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Washington Post
6 days ago
- Business
- Washington Post
A gene could be key to growing rice, and feeding billions, in a hotter world
Rising global temperatures are threatening rice, a staple food that nourishes billions of people around the world. But researchers say they may have discovered a way to improve harvests and grain quality: by essentially silencing a temperature-sensitive gene found in some common rice varieties. A team of scientists in China recently announced that they had identified a gene that, when overheated, appears to have a negative impact on crops, lowering yield and producing chalky-looking, pasty-tasting grains. But when that gene is deactivated — through gene editing or through breeding that capitalizes on a naturally occurring variant that doesn't react to higher temperatures — rice plants produce more and better grains, according to a peer-reviewed paper published last month in the journal Cell.
South China Morning Post
23-05-2025
- Health
- South China Morning Post
Global study debunks ‘lab leak' theory, finds Covid-19 virus didn't originate in Wuhan
A landmark international study has offered compelling evidence that the coronavirus that caused the Covid-19 pandemic did not originate in Wuhan, China, challenging US President Donald Trump's laboratory leak theory Advertisement The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Cell on May 7, was led by the University of Edinburgh and involved researchers from 20 institutions across the US, Europe, and Asia, including China. The team analysed 167 bat coronavirus genomes and traced the origins of the virus that causes Covid-19 to bat populations in northern Laos and southwest China's Yunnan province, where its most recent ancestor circulated five to seven years before the pandemic emerged. The findings counter assertions by the White House, which claimed on a revamped government website in April that a Chinese lab leak was the 'real source' of the Covid-19 pandemic. The website continues to display the headings 'LAB LEAK', 'TRUTH', and 'ORIGIN' in bold capital letters. Specifically, the researchers looked at the genomes of sarbecoviruses – coronaviruses that can cause severe respiratory illness. They include Sars-CoV-1, which was responsible for the 2002–2004 severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) outbreak, and Sars-CoV-2, which caused the Covid-19 pandemic Advertisement Lead author Jonathan Pekar said the study showed that the original Sars-CoV-1 was circulating in western China just a year or two before Sars emerged in the southern province of Guangdong in late 2002.
ABC News
22-05-2025
- Science
- ABC News
Infrared contact lens helps people see in the dark, even with their eyes closed
Many people have wished for night vision on a dark walk home. But have you ever wondered if it's possible to see with your eyes closed? Both are feasible with a contact lens that allows the wearer to see light that's usually invisible to our eyes — and can pass through our eyelids. The infrared lens, which was developed by researchers in China, was unveiled in the journal Cell today. Tian Xue, a neuroscientist at the University of Science and Technology of China and study co-author, said the material had the potential to give people "super-vision". But in the shorter term, the team's ambitions are more modest. "Flickering infrared light could be used to transmit information in security, rescue, encryption or anti-counterfeiting settings," Professor Xue said in a press release. Our eye cells only register light in a small proportion of the electromagnetic spectrum. If we could see longer wavelengths — just outside the visible spectrum into the near-infrared — we'd be able to see humans and other warm-blooded animals "glow" faintly as they emit infrared light. Devices like night-vision goggles often work by tuning into near-infrared wavelengths, sometimes accompanied by an infrared light source to illuminate the surrounding area. But these devices usually need an external power source to work, making them bulky. They also tend to have a very limited of field of view, according to Paul Martin, a researcher in ophthalmology at the University of Sydney. While it's possible to buy "infrared" contact lenses online, typically marketed for cheating at card games, these lenses don't allow users to see infrared light. Instead, Professor Martin said they filter out higher wavelengths of light to make it easier to see light at a desired wavelength — usually, one tuned to an invisible ink sold with the contact lenses. Researchers around the world, including in Australia, have been working on less cumbersome materials that can perform "wavelength shifting": absorbing invisible infrared light and re-emitting it as light we can see. The researchers behind the new study had previously developed particles roughly the size of a small virus by mixing gold atoms with a few other elements, including the metals ytterbium and erbium. The team injected these particles into the eyes of mice and found it gave them infrared vision. But they wanted to make the process less invasive before testing