Category Archives: Genetic Engineering

Weve all heard the conspiracy theories about COVID-19. Now a whole new set is emerging around COVID vaccines and spreading as virulently as the pandemic they are meant to control.

Though the public health community tends to resort to reassurances about some of the more reasonable concerns yes, the vaccines have been developed incredibly quickly and short-term side effects can occur this post aims to do something different.

Were going right to the heart of the matter. So no, COVID-19 vaccines arent delivery vehicles for government microchips. They arent tainted by material from aborted fetuses. And they wont turn us into GMOs though some of them do use genetic engineering, and all of them use genetics more broadly.

We think this is way cool something to celebrate, not shy away from. So, were doing the deep reveal on exactly how genetics and biotechnology have been a central component of the vaccine effort. Because we know the conspiracists dont care about evidence, anyway.

First up: mRNA. It wont reprogram your brain. But it does reprogram some of your cells, in a manner of speaking. And thats not a defect its intentional.

To get your head around this you need to understand what mRNA is for. Basically, its a single-stranded nucleic acid molecule that carries a genetic sequence from the DNA in the cells nucleus into the protein factories called ribosomes that sit outside the nucleus in the cellular cytoplasm.

Thats what the m in mRNA stands for: messenger. Messenger RNA just carries instructions for the assembly of proteins from the DNA template to the ribosomes. (Proteins do almost everything that matters in the body.) Thats it.

This is useful for vaccines because scientists can easily reconstruct specific genetic sequences that encode for proteins that are unique to the invading virus. In the COVID case, this is the familiar spike protein that enables the coronavirus to enter human cells.

What mRNA vaccines do is prompt a few of your cells near the injection site to produce the spike protein. This then primes your immune system to build the antibodies and T-cells that will fight off the real coronavirus infection when it comes.

Its not hugely different from how traditional vaccines work. But instead of injecting a weakened live or killed virus, the mRNA approach trains your immune system directly with a single protein.

Contrary to assertions made by opponents, it wont turn you or anyone else into a GMO. mRNA stays in the cytoplasm, where the ribosomes are. It does not enter the nucleus and cannot interact with your DNA or cause any changes to the genome. No Frankencure here, either.

A variant of the mRNA approach is to go one step back in the process and construct a vaccine platform out of DNA instead. This DNA template constructed by scientists to encode for the coronavirus spike protein gets into cells where it is read into mRNA and well the rest is the same.

You might ask whether this DNA can genetically engineer your cells. Once again, the answer is no. DNA is injected in little circular pieces called plasmids not to be confused with plastics and while these do enter the nucleus, the new DNA does not integrate into your cellular genome. Got it?

This one really is genetically engineered. But what does that actually mean?

The Oxford vaccine uses what is called a viral vector approach. The scientific team took an adenovirus a type of pathogen that causes a common cold and spliced in the same spike protein genetic sequence from the coronavirus.

The adenovirus simply serves as the vehicle to get the genetic sequence into your cells. Thats why its called a viral vector after all. Viruses have been designed by billions of years of evolution precisely to figure out ways to sneak into host cells.

Note that genetic engineering is an essential part of the development process. Firstly, vector viruses are stripped of any genes that might harm you and actually cause disease. Genes that cause replication are also removed, so the virus is harmless and cannot replicate.

Then the coronavirus spike protein genes are added a classic use of recombinant DNA. So yes, the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine does actually mean a genetically engineered virus is injected into your body.

And thats a good thing. In the past, for example with the polio vaccine, live viruses in the vaccine can sometimes mutate and revert to being pathogenic, causing vaccine-derived polio. You can see its far better to use a GM virus that cannot cause any such harm!

As we have reported before at the Alliance for Science, the anti-GMO and anti-vaccine movements substantially overlap. These groups tend to share an ideology that is suspicious of modern science and fetishsize natural approaches instead. Whatever natural means.

Note that these groups are not always marginalized to the fringe where they belong. In Europe, anti-GMO regulations have stymied any substantial use of crop biotechnology for nearly two decades, hindering efforts to to make agriculture more sustainable.

And back in July, the European Parliament actually had to suspend the EUs anti-GMO rules in order to allow the unimpeded development of COVID vaccines. Very embarrassing for Brussels!

Will the anti-GMO and anti-vaxxer movements use their usual scaremongering tactics to drum up fear, increase vaccine hesitancy and thereby prolong the hell of the COVID-19 pandemic? That remains to be seen. If they do succeed, then tragically many more people will die and our economies will continue to suffer. Its up to all of us the grassroots pro-science movement to stop them.

Image: Coronavirus and DNA strands. Medical 3D illustration by peterschreiber.media/Shutterstock.

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Yes, some COVID vaccines use genetic engineering. Get over ...

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7 Future Genetic-Engineering Technologies | Genetically ...

by Allison Bakerfigures by Lillian Horin

The Arctic apple is the juiciest newcomer to produce aisles. It has the special ability to resist browning after being cut (Figure 1), which protects its flavor and nutritional value. Browning also contributes to food waste by causing unappealing bruising on perfectly edible apples. Food waste, especially for fruits and vegetables, is a major problem worldwide; nearly half of the produce thats grown in the United States is thrown away, and the UK supermarket Tesco estimates that consumer behavior significantly contributes to the 40% of its apples that are wasted. Therefore, Arctic apples not only make convenient snacks, but they also might be able to mitigate a major source of food waste.

While a non-browning apple sounds great, how exactly was this achieved? Arctic apples are genetically engineered (GE) to prevent browning. This means that the genetic material that dictates how the apple tree grows and develops was altered using biotechnology tools. But before learning about the modern science used to make Arctic apples, lets explore how traditional apple varieties are grown.

Harvesting tasty apples is more complicated than simply planting a seed in the ground and waiting for a tree to grow. In particular, its difficult to predict what an apple grown from a seed will look and taste like because each seed contains a combination of genetic material from its parents. But farmers can reliably grow orchards of tasty apples by using an ancient technique called grafting. After a tree that produces a desirable apple is chosen, cuttings of that original tree are grafted, or fused, onto the already-established roots of a donor tree, called rootstock. The cuttings then grow into a full-sized tree that contains the exact same genetic material as the original tree. As a result, each tree of a specific apple variety is a cloned descendant of the original tree, and thus produce very similar apples.

