptoms.

The researchers used novel cellular models of the human inner ear that they developed, as well as hard-to-obtain adult human inner ear tissue, for their studies. The limited availability of such tissue has hindered previous studies of Covid-19 and other viruses that can cause hearing loss.

“Having the models is the first step, and this work opens a path now for working with not only SARS-CoV-2 but also other viruses that affect hearing,” says Lee Gehrke, the Hermann L.F. von Helmholtz Professor in MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, who co-led the study.

Konstantina Stankovic, a former associate professor at Harvard Medical School and former chief of otology and neurotology at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, who is now the Bertarelli Foundation Professor and chair of the Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine, co-led the study. Minjin Jeong, a former postdoc in Stankovic’s laboratory at Harvard Medical School, who is now at Stanford Medical School, is the lead author of the paper, which appears today in Communications Medicine.

Researchers set ‘ultrabroadband’ record with entangled photons

Researchers in the lab of Qiang Lin at the University of Rochester have generated record ‘ultrabroadband’ bandwidth of entangled photons using the thin-film nanophotonic device illustrated here. At top left, a laser beam enters a periodically poled thin-film lithium niobate waveguide (banded green and gray). Entangled photons (purple and red dots) are generated with a bandwidth exceeding 800 nanometers.
(Illustration by Usman Javi and Michael Osadciw)

The engineers have achieved unprecedented bandwidth and brightness on chip-sized nanophotonic devices.

Quantum entanglement—or what Albert Einstein once referred to as “spooky action at a distance”— occurs when two quantum particles are connected to each other, even when millions of miles apart. Any observation of one particle affects the other as if they were communicating with each other. When this entanglement involves photons, interesting possibilities emerge, including entangling the photons’ frequencies, the bandwidth of which can be controlled.

Researchers at the University of Rochester have taken advantage of this phenomenon to generate an incredibly large bandwidth by using a thin-film nanophotonic device they describe in Physical Review Letters.

The breakthrough could lead to:

1. Enhanced sensitivity and resolution for experiments in metrology and sensing, including spectroscopy, nonlinear microscopy, and quantum optical coherence tomography
2. Higher dimensional encoding of information in quantum networks for information processing and communications

“This work represents a major leap forward in producing ultrabroadband quantum entanglement on a nanophotonic chip,” says Qiang Lin, professor of electrical and computer engineering. “And it demonstrates the power of nanotechnology for developing future quantum devices for communication, computing, and sensing,”

Heatwaves like ‘the Blob’ could decrease role of ocean as carbon sink

A major two-year heatwave may have temporarily dampened the Pacific’s ability to sequester carbon, according to research from the University of British Columbia and University of Southern Denmark. Credit: Jody Wright

Researchers have found the two-year heatwave known as ‘the Blob’ may have temporarily dampened the Pacific’s ‘biological pump,’ which shuttles carbon from the surface ocean to the deep sea where it can be stored for millennia.

Canadian and European researchers, in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute, conducted a large-scale study of the impact of one of the largest marine heatwaves on record – colloquially known as the Blob – on Pacific Ocean microorganisms. Their observations suggest that it’s not just larger marine life that is affected by abrupt changes in sea temperature.

“Heatwaves such as the Blob may decrease the ocean’s biological role as a carbon sink for fixed atmospheric carbon,” said Dr. Steven Hallam (he/him), a microbiologist at the University of British Columbia and author of the paper published in Nature Communications Biology.

This ‘biological pump’ process is an important mechanism for buffering the impact of human activity on Earth’s climate, said co-author Dr. Colleen Kellogg (she/her), a research scientist with the Hakai Institute. “The ocean is a huge global reservoir for atmospheric carbon dioxide. If marine heatwaves reduce the capacity for carbon dioxide to be absorbed into the ocean, then this shrinks this reservoir and leaves more of this greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.”

Ways to make equestrian sport safer for horses and riders

Photo by Jean van der Meulen from Pexels

In the first study of horse falls for over 20 years, University of Bristol academics have identified some simple interventions to reduce the risk of injury in equestrian sport - making it safer for both horses and riders.

The study pinpointed characteristics associated with an increased risk of falls in eventing, such as higher-level events, longer courses, more starters at cross-country phase and less experienced horses and athletes.