it on humans. In the newest study, the researchers mixed their nanoparticles with polymers used in commercial contact lenses, and moulded this mixture into contacts. They found people wearing the contact lenses could see visible light as normal. But they could also see a flashing infrared light — even when their eyes were shut. Our eyelids have evolved to block visible light, but infrared light can pass right through them. In fact, Professor Xue said participants were better at detecting the infrared flashes when their eyes were shut, because there was less interference from visible light. The researchers could tweak their nanoparticles to convert specific infrared wavelengths into specific visible wavelengths, so the participants could see different shades of infrared light in different visible colours. They tested this by showing the study participants different letters made from infrared light, which the participants could read in different colours. Professor Martin, who was not involved with the research, called the study a "marvellous technical tour de force". "One big and exciting promise of the present study is that the contact lenses or glasses could become a new basis for human-worn surveillance devices." While the research is promising, Professor Martin believes these contact lenses are a long way away from practical use. People using the lenses could see infrared light, but they weren't granted fine night vision. The researchers did build their nanoparticles into wearable spectacles, which gave people crisper infrared vision, but they still needed a bright source of infrared light for the glasses to work. "The nanoparticles in the contact lens or glasses are not sensitive enough to detect the very low intensity of infrared radiation emitted by warm-blooded animals," Professor Martin said. Professor Xue said that the team was working on improving the nanoparticles' sensitivity so that they could make higher-resolution contact lenses.
Telegraph
08-05-2025
- Health
- Telegraph
New study retraces Covid's origins to bats in southwest China or northern Laos
The virus that causes Covid-19 followed the same evolutionary path as Sars, a coronavirus that jumped from bats to wildlife to people in the early 2000s, according to an analysis of their genomes. In a paper published in Cell journal, scientists compared the genomes of 250 coronaviruses to reconstruct how the pathogens evolved over time, potentially offering insights into how Covid-19 spilled into people – an unresolved question that's been thrust back into the spotlight since Donald Trump assumed office. The researchers found that both Sars viruses were circulating and changing inside bats in southern China and neighbouring countries for hundreds of thousands of years before emerging in humans. Bats have unusual immune systems which allow them to harbour coronaviruses, allowing them to mix and mutate into something new. By unpicking this 'recombination' process, the scientists were able to estimate when and where each of the two coronaviruses had emerged in bats. They found Sars was circulating in western China just one to two years before it jumped into humans in Guangdong, central China. Sars-Cov-2 followed an 'extremely similar' route, they say. It made its final recombination between 2012 and 2014 in bats in southwest China or northern Laos, five to seven years before sparking a human pandemic Wuhan. The researchers say it is striking that, in both instances, the virus was circulating in bats hundreds of miles from where humans were first infected. In the case of Sars, there is strong evidence that wildlife sold in wet markets bridged this geographical gap and carried the virus to humans. Researchers have previously established that the virus was present in palm civets and other wild mammals for sale in markets at the time of the first Sars outbreak in 2002. They concluded that it was the wildlife trade which transported the pathogens hundreds of miles, from bat caves to people. Prof Michael Worobey, head of the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona and a co-author of the paper, said that 'we're seeing exactly the same pattern with Sars-Cov-2'. Like Sars, Sars-Cov-2 evolved in bat caves hundreds of miles away from the spot humans were first infected. While the paper does not prove it was transported by the wildlife trade to the wet market around which the first human cases emerged in Wuhan, the authors said parallels between the two pandemics were too striking to be ignored. 'At the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic, there was a concern that the distance between Wuhan and the bat virus reservoir was too extreme for a zoonotic origin,' said Prof Joel Wertheim, a professor of medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine's division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health. 