New apple varieties emerge when genetic changes are allowed to occur. Traditionally, new apples are produced by cross-breeding existing apple varieties. This reshuffles the genetic makeup of seeds, which are then planted to see if they grow into trees that produce delicious new apples. On the other hand, Arctic apples are created by making a targeted change to the genetic material of an existing variety (more on this later). The advantage of using genetic engineering over traditional breeding methods is that scientists can efficiently make precise improvements to already-beloved apple varietiesin contrast, traditional cross-breeding is much more random and difficult to control.

Insight into the molecular causes of apple browning guided the genetic alteration that made Arctic apples. Apples naturally contain chemicals known as polyphenols that can react with oxygen in the air to cause browning. This reaction wont occur, however, without the help of polyphenol oxidase (PPO) enzymes, which bring polyphenols and oxygen together in just the right way. PPO enzymes and polyphenols are normally separated into different compartments in apple cells, which is why the inside of a fresh apple is white or slightly yellow-green in color. But these structures are broken when the fruit is cut or crushed, allowing PPOs to interact with polyphenols and oxygen to drive the browning reaction(Figure 2). This process occurs in all apples, but some varieties are less susceptible than others due to factors like lower amounts of PPOs or polyphenols. Common household tricks can also delay browning by a few hours by interfering with the PPO reaction, but no method prevents it completely or indefinitely. Knowing that PPOs were responsible for browning, researchers thought about blocking the production of these enzymes with genetic tools to create non-browning apples.

Genetic material is stored in our DNA and divided into functional units called genes. The genes are read by copying the DNA sequence into a related molecule called RNA. The RNA copy functions as a blueprint that instructs the cell how to build the product for that gene, which is called a protein. The production of PPO enzymes, therefore, can be blocked by simply removing their RNA blueprints. To do so, researchers used a tool from molecular biology called RNA interference (RNAi). RNAi is a natural biological process that recognizes and destroys specific RNA structures. Biologists can use RNAi to lower PPO levels by introducing RNA sequences that cause the degradation of PPO RNA. Using this technique, researchers developed an anti-PPO gene that makes anti-PPO RNA, which destroys the PPO RNA before it can be used to make PPO enzymes.

Once scientists created the anti-PPO gene, they needed to safely introduce it into the apple genome. To make a variety called the Arctic Golden, researchers began with Golden Delicious apple buds and inserted an engineered piece of genetic material called a transgene that contained the anti-PPO gene. After confirming that the plant received the transgene, the saplings were then allowed to grow into mature trees, one of which produced the apple that is now known as the Arctic Golden.

After over a decade of research, regulatory agencies in the United States and Canada like the FDA and USDA recently approved Arctic apples for human consumption. Accumulated evidence shows that Arctic apple trees and fruit are no different from their traditional counterparts in terms of agricultural and nutritional characteristics. On the molecular level, the transgene genetic material present in Arctic apples is quickly degraded by your digestive system to the point where its indistinguishable from that found in traditional apples. The only new protein in Arctic apple treesa protein called NPTII thats used to confirm that the genetic engineering was successfulwas not only undetectable in their apples, but it has also been evaluated and deemed nontoxic and non-allergenic by the FDA.

Yet some anti-GMO groups continue to protest the approval of Arctic apples, arguing that unforeseen consequences of the genetic alteration could impact safety. Its true that its impossible to predict and disprove every possible consequence of a genetic change. But a recent review by the National Academies of Science that covers decades of published research found no convincing evidence that GE crops have negatively impacted human health or the environment. While its important to rigorously test all new crops that are developed, GE crops should not be considered inherently more dangerous than their traditionally-bred relatives.

So whats next for the Arctic apple? It takes several years for new apple trees to grow and literally bear fruit, so itll take time for non-browning apples to expand to supermarkets throughout the US. Currently, Arctic Goldens are only available in bags of pre-sliced apples in select US cities, but Arctic versions of Granny Smith and Fuji apples have received USDA approval, and Arctic Galas are in development. If commercially successful, non-browning apples could help to combat rampant food waste one slice at a time.

Allison Baker is a second-year Ph.D. student in Biological and Biomedical Sciences at Harvard University.

Cover image credit:Okanagan Specialty Fruits Inc.

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Arctic Apples: A fresh new take on genetic engineering ...

The rapid advance of technology has enriched our daily lives. We can take pictures and videos with a cell phone, we can surf the internet, organs can be transplanted, genetic engineering can be utilized to develop vaccines, while windmills and solar panels are altering the way we generate electricity, 5G will revolutionize telecommunications, streaming services allow us to watch movies in our own homes and robots and artificial intelligence are changing the workplace.

There is only one group that rejects the onrush of modernity and technology and that is the organic community of farmers, processors, retailers and marketers (as well as their lobbying organizations), which believes the old ways are the better ways and wishes to turn back the clock to a supposedly idyllic time where small family farms proliferated and produced most of the food we consumed.

[Editors note: This is the first part of a two-part series. Read part two here: The hypocrisy of opponents of genetic engineering for food]

Farming has always been a very difficult business, particularly given the vagaries of the weather and crop prices. But it has only been through the application of science and new technologies that farmers have been able to steadily increase productivity and produce more food at a time when the number of people engaged in farming has plunged. This is one of the major reasons organic farming is less productive than conventional farming. It rejects the application of new innovative technologies such as biotechnology which has allowed the expansion of food production.

Many proponents of organic farming even reject hydroponicscrops grown solely in waterbecause they are not grown in soil. In May 2021, the Center for Food Safety and a group of organic farmers appealed a court ruling that the USDA did not act unreasonably when it refused to prohibit the organic certification of hydroponic agriculture. They claimed the USDA is in violation of the Organic Foods Production Act because hydroponic agriculture undermines the laws stipulation that organic farming enhance soil fertility.

There is no reason why organic farming cannot adopt modern biotechnology methods other than stubborn adherence to orthodoxy, which in the long run will undermine the entire industry. This is because organic farming will not be able to compete with the crops that will be grown via genetic engineering, which hold out the promise of creating crops that are insect, browning and drought resistant, make their own nitrogen, are more nutritious, colorful and tastier and have a longer shelf life. These crops can only be created in the laboratory and not through conventional breeding methods.

Pairwise, a biotechnology agriculture company, based in North Carolina, is working on developing via genetic engineering seedless blackberries, pit less cherries and tastier greens.