Identifying these risk factors allows riders and event organizers to assess the level of risk for individual horse, rider and event combinations. The study, published in the Equine Veterinary Journal, recommends simple mitigations such as adjusting minimum eligibility requirements (MERs) to ensure horses and riders always compete at a level appropriate to their ability.

Led by Bristol Veterinary School’s Dr. Euan Bennet and Professor Tim Parkin, with Dr Heather Cameron-Whytock of Nottingham Trent University, and funded by Federation Equestre Internationale (FEI), it is the first large scale study using a global data set of every FEI eventing competition over an 11-year period.

Engineering molecules to turn off inflammation

Stylized scientific image of the anti-inflammatory
molecule, Interleukin-37

In a long-term collaboration between researchers and industry, an exciting first step has been made in the creation of a new generation of medicines for auto-immune diseases such as arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease using one of our body’s own anti-inflammatory off-switch molecules.

Our body’s own immune system produces many highly potent anti-inflammatory molecules, but they are often highly fragile, short-lived, and do not have drug-like properties. Interleukin-37 is one such molecule produced by the body to turn off inflammation.

Together with partner F. Hoffmann-La Roche (Roche), the multidisciplinary research team from the Monash University Biomedicine Discovery (BDI) Institute, Monash University’s Department of Pediatrics and the Hudson Institute of Medical Research have harnessed their Fc-fusion platform to engineer the next generation of Interleukin-37, one that retains anti-inflammatory potency, is highly stable and has an excellent therapeutic likeness.

The findings from the research collaboration have now been published in Cell Chemical Biology.

A little bit of inflammation can be a good thing and is often the body's immune system doing its job. However, when inflammation persists, or the immune system starts attacking the body’s own cells, this can lead to disease.

One of the study’s lead authors Dr. Andrew Ellisdon from the Monash BDI says many human diseases, including autoimmune diseases such as arthritis or inflammatory bowel disease, are characterized by too much inflammation. There is a gap in producing new generations of potent anti-inflammatory therapeutics.

Urgent changes needed to global guidelines designed to stop surgical infection

Wound infections are the most common problem after surgery, particularly in developing countries, but promised innovations to tackle the issue do not work and global guidance needs changing, a new study reveals.

Both World Health Organization (WHO) and the UK’s National Institute of Health Research guidelines recommend that surgeons use alcoholic chlorhexidine skin preparation and triclosan coated sutures to prevent Surgical Site Infection (SSI).

However, the world’s largest wound infection trial could not demonstrate superiority of these interventions over lower cost alternatives.

Carried out in Benin, Ghana, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Rwanda and South Africa, the FALCON trial was funded by the UK’s National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).

Publishing their findings today in The Lancet, researchers participating in this study are calling for guidelines recommending these measures, either specifically to Low- and Middle-income Countries (LMIC) or at a general global level, to be revised.

Co-author Mr. Aneel Bhangu, from the University of Birmingham, commented: “Surgical site infection is the world’s most common postoperative complication - a major burden for both patients and health systems. We have delivered the biggest trial of its kind, where we could not demonstrate the superiority of these interventions over cheaper alternatives.

First overview of archaea in vertebrates

View of an archea colony in the scanning electron microscope. 
© MPI f. Developmental Biology

Uncovering how host relatedness influences the diversity of archaea in the vertebrate gut

Archaea are often mistaken as bacteria, given that both are small, single-cell organisms. However, archaea are as genetically different from bacteria as humans are from bacteria. While archaea are found in most environments, including the human gut microbiome, relatively little is known about them. An international team of researchers from Germany and Austria, led by Nicholas Youngblut at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, Germany, has compiled the first large scale assessment of archaeal diversity in the vertebrate gut. The study shows that the diversity of archaea in the vertebrate gut is greater than previously thought. Moreover, the study shows how the relatedness of animals and their diets affects archaeal diversity.

Archaea are the third domain of life, separate from the domains of bacteria and eukaryotes. While bacteria and archaea are both unicellular organisms that lack a nucleus, they are very different in key ways. For instance, archaea uniquely generate methane by consuming the waste products of bacterial fermentation. Unlike bacteria, no pathogenic species of archaea have been discovered, which is a major reason why more attention is paid to bacteria in the animal microbiome. As a result, little is known about the diversity of archaea in the vertebrate gut and what factors influence this diversity.

