The World Health Organization says Japan recorded the highest global number of new coronavirus cases in the seven days through Sunday.
The WHO on Wednesday released an update on new COVID-19 cases reported during the week from July 18 to 24.
The report says the number of weekly cases in Japan stood at 969,068 — an increase of 73 percent from the previous week.
DeepMind has predicted the structure of almost every protein so far catalogued by science, cracking one of the grand challenges of biology in just 18 months thanks to an artificial intelligence called AlphaFold. Researchers say that the work has already led to advances in combating malaria, antibiotic resistance and plastic waste, and could speed up the discovery of new drugs.
Determining the crumpled shapes of proteins based on their sequences of constituent amino acids has been a persistent problem for decades in biology. Some of these amino acids are attracted to others, some are repelled by water, and the chains form intricate shapes that are hard to accurately determine.
Thinking long-term to save the world Martin Rees at New Scientist Live this October.
A single chemical is key to controlling when hair follicle cells divide, and when they die. This discovery could not only treat baldness, but ultimately speed wound healing because follicles are a source of stem cells.
Glioblastoma tumors take advantage of mechanisms used to create neurons to spread far and wide, scientists in Germany say.
One case involved a man with cancer who underwent a specialized stem cell transplant; the other involved a woman who received immune-boosting therapies as part of a clinical trial.
Academics have created a vaccine which has the potential to protect humans from the infection melioidosis, also called Whitmore’s disease.
The vaccine is the result of two decades of research, and is the most protective tested to date.
Melioidosis is caused by the bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei. It is thought to be spread in soil and dust, but experts do not yet know why it only affects people and animals in tropical regions. Occasionally people from the UK have contracted melioidosis while on holiday abroad.
The Virus Zoo is my latest educational blog post! I’ve written up ~1 page ‘cheat sheets’ on the molecular biology of specific viruses. I cover genome, structure, and life cycle. So far, my zoo includes adeno-associated virus (AAV), adenovirus, and herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1). However, I plan to add more viruses as time goes on! Some others I would like to incorporate later are coronavirus, HIV, anellovirus, lentivirus, ebolavirus, and MS2 bacteriophage. Feel free to suggest other interesting viruses in the comments! All images were created by me. #virology #molecularbiology #biotechnology #genetherapy #virus #biochemistry #genetics
Genome and Structure:
AAV genomes are about 4.7 kb in length and are composed of ssDNA. Inverted terminal repeats (ITRs) form hairpin structures at ends of the genome. These ITR structures are important for AAV genomic packaging and replication. Rep genes (encoded via overlapping reading frames) include Rep78, Rep68, Rep52, Rep40.1 These proteins facilitate replication of the viral genome. As a Dependoparvovirus, additional helper functions from adenovirus (or certain other viruses) are needed for AAVs to replicate.
Continue reading “The Virus Zoo: A Quick Primer on Molecular Virology” »
The man is among a handful who have gone into remission after the procedure, but it is not an option for most people.
Circa 2015
New software being developed at MIT is proving able to autonomously repair software bugs by borrowing from other programs and across different programming languages, without requiring access to the source code. This could save developers thousands of hours of programming time and lead to much more stable software.
Bugs are the bane of the software developer’s life. The changes that must be made to fix them are often trivial, typically involving changing only a few lines of code, but the process of identifying exactly which lines need to be fixed can be a very time-consuming and often very frustrating process, particularly in larger projects.
AIDS researchers announced on Wednesday that a fourth person has been “cured” of HIV, but the dangerous procedure for patients also battling cancer may be little comfort for the tens of millions living with the virus worldwide.
The 66-year-old man, named the “City of Hope” patient after the Californian center where he was treated, was declared in remission in the lead up to the International AIDS Conference, which begins in Montreal, Canada on Friday.
He is the second person to be announced cured this year, after researchers said in February that a US woman dubbed the New York patient had also gone into remission.