Calyxt, headquartered in Minnesota, has developed a gene-edited soybean oil that contains approximately 80 percent oleic acid and up to 20 percent less saturated fatty acids compared to commodity soybean oil, as well as zero grams of trans fat per serving.

In 2019, Cibus, another agriculture biotechnology company, headquartered in California, developed via gene-editing three new traits for canola that can increase crop yields and reduce harmful environmental impacts. According to a company press release:

The new traits precisely edit the canola genome to reduce pod shatter, the tendency of canola seed pods to open pre-harvest that can reduce yields by as much 40 percent, build resistance to Sclerotinia, a disease called white mold, that can reduce yields by as much as 50 percent, and introduce an improved weed control system, as competition with weeds for nutrients and sunlight can reduce yield of canola.

The Camelina plant has been genetically modified to produce omega-3 which are normally sourced from fish oil. This development might help to ease overfishing.

Genetic engineering will be able to produce disease resistant crops by manipulating the genetic make-up of plants. The papaya industry in Hawaii was saved from being decimated by ringspot virus by a genetically modified variety that is resistant to the virus. CRISPR/Cas 9 technology has been used to confer late blight resistance to potatoes. Genetic engineering may be the only means of saving the Cavendish banana from being decimated by Panama disease and oranges from citrus greening.

An article in the Phytologist journal entitled, Genetic modification to improve disease resistant crops, noted:

Plant pathogens are a significant challenge in agriculture despite our best efforts to combat them. One of the most effective and sustainable ways to manage plant pathogens is to use genetic modification (GM) and genome editing expanding the breeders toolkit.

Genetic engineered solutions to the scourge of crop diseases that cost farmers billions of dollars of losses would not be available to organic farmers because of the rejection of the use biotechnology in cultivating their crops.

Organic farmers will also not be able to avail themselves of using animals for dairy and meat that have received genetically engineered vaccines. About 20 percent of cows and other livestock are lost to disease every year.

A 1988 article from Critical Reviews in Microbiology that could now be considered a classic entitled, New approaches to animal vaccines utilizing genetic engineering, stated:

Control of infectious diseases in livestock is an important determinant in the success of a nations effort to efficiently meet its need for animal products. Genetic engineering offers many new options in the design of animal vaccines. Monoclonal antibodies, DNA cloning, recombination, and transfection are examples of techniques that facilitate innovative strategies in antigen identification, production, and delivery.

The organic industry will also not be able to take advantage of using animals that have been genetically engineered to be heat tolerate, grow faster like the GMO salmon, and develop more muscle mass.

In December, 2020, the Food and Drug Administration approved genetically engineered pigs for use in food and medical products. The pigs, developed by Virginia-based Revivicor, can be used in the production of drugs, to provide organs and tissues for transplants, and to produce meat thats safe to eat for people with meat allergies.

Meanwhile, a Japanese company is selling a genetically engineered red sea bream that has 20 to 60 percent more meat and whose feed utilization efficiency is 14 percent greater than conventionally grown bream.

In a world in which plant-based meat will garner a growing share of the meat market, the organic good industry will not be able to fully participate in providing basic ingredients, such as soybeans, potatoes and peas, because many of the processes involved in creating such meat use genetic engineering. Impossible Burger, for instance, uses GMO technology to create a soy-based heme which makes its burgers bleed.

An article by IDTechEx Senior Technology Analyst Michael Dent, Emerging Technologies Set to Shape Next Generation of Plant Based Meat, noted:

Genetic engineering technology has great potential for producing new proteins and allowing animal-free production of ingredients usually derived from animals. Perfect Day is using recombinant technologyto create vegan dairy products that contain the exact same proteins as their animal-derived counterparts, creating realistic tastes and textures. Clara Foods is taking a similar route, using genetically engineered yeast to produce vegan egg white proteins. Beyond this, genetic engineering technologies such as CRISPR and TALEN could help create crops optimized for plant-based meat production, such as increased protein content, fewer off-flavors, or boosted nutritional profiles.

The organic food industry remains steadfastly opposed to the use any form of genetic engineering to grow crops. In 2019, for example when U.S. Department of Agriculture undersecretary Greg Ibach suggested that gene-editing should be considered for use in organic food production, The Organic Trade Association issued a statement that said it maintains its long-held position that any gene-editing techniques not be allowed in organic production. Harriet Behar, the chair of the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) chair, said,

Weve made it very clear, and the organic community has public comment that gene-editing and CRISPR should be an excluded methodThe organic community works with natural systems, and we dont feel the need for this type of genetic engineering.

Despite the long-held and vigorous opposition to genetic engineering, the organic food industry may ultimately have to reassess its position or else it will be digging itself into a grave of obsolesce. Prices for organic food are already much higher than for conventionally grown food. As a result, it has only been able to capture a small percentage of the food market. According to the Organic Trade Association, nearly 6% of all food sold was certified organic in 2020. One of the reasons for the higher costs is the low productivity of organic farming.

A plethora of crops developed by means of genetic engineering will come to the market in the near future that are nutritional, taste and color enhanced, drought tolerant and browning and disease resistant, all of which organic produce will not be able to compete with. The organic food industry needs to set aside its orthodoxy and its devotion to dogma against genetic engineering or else it will never break out of the small niche share it has in the food market and might even slip into irrelevance.

Steven E. Cerier is an international economist and a frequent contributor to the Genetic Literacy Project.

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The organic food industry's rejection of modernity - Genetic Literacy Project

DUBLIN, November 19, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "Growth Opportunities in Synthetic Biology, AI Augmented Diagnostics, Microbiome Enablers, Biomarker Discovery, and Lab Automation" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

This edition of the Life Science, Health & Wellness Technology Opportunity Engine (TOE) focuses on microbiome-based technologies, such as high throughput isolation and culturing of microbes, microbial biomarker-based diagnostics, microbial single cell genomic analysis, and so on.

Recent advances in synthetic biology platforms along with developments in lab automation and microfluidics technologies, which are bolstering the field have also been covered. Innovations around artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) augmented diagnostics have been highlighted, and this includes both image-based diagnostics and molecular diagnostics. Many of the innovations covered in this issue support new biomarker discovery and novel therapeutics development.

The Life Science, Health & Wellness TOE will feature disruptive technology advances in the global life sciences industry. The technologies and innovations profiled will encompass developments across genetic engineering, drug discovery and development, biomarkers, tissue engineering, synthetic biology, microbiome, disease management, as well as health and wellness among several other platforms.