Like a biological fingerprint, specific groups of microbes colonize the guts of birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles and fish. In a new paper, researchers revealed how archaea fit into this picture. "We were amazed by the specificity but also diversity of the archaeal species we found in the gut of vertebrates. Among them was the archaeon Methanothermobacter," explained Nicholas Youngblut of the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, who is lead author of the study. "Methanothermobacter is known to occur only in hot environments of about 60 degrees Celsius, so its detection in a large number of different vertebrates was surprising. We saw the archaeal genus particularly common and widespread among birds, which may be due to their higher body temperature of about 40 degrees Celsius or warmer."

Researchers invent chemical reaction that could accelerate drug discovery

Tim Cernak

Medicines come from chemical reactions, and better chemical reactions lead to better medicines.

Yet, the most popular reaction used in drug discovery, called the amide coupling, makes an inherently unstable amide bond. Because the body excels at metabolizing medication, one of the most important and difficult goals of drug research is to invent metabolically stable molecules, so we can take one pill a day instead of every 15 minutes.

To that end, researchers at the University of Michigan College of Pharmacy hacked the popular amide coupling to produce a carbon-carbon bond instead of an amide. The carbon-carbon bond is the most prevalent bond arrangement in nature and in synthetic drugs, and it’s also typically more stable than the amide bond, said Tim Cernak, assistant professor of medicinal chemistry and principal investigator of the study that appears online in the Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

The discovery of the carbon-carbon bond-forming reaction opens the door to more stable medicines, and is particularly applicable to biological probes and new medical imaging agents, Cernak said.

“It’s actually really, really difficult to invent a molecule that has that stability so that you can take just one pill a day,” he said. “If we don’t put all this optimization into stabilization of molecules, we’d have to take one pill every 15 minutes or 20 minutes. It would be very inconvenient.”

The common amide bond is formed by coupling an amine and a carboxylic acid. To form a carbon-carbon bond, researchers identified a catalyst that deaminates the amine and decarboxylates the carboxylic acid, forming a carbon-carbon bond in the process.

Joining an amine and a carboxylic acid to make a carbon-carbon bond is also advantageous because these reagents are available in the highest diversity, and are typically less expensive than other raw ingredients that could be used to make a carbon-carbon bond.

Triple-drug combo could prove key weapon in fight against cancer

Combining three existing drugs – a commonly-used anti-epileptic, a contraceptive steroid and a cholesterol-lowering agent – could form an effective and non-toxic treatment for a range of aggressive blood cancers, a new study reveals.

The discovery by University of Birmingham scientists has led to a £1 million funding award from Blood Cancer UK to run a randomized clinical trial to test the new drug combo against another experimental agent (Danazol) in patients living with Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS).

Over 7,000 people in the UK have MDS and many patients die because their disease transforms into acute myeloid leukemia (AML) - an even more aggressive blood cancer. The general outlook for AML is poor, but when AML arises from MDS it is worse.

Left untreated, AML kills patients quickly by crippling production of normal blood cells. AML is most prevalent in elderly people – many of whom cannot tolerate ‘traditional’ treatment of intensive chemotherapy because of their age and frailty.

Scientists at the University of Birmingham had already discovered that mixing bezafibrate (BEZ - cholesterol-lowering) with medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA - contraceptive steroid) eased a range of blood cancers including AML, chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and non-Hodgkins lymphoma.

Giant pandas’ distinctive black and white markings provide effective camouflage

Giant Panda Credit: Anssi Nokelainen

Researchers at the University of Bristol, Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Jyväskylä have used state-of-the art image analysis techniques to demonstrate, counterintuitively, that the unique colorings work to disguise the giant panda. The results have been published today in Scientific Reports.

While most mammals are drab browns and greys, there are a small number of well-known and intriguing exceptions such as zebras, skunks, and orcas. Perhaps the most famous of all however is the giant panda.

The international team analyzed rare photographs of the giant pandas, taken in their natural environment. They discovered that their black pelage patches blend in with dark shades and tree trunks, whereas their white patches match foliage and snow when present. Also, infrequent pale brown pelage tones match ground color, providing an intermediate color which bridges the gap between the very dark and very light visual elements in the natural habitat. The results are consistent whether viewed by human, felid or canine vision models; the last two represent panda predators.