'This paper shows that it isn't unusual and is, in fact, extremely similar to the emergence of Sars-Cov-1 in 2002,' he said. Analysis 'won't quash the lab leak' theory The question of how Covid-19 emerged has long been contentious, but tensions have ratcheted up since President Trump assumed his second term in office. Last month the White House created a website called 'Lab Leak: The True Origin of Covid 19', which suggests the pandemic was caused by human error in a Wuhan lab facility. Beijing then resurfaced its own conspiracy theory – believed by many in China – that the US's own high security labs were to blame. Prof Jonathan Ball, a professor of molecular virology at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine who was not involved in the paper, praised the new research for showing how the two Sars viruses had evolved. But he added that it could not settle the lab v natural origins debate. 'I sit in favour of the Huannan market [analysis], mainly because of all the other evidence. This paper adds another bit of evidence to that pile,' he said. 'But it's not going to quash the lab leak [hypothesis], and it won't persuade Donald [Trump].' Prof Stuart Neil, head of the department of Infectious Diseases at King's College London, also said the paper 'can't fill the gap between the bats and the market'. But he added that the evolution and geography of Sars and Sars-Cov-2 described in the paper clearly showed that both were able to fully emerge of their own accord in nature and that there was no reason it could not happen again. 'What [the paper] reinforces is that you need to control and monitor the most likely flash points for zoonotic emergence,' he said. Yet some remain sceptical of the idea that the wildlife trade carried the Sars-CoV-2 to Wuhan as happened with Sars in the 2002 outbreak. 'It's a very sophisticated analysis of the evolutionary origins of Sars viruses in their natural reservoir, however the analysis leaves two big gaps,' said Prof Mark Woolhouse, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh. 'The story [for Covid] stops some years short of 2020, and it also leaves a very big gap in terms of space. 'I don't agree with the inference in the paper that the only plausible way that the virus could have gone from its natural habitat to Wuhan is through the wildlife trade. 'For me, there's no convincing evidence that the animals implicated in the early spread of Sars-Cov-2 [such as racoondogs] were farmed in the region where Sars-Cov-2 is thought to evolve. So for me, the most likely route that it got from one place to the other is via people,' Prof Woolhouse said.
The Independent
07-05-2025
- Health
- The Independent
Scientists just mapped your tongue. It may be the key to helping you lose weight
Could your tongue be the key to helping you lose weight? With the aid of new research, scientists say it may be. For the first time, researchers have mapped out the three-dimensional structure of the tongue and the sweet taste receptor. These receptors can detect a large number of different chemicals that taste sweet and, unlike other receptors such as those for sour or bitter tastes, have evolved to not be very sensitive. This, in turn, helps us focus on sugary foods for energy and drives our cravings. Better understanding this sweet taste receptor could help aid the discovery of things to regulate it and potentially alter our appetite for sugar, they announced on Wednesday. 'The leading role that sugar plays in obesity cannot be overlooked," Dr. Juen Zhang, a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, said in a statement. 'The artificial sweeteners that we use today to replace sugar just don't meaningfully change our desire for sugar. Now that we know what the receptor looks like, we might be able to design something better.' Zhang was the co-first author of the findings, which were published in the journal Cell. To reach this milestone, Zhang and his co-authors worked for three years. They used a technique called cryo-electron microscopy to analyze the receptor, firing beams of electrons to help them capture images o 3D structure of the tongue and its sweet receptor. The receptor, which consists of two main halves, includes a component that resembles a Venus flytrap. Knowing the structure of that part, which is called a binding pocket, may also help to better figure out why some people are so sensitive to sweets. "Defining the binding pocket of this receptor very accurately is absolutely vital to understanding its function," study co-author Dr. Anthony Fitzpatrick, a principal investigator at Columbia's Zuckerman Institute, said. 'By knowing its exact shape, we can see why sweeteners attach to it, and how to make or find better molecules that activate the receptor or regulate its function,' he added. Although the sweet taste receptor is found in the mouth, it is also found throughout the body. So, maps can support additional research looking at metabolism. That research could be incredibly helpful in the ongoing fight against obesity. It's a big problem to tackle in the U.S., where obesity affects one in five children and two in five adults. Furthermore, eating too much sugar is associated with larger fat deposits around the heart and in the abdomen, which are risky for a person's health. "We're trying to move our understanding of science forward to be able to help people," said study co-author Andrew Chang, a research technician at the Fitzpatrick lab.