The Health & Wellness cluster tracks developments in a myriad of areas including genetic engineering, regenerative medicine, drug discovery and development, nanomedicine, nutrition, cosmetic procedures, pain and disease management and therapies, drug delivery, personalized medicine, and smart healthcare.

Key Topics Covered:

Innovations in Life Sciences, Health & Wellness

High-Throughput Microbial, Cultivation, Isolation and Screening Platform

Automation in Microbial Culture

Galt Inc. - Investor Dashboard

Noninvasive Colorectal Cancer Screening Testing

Detection of Colon Polyps Thorough Microbial Biomarkers

Metabiomics Corp. - Investor Dashboard

Microbiome Single-Cell Genomic Analysis

Therapeutics and Diagnostic Development Tool

Bitbiome Inc. - Investor Dashboard

Picodroplet Microfluidic Technology for Single-Cell Analysis

Acceleration of Antibody Discovery and Cell-Line Development Processes Through Picodroplet Technology

Sphere Fluidics - Investor Dashboard

Clostridium-Assisted Drug Development Platform Supports Oral Drug Delivery

The Engineered Strain of Clostridium Serves as a Live Biotherapeutic Product

Chain Biotechnology - Investor Dashboard

Xenonucleic Acid and Superbdna Technologies for Diagnostics

XNA and Superbdna Offer High Sensitivity and Specificity in Detection of Cancer and COVID-19

Diacarta - Investor Dashboard

Robotic Cloud Lab for Drug Discovery and Development

Robotic Cloud Labs Revolutionize the Scientists' Workday

Strateos - Investor Dashboard

Developing Personalized Medicine to Slow Cell Senescence

Cancer Biomarker Detection for Faster Diagnosis

Developing Targeted Protein Degradation Technology

Automated Library Preparation for Next-Generation Sequencing

Machine Learning and AI-Based Cardiovascular Imaging Solutions

AI and Big Data-Enabled Genomic Diagnostics Targeting Rare Diseases

Exosomes Characterization to Study Disease-Specific Biomarkers

Machine Learning-Enabled Mutation Calling to Detect Cancer

Companies Mentioned

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Bitbiome Inc.

Chain Biotechnology

Diacarta

Galt Inc.

Metabiomics Corp.

Sphere Fluidics

Strateos

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/btqnmd

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Growth Opportunities in Synthetic Biology, AI Augmented Diagnostics, Microbiome Enablers, Biomarker Discovery and Lab Automation 2021 -...

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation announced that Princeton's Sarah Kocher is one of 20 early-career researchers to be awarded a 2021 Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering. Each fellow will each receive $875,000 over five years to pursue their research.

Kocher, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, investigates the genetic and neurobiological mechanisms behind social living. Herresearch takes advantage of naturally occurring variation in sweat bees, where some species live alone while others build social units like their better-known cousins the honeybees.

Photo by

Denise Applewhite, Office of Communications

"Through this comparative lens, we can examine the genetic factors that shape variation in social behavior within and among species and link these genetic changes with neurobiological and behavioral traits," Kocher said. "My work traverses different levels of biological complexity, from genes to brains to behavior, to gain a comprehensive understanding of the factors that shape the evolution of the social brain.'"

The Packard Fellowships in Science and Engineering are among the nations largest nongovernmental fellowships, designed to allow maximum flexibility in how the funding is used. Since 1988, this program has supported the blue-sky thinking of scientists and engineers whose research over time has led to new discoveries that improve peoples lives and enhance our understanding of the universe.

What a moment for celebration, saidNancy Lindborg, the president and CEO of the Packard Foundation.At a time when we are confronting so many difficult, intertwined challenges, including climate change, a global pandemic and racial injustice, I am buoyed by the determination and energy of these 20 scientists and engineers. Through their research, creativity and mentorship to their students and in their labs, these young leaders have the potential to help equip us all to better understand and address the challenges we face.

The fellowships program was inspired by David Packards commitment to strengthen university-based science and engineering programs in the United States. He recognized that the success of the Hewlett-Packard Company, which he cofounded, was derived in large measure from research and development in university laboratories. Since 1988, the Packard Foundation has awarded $464 million to 657 scientists and engineers from 54 national universities.

The fellowship will be paid over five years, beginning in November 2021. Kocher will join other fellows at an annual conference held online this year and last yearto discuss their research and possibly spark interdisciplinary collaborations. Next years meeting is scheduled for Sept. 7-10 in Monterey, California.

Other Princetonians who have been named Packard Fellows include quantum chemist Leslie Schoop in 2020, mathematicianAleksander Logunov in 2019, biologist Mary "Cassie" Stoddard in 2018, mathematician John Pardon in 2017, physicist Waseem Bakr in 2016, biologist Sabine Petry in 2014, computer scientist Mark Braverman in 2013, astrophysicist Gspr Bakos in 2012, physicist William Jones in 2010, chemical engineer Celeste Nelson and physicist Jason Petta in 2008 and mathematicianManjul Bhargava in 2004.

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Biologist Sarah Kocher receives Packard Foundation fellowship for early-career scientists for her 'social brain' research with bees - Princeton...

Why do humans spend a third of their lives sleeping? Why do animals sleep, even when there may be a continuous threat of predators? The question of how sleep benefits the brain and individual cells has remained a mystery, but studies in zebrafish, and in mice, by Bar-Ilan University researchers, have now provided a detailed description of the chain of events explaining sleep at the single-cell level. Their results indicated that a buildup of DNA damage in neurons during wakefulness increases sleep pressure. A protein called Parp1 senses this mounting DNA damage, signals when its time to sleep. During sleep efficient DNA repair occurs, which reduces the cellular homeostatic pressure that drives the need for sleep.

The team, led by Lior Appelbaum, PhD, a professor at Bar-Ilans Goodman Faculty of Life Sciences and Gonda (Goldschmied) Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, suggests that the mechanism uncovered may explain the link between sleep disturbances, aging and neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinsons disease and Alzheimers disease. Appelbaum believes that future research will help to apply this sleep function to other animals, ranging from lower invertebrates to eventually, humans.

The authors reported on their findings in Molecular Cell, in a paper titled, Parp1 promotes sleep, which enhances DNA repair in neurons, in which they concluded that their results demonstrate that DNA damage is a homeostatic driver for sleep, and Parp1 pathways sense this cellular pressure and facilitate sleep and repair activity.

Sleep, accompanied by reduced responsiveness to external stimuli, is a vulnerable behavioral state, the authors wrote. Yet throughout evolution sleep has remained universal and essential to all organisms with a nervous system, including invertebrates such as flies, worms, and even jellyfish.What is different between species is the amount of sleep required, the authors continued. Adult humans sleep approximately 78 h per day, whereas owl monkeys sleep for 17 h, and free-roaming wild elephants may sleep only 2 h. These diverse sleep requirements raise fundamental questions: what dictatesa species-specific sufficient amount of sleep, and what is the restorative neural process?

When we are awake, homeostatic sleep pressure (tiredness) builds up in the body. This pressure increases the longer we stay awake, and decreases during sleep, reaching a low after a full and good nights sleep. But what causes homeostatic pressure to increase to a point that we feel we must go to sleep, and what happens at night to reduce that pressure to such an extent that we are ready to start a new day, isnt clear. the cellular homeostatic mechanisms that drive sleep needs, as well as the identity of the homeostatic factors, are unclear, the researchers commented.

Studies have shown that during waking hours, DNA damage accumulates in neurons. Enriched wakefulness and neuronal activity induce DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) in mice and flies, the team continued. This damage can be caused byvarious elements, includingUV light, neuronal activity, radiation, oxidative stress, and enzymatic errors.During sleep and waking hours, repair systems within each cell correct these DNA breaks. However, DNA damage in neurons continues to accumulate during wakefulness, and excessive DNA damage in the brain can reach dangerous levels that must be reduced.

A series of experiments by Appelbaum, together with postdoc researcher David Zada, PhD, and colleagues, sought to determine whether the buildup of DNA damage could be the driver for homeostatic pressure and the subsequent sleep state. The scientists turned first to zebrafish as a live vertebrate model that they could use to try to identify cellular sleep drivers and understand the role for sleep in restoring nuclear homeostasis, at the level of single neurons.

With their absolute transparency, nocturnal sleep, and a simple brain that is similar to humans, zebrafish are a perfect organism in which to study this phenomenon. The zebrafish is a well-established sleep model, and the structure and function of its brain, as well as the DNA damage and repair systems, are conserved with mammals, the scientists stated.

Using UV radiation, pharmacologic intervention and optogenetics, the researchers induced DNA damage in zebrafish to examine how it affects their sleep. Their results showed that as DNA damage was increased, the need for sleep also increased. The experiment suggested that at some point the accumulation of DNA damage reached a maximum threshold, and increased sleep (homeostatic) pressure to such an extent that the urge to sleep was triggered, and the fish went to sleep. The ensuing sleep facilitated DNA repair, which resulted in reduced DNA damage. Our causative experiments demonstrated that sleep increases the clustering of Rad52 and Ku80 repair proteins in neurons, which enables normalization of the levels of DNA damage.

Having determined that accumulated DNA damage is the force that drives the sleep process, the researchers then wanted to see whether they could determine the minimum time that zebrafish need to sleep in order to reduce sleep pressure and DNA damage. Similarly to humans, zebrafish are sensitive to light interruption, and so the dark period was gradually decreased during the night.

These results suggested that six hours of sleep per night is sufficient to reduce DNA damage in the zebrafish. And, astoundingly, after less than six hours of sleep, DNA damage was not adequately reduced, and the zebrafish continued to sleep even during daylight. There was a strong positive correlation (R = 0.76) between levels of neuronal DNA damage and total sleep time, suggesting that the amount of DNA damage can predict the total sleep time required for repair, the team further noted.

During waking hours (top) the buildup of DNA damage in neurons increases tiredness. Acting as an antenna the PARP1 protein (yellow helmets) senses and marks DNA breaks in cells, drives sleep, and recruits repair systems (green and blue helmets, bottom). During sleep, the DNA repair systems repair the breaks enabling a fresh new start to the day. In red is the soma (cell body), blue the nucleolus, and green (DNA damage sites). [David Zada, PhD]Another question is what is the mechanism in the brain that tells us we need to sleep in order to facilitate efficient DNA repair? Sleep promotes the activity of the DNA damage repair (DDR) signaling pathway, which includes DNA damage sensors, signal transducers, and effector proteins required for repair, the team noted. we reasoned that activation of a DDR protein might signal the organism to sleep in order to increase chromosome dynamics and enable the efficient assembly of repair proteins.

The researchers focused on a protein called PARP1, which is part of the DNA damage repair system, and responds to single- and double-stranded DNA breaks. PARP1 marks DNA damage sites in cells, and recruits all relevant systems to clear out DNA damage. PARP-1 is a DNA damage detector, which is recruited to DNA repair response, they noted.

In accordance with DNA damage, the team found that clustering of PARP1 in DNA break sites increased during wakefulness and decreased during sleep. Through genetic and pharmacological manipulation, the overexpression and knockdown (KD) of PARP1 revealed that increasing PARP1 promoted sleep, and also increased sleep-dependent repair. Conversely, inhibition of PARP1 blocked the signal for DNA damage repair. As a result, the fish werent fully aware that they were tired, didnt go to sleep, and no DNA damage repair occurred. Inhibition of Parp1 activity abolished DNA damage-induced sleep, chromosome dynamics, and repair, even under strong sleep pressure, the investigators stated.

To strengthen the findings in zebrafish, the investigators teamed up with Yuval Nir, PhD, at Tel Aviv University, to further test the role of PARP1 in regulating sleep, mice, using EEG. These results showed that as theyd seen with zebrafish, the inhibition of PARP1 activity in mice reduced the duration and quality of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. These results extend those of zebrafish larvae along three separate dimensions, by (1) establishing them in mammals and (2) in adult animals, and (3) by showing that Parp1 affects sleep depth, beyond its effects on sleep duration, the team stated.

In a previous study, Appelbaum and team used 3D time-lapse imaging to determine that sleep increases chromosome dynamics. Adding the current piece to the puzzle, PARP1 increases sleep and chromosome dynamics, which facilitates efficient repair of DNA damage accumulated during waking hours. The DNA maintenance process may not be efficient enough during waking hours in neurons, and therefore requires an offline sleep period with reduced input to the brain in order to occur. Appelbaum noted, PARP1 pathways are capable of signaling the brain that it needs to sleep in order for DNA repair to occur.

The authors concluded, Here, imaging of cellular and nuclear markers, coupled with behavioral monitoring of zebrafish, showed that neuronal DNA damage can be a driver for sleep that promotes DNA repair activity our findings that sleep regulates the neuronal balance between DNA damage and repair and consequently the health of the cell provide the basis for future work focusing on the causative link between sleep, aging, and neurodegenerative diseases.

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Study Unpicks What Drives the Need for Sleep at the Cellular Level - Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News

Where did the virus that changed the world come from?

The prevailing theory for a long time was that wild animals sold as food at a wet market in Wuhan, China, had started the outbreak.

One of the first scientists to seriously question the official narrative was Botao Xiao, who in February 2020 published a pre-print paper arguing that "the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan."

The author pointed out that there was no evidence that the vendors at the wet market in Wuhan sold bat meat. On the other hand, there were two research labs studying bat-borne coronaviruses located in Wuhan, where a virus could have accidentally infected workers, causing them to spread the disease to the general public. Xiao withdrew the paper two weeks later, after Chinese authorities declared that the lab-leak theory had no merit.

The Chinese government proceeded to clamp down on research into the virus's origins and ordered the closure of a lab that had shared the virus's genetic sequence with other scientists in January 2020. The government also forced the lab to destroy its viral samples.

To this day, the Chinese government won't allow outside researchers to test blood drawn from employees of the Wuhan Institute of Virology who, according to a U.S. intelligence report, were hospitalized for a flu-like illness in November 2019weeks before the first documented human-to-human transmission. Chinese authorities cited privacy concerns to the World Health Organization (WHO) team that requested the samples.

There's no direct proof that the virus originated from a lab. But there's also no such proof that humans first became infected by eating bats or through exposure to pangolins, theories that were treated as unimpeachable fact early in the pandemic.

In February 2020, a group of scientists signed a statement published in The Lancet denouncing speculation about potential nonnatural origins of the virus as "conspiracy theories."

Only following the publication of leaked emails did it become clear that the scientist who brought his colleagues together to co-sign the Lancet statement was Peter Daszak, head of EcoHealth Alliance, the nonprofit that secured U.S. government funding for controversial research on bat-borne coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Daszak assured his co-signers that the EcoHealth logo wouldn't appear on the letter and wrote that he hoped "to avoid the appearance of a political statement."

Daszak also co-authored a June 2020 op-ed in The Guardian headlined"Ignore the Conspiracy Theories: Scientists Know COVID-19 Wasn't Created in a Lab" without disclosing a potential conflict of interest.

Media coverage following the publication of the Lancet letter overwhelmingly framed discussion of the lab-leak hypothesis as a "conspiracy theory," often tying it to former President Donald Trump after he and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made public statements promoting the lab-leak theory as the explanation.

"That episode does not reflect well on scientists," says science writer Matt Ridley, co-author of the new book Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19.

Ridley says that White House COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci's emails, which were made public through a Freedom of Information Act request, show that behind the scenes scientists were taking the lab-leak theory seriously all along.

"A number of leading virologists were talking to each other and were saying to each other, 'we think this might look a bit like a virus that's been engineered in the laboratory,'" says Ridley, referencing a January 31, 2020, email in which researcher Kristian G. Andersen says that "one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered." Fauci replies a day later, "Thanks, Kristian. Talk soon on the call."

"And at the end of that phone call, they all did a very rapid volte-face, and started writing articles almost immediately," says Ridley, referring to an influential article Andersen and his colleagues published in Natureon March 17, 2020, stating that "our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus." On March 6, Andersen emailed Fauci to tell him the paper had been accepted for publication, to which Fauci replied, "Nice job on the paper."

But Ridley says that it's Daszak's efforts to obscure his connections to the Wuhan Institute of Virology while publishing attacks on the lab-leak hypothesis that are most alarming.

"It does raise very serious concerns that Dr. Daszak needs to answer," says Ridley. "I've tried to correspond with him numerous times. I've never yet had a responseI never said anything rude about him, but he blocked me on Twitter. So I can't get answers out of him."

Daszak did not reply to Reason's interview request.

Ridley's writing partner on the new book is the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard's Alina Chan, one of the earliest and most outspoken public skeptics of the natural-origin hypothesis. She says that when she and her colleagues published a pre-print paper questioning the consensus, she hadn't been aware of the Lancet letter organized by Daszak. She says she believes it could've had a major chilling effect on the scientific discussion in those early days.

"They were saying that anyone saying that this virus didn't come from nature is a conspiracy theorist," says Chan. "Other people, when they read this letter, they might have thought, 'I'm not going to put my neck out to say that this may have come from a lab.'"

Chan, a molecular biologist, argued in the paper that because SARS-CoV-2 was so well adapted to humans, there was reason to be skeptical that it had recently come from an animal. If it had recently come from bats or pangolins, she would've expected the virus to have been rapidly mutating in the early days of the pandemic to become better adapted to human tissue.

Chan partially credits this insight to her experience in the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak of 2003, which she lived through in Singapore.

"In that situation and that outbreak, the virus had rapidly picked up dozens of mutations in the early three months," says Chan. "By comparison, for SARS-CoV-2, that had very few of these mutations. So it's suggested to me that this virus had really picked up many useful mutations for infecting and transmitting amongst humans prior to its detection in December 2019."

Another major difference is that during the 2003 outbreak, authorities discovered previous SARS infections among animals being sold at markets in south China within a couple of months. That's not the case with SARS-CoV-2, despite initial suspicions that a wet market was to blame.

"Even though the first class of cases identified was at the seafood market, they never found any signs of animals that were infected by this virus," says Chan. "So up until today, there's no sign of an animal [in Wuhan] that was ever infected by SARS-CoV-2 and then gave it to humans."

When the WHO sent a team to investigate the virus's origins in January 2021, Daszak was the only American member included. The team dismissed the lab-leak hypothesis before WHO leadership later backtracked.

Daszak granted an interview to 60 Minutes following that trip to Wuhan and suggested that farm animals were the likely culprit.

"Now what we've gotta do is go to those farms and investigate. Talk to the farmers. Talk to their relatives. Test them. See if there were spikes in virus there first," Daszak told 60 Minutes.But no farm animals have been identified as the hosts yet.

There's a detail that emerged after the 60 Minutes report that Ridley would like Daszak to explain: Recently-leaked documents show that EcoHealth Alliance applied for a research grant related to inserting what's called a furin cleavage site into SARS-like coronaviruses. This very furin cleavage site may be what makes SARS-CoV-2 so infectious, and it's what distinguishes it from any SARS-like coronaviruses as yet found in the wild. The grant request was rejected. But did the Wuhan laboratory engage in this research even without funding from that grant? Daszak may be able to help answer that question.

"The fact that that is probably the feature that makes the virus sufficiently infectious to start a pandemic means that it is a highly important thing," says Ridley. "So you would think that a scientist who knew that he had put in a grant application in 2018 to put furin cleavage sites into SARS-like viruseswould volunteer that information early in the pandemic."

Ridley and Chan also find it suspicious that when China's premier bat coronavirus expertand Daszak's collaborator in Wuhanpublished her complete analysis of the SARS-CoV-2 genome, she neglected to mention this highly unusual furin cleavage site.

After the 60 Minutes interview, more leaked documents showed that EcoHealth Alliance worked with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to make several bat-borne SARS-like coronavirusesand even Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS)more infectious to human cells.

Chan and Ridley say that when they started writing the book they didn't have a strong view about which theory was correct, but these recent revelations have shifted their thinking in favor of the lab-leak theory.

"In light of grant proposals and reports released in the past 2 months," Chan wrote on Twitter, "we know novel SARS-like viruses were being synthesized and engineered at unprecedented scale."

"That changed my mind completely, knowing that there actually was a plan, a pipeline, a protocol for doing this work in 2018. So now for me, genetic engineering is very much on the table," says Chan. "If it came from a lab, [the likelihood is] close to a 5050 chance that [genetic engineering] happened."

This question was at the center of a heated exchange between Fauci and Sen. Rand Paul (RKy.) over possible National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding of so-called gain of function research, which involves purposely making a virus more infectious to humans.

But much of the blame for the devastating scope of the pandemic, says Ridley, rests on Chinese authorities, who punished whistleblowers like ophthalmologist Li Wenliang, who tried to get the word out about the emergence of a new SARS-like virus to his colleagues. The government successfully kept human-to-human transmission of the disease under wraps for weeks and maybe longer.

"Communist regimes tend to be secretive," says Ridley. "There tends to be an assumption that you don't talk about things unless you're allowed to, rather than the other way around. But [Chinese President] Xi Jinping, being a much more dictatorial and authoritarian ruler than his immediate predecessors, by 2019 it was more and more the case that scientists in laboratories and doctors in hospitals were under orders not to communicate with theoutside world about things that the regime might not want them toDid that play a part in the epidemic escaping and getting to the rest of the world and turning into a pandemic? You bet it did."

The Wuhan Institute of Virology houses samples of RaTG13, a bat virus that is one of the closest known genetic matches to SARS-CoV-2. But to this day, information about other coronaviruses in the Wuhan lab hasn't been released, so we don't know if the lab was working with a virus that's even more closely related to SARS-CoV-2.

The lab's public database of viral samples could hold some answers, but it was taken offline in February and had been modified in December, which we know because of work by the Dedicated Research and Scientific Team Investigating COVID-19 (DRASTIC), a decentralized group of volunteers who compile and analyze open-source material and leaked documents to investigate the origins of COVID-19.

"Once I realized [the lab-leak hypothesis] was being discredited without any evidence, I just couldn't stay silent," says Yuri Deigin, a biotech entrepreneur and one of the founding members of DRASTIC.

A key revelation uncovered by the group was that the Wuhan Institute of Virology database was first taken down in September 2019, three months before the pandemic became publicly known. A description of the database was modified on December 30, 2019, the day Shi Zhenglitold Chinese state television that her lab first obtained samples of the virus in Wuhan.

Wuhan scientists accessed the database a few times before it was permanently removed in February 2020 for alleged "security concerns."

"For them to take it down is very suspicious. And of course, Shi's explanation that she took it down to prevent hackers from attacking is complete bullshit because it was a public database to begin with," says Deigin.

A member of the DRASTIC team also discovered that the Wuhan team had collected key samplesincluding one of the virus's closest known genetic matchesfrom a mine where some workers had fallen sick and died after clearing out bat droppings. Chinese authorities have denied outsiders any access to examine the mine.

Though there's mounting circumstantial evidence to support the lab-leak theory, government officials maintain that the natural-origin hypothesis is more likely. A U.S. intelligence report declassified on October 29, 2020, said four intel agencies had low confidence that the virus most likely emerged in nature; one agency had moderate confidence that it leaked from a lab; and analysts at three agencies remained "unable to coalesce around either explanation without additional information." The report did conclude that SARS-CoV-2 was unlikely to be a biological weapon.

NIH Director Francis Collins, who didn't reply to Reason's interview request, told computer scientist and podcast host Lex Fridman in early November that he's open to the lab-leak hypothesis but still believes strongly that the virus is of natural origin.

Between July 2020 and January 2021, an international team of scientists captured bats in Laos carrying a newly discovered coronavirus that's the closest known genetic match to SARS-CoV-2even closer than the virus held in the Wuhan lab, which some say supports the natural-origin theory. But Ridley, Chan, and Deigin point out that it lacks the crucial furin cleavage site, which they suspect scientists inserted in a lab.

Supporters of the natural-origin theory point out that no "smoking gun" virus has yet been found in the version of the Wuhan database uncovered by DRASTIC. But Chan points out that this version of the database is years out of date because the Wuhan researchers generally don't enter new viruses until they've had a chance to sequence and publish studies about them.

"So we have barely any concept of what viruses and sequences they might have found after 2016 in the years leading up to COVID-19," says Chan. "So without access to the informationitbecomes very difficult for us to guess whether or not they finally found the precursor of SARS-CoV-2 in the labs and were working with it."

Ridley says that he doesn't want a fear of biotechnology, which he credits for alleviating human suffering, to hamper scientific progress because of what may have happened in Wuhan. But he thinks scientists should convene an international forum to set stricter ethical guidelines prohibiting dangerous types of research, such as harvesting bat viruses from faraway caves and bringing them to large urban centers to run experiments that make them more infectious to human cells. One China-produced documentary released in December 2019 showcases researchers doing this work, some of them without proper protective gear.

"Going out and harvesting viruses in wild places with pandemic potential and bringing them back to cities to work on them, probably isn't very sensible," says Ridley. "If we could get the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Japan, other major countries to sign a treaty saying, 'When there's an outbreak in our country, we promise to open up as far as possible and tell you everything we know,' then the very fact that some countries won't sign that treaty will itself put pressure on them."

He points to the emergence of the International Atomic Energy Agency as a model for nations to follow in terms of preventing future lab leaks of potentially pandemic-causing pathogens.

And Ridley says that despite the months of obfuscation by Chinese authorities, virologists, and even some U.S. media outlets, he's optimistic that the truth will emerge in time.

"It may take a long time," says Ridley. "The fall of the Soviet Union did lead to significant revelations about biological accidents thereI think therefore it may take a change of regime in Beijing before we find out more. But I think there are people who know what happened, whatever happened, even if it's just what happened in a marketThere are plenty of people who say it's too late; we've lost the chance to find out. I'm not one of them, at least not yet."

Produced by Zach Weissmueller; graphic intro and timeline graphics by Tomasz Kaye; additional graphics by Calvin Tran

Images: He Huan / Xinhua News Agency/Newscom; Yin Gang / Xinhua News Agency/Newscom; Imagine China/Newscom; Kyodo/Newscom; Hitoshi Katanoda/Polaris/Newscom; Dickson Lee/SCMP/Newscom; DESIGN CELLS/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Newscom; Wang Bingyu/EyePress / EyePress/Newscom; EyePress / EyePress/Newscom; Edwin Remsberg / VWPics/Newscom; SHEPHERD ZHOU/FEATURECHINA/Newscom; Xie Huanchi / Xinhua News Agency/Newscom; Li Xueren / Xinhua News Agency/Newscom; Wang Ye / Xinhua News Agency/Newscom; Imagine China/Newscom; CHINE NOUVELLE/SIPA/Newscom; CHINE NOUVELLE/SIPA/Newscom; CHINE NOUVELLE/SIPA/Newscom; SHI ZHI/FEATURECHINA/Newscom; Xiao Yijiu / Xinhua News Agency/Newscom; Christophe Gateau/dpa/picture-alliance/Newscom; Yin Gang / Xinhua News Agency/Newscom; Andre Malerba/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; u Peng / Xinhua News Agency/Newscom

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Was It a Lab Leak? The Mysterious Origin of COVID-19 - Reason

CAMBRIDGE (CBS) When we all went in to lockdown back in March of 2020, an MIT scientist began studying exactly how the coronavirus pandemic began, and decided that a lab accident in Wuhan, China had to be considered one plausible explanation.

Over the last 18 months, Alina Chan has grown a huge following on Twitter where she tweeted her theories and research and has been attacked by one camp and called a hero by another. Now, shes written a new book on what she says has been an exhausting journey.

This all began because I wanted to ask the question: could this have come from nature or from a lab? Somehow just raising the lab hypothesis offended a whole bunch of people, powerful people, but behind the scenes, in private I have actually received a great deal of support from other scientists, MIT Broad Institute Researcher Alina Chan said.

In fact, after being dismissed as a conspiracy theory at the start of the pandemic, those questions about the possibility of a lab leak have even started to seep in to popular culture. Jon Stewart joked on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert: How did this happen? I dont know maybe a pangolin kissed a turtle, he said.

But Alina Chan warns this is no laughing matter. A postdoctoral researcher in gene therapy at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard (but not a virologist), she co-authored the new book Viral, and argues that searching for the origin of COVID-19 is vital to preventing future pandemics.

If we dont say anything, this will happen again and again, Chan said.

The book makes the case for both possibilities: natural transfer of the virus from bats to mammals and then to humans, or from some sort of lab accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that spread to the community. She adds this is not about assigning blame.

We make the strongest argument possible for each origin, she explained. And we let the reader decide, so we dont know the answer.

Some have accused Chan of pushing the lab origin theory when there is no evidence to support that claim.There is no evidence whatsoever for a natural origin or a lab origin so all of the existing evidence is circumstantial. Even for natural origin, its completely circumstantial, Chan explained.

So no, there is no hard evidence yet, but as another leading infectious disease expert, Dr. David Relman of Stanford University, told CBS News everything is on the table: The lab leak hypotheses are absolutely legitimate, Dr. Relman said. They are plausible.

Despite personal and professional attacks online questioning her qualifications, Chan insists she wont be deterred: I actually do have a very strong background in handling viruses and engineering them. I have many years of experience in bioengineering, genetic engineering.

And shes not sorry to have started asking questions. I dont regret pushing so hard because the scientific community really needs to step up and rebuild public trust.

Chan said the book catches people up on whats happened so far there has been a lot of confusion, but she points out that no safety changes have been made to the wildlife trade or lab safety. So after millions have died and had their lives turned upside down, we are in the exact same place we were two years ago before anyone ever realized what coronavirus was.

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MIT Scientist Discusses The Importance Of Finding The Source Of The COVID Pandemic - CBS Boston

SRINAGAR: Bringing laurels to Kashmir, a young Botanist, Dr Parvaiz Ahmad has been included in the top one percent Highly cited Researcher-2021 in the field of Plant Sciences.

The list has been compiled on the basis of multiple citation indicators and their composite across scientific disciplines.

Clarivate for Academia and Government in association with a web of Science and Publon unfold the Highly cited Researcher every year throughout the globe. Approximately 8.8 million researchers are working this time in different fields like engineering, science, medicine, Economics and Business, Computer sciences etc. and among these less than 1% have published many papers over a decade and that rank in the top 1% of citations for a particular field.

Hailing from Payir area of south Kashmirs Pulwama district, Dr Parvaiz Ahmad was also included in the top 2% scientists of 2021 by Standford University, California, United States of America.

It is worth mentioning that in 2020, he was also listed in the top 2% list of scientists provided by Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States of America.

Dr Parvaiz completed his M.Sc in Botany from Hamdard University New Delhi and later completed his PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi (IITD).

He also worked as postdoc fellow in International Council For Genetic Engineering And Biotechnology (ICGEB)- New Delhi.

Presently, he is the Senior Assistant Professor at Government Degree College, Pulwama.

Dr Parvaiz has published around 25 books with eminent international publishers like Elsevier, Springer, John Wiley etc.

He has also published 272 research papers in the research field according to the web of science and Publon.

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Kashmir Botanist Among Top 1% Highly Cited Researchers-2021 - Kashmir Life