Phys.org July 5, 2022 An international team of researchers (USA – Caltech, NIAID, University of Washington, Stanford, industry, the Rockefeller University, UK) chose eight different SARS-like betacoronaviruses—including SARS-CoV-2 along with seven related animal viruses that could have potential to start a pandemic in humans—and attached fragments from those eight viruses onto the nanoparticle scaffold. The idea was that such a vaccine could induce the body to produce antibodies that broadly recognize SARS-like betacoronaviruses to fight off variants in addition to those presented on the nanoparticle by targeting common characteristics of viral RBDs. In mice, antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 RBD were […]
Tag Archives: Pandemic
Deconstructing the Infectious Biological Weaponry of the COVID-19 Virus
SciTech Daily August 8, 2021 The replication transcription complex (RTC) from the virus SARS-CoV-2 is responsible for recognizing and processing RNA for two principal purposes, propagation into new virus and for ribosomal transcription of viral proteins. The RTC will discontinuously transcribe specific sections of viral RNA to amplify certain proteins over others. A team of researchers in the US (University of Chicago, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, University of Auburn) has conducted a systematic structural investigation of three components that make up the RTC: Nsp7, Nsp8, and Nsp12 and solved high-resolution crystal structures of the Nsp7/8 […]
Predicting the evolution of a pandemic
Phys.org June 15, 2021 An international team of researchers (Kuwait, USA – NIST, Saudi Arabia) has developed a susceptible-exposed-infected-recovered model (SEIR) with a vaccination compartment proposed to simulate theCOVID-19 spread in Saudi Arabia. The model considers seven stages of infection: susceptible (S), exposed (E), infectious (I), quarantined (Q), recovered (R), deaths (D), and vaccinated (V). As numerical models can be subject to various sources of uncertainties, they used the ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) to constrain the model outputs and its parameters with available data. They conducted joint state-parameters estimation experiments assimilating daily data into the proposed model using the EnKF […]
COVID-19 testing method gives results within one second
Phys.org May 18, 2021 An international team of researchers (USA – University of Florida, Taiwan) has developed a sensor system which amplifies the binding signal for a target biomarker using a disposable and biofunctionalized strips, which can be connected externally to a reusable printed circuit board for signal amplification with an embedded MOSFET. The sensor was externally connected to the gate electrode of the MOSFET, and synchronous pulses were applied to both the sensing strip and the drain contact of the MOSFET. The resulting changes in the dynamics of drain waveforms were converted into analog voltages and digital readouts, which […]
A Global Database of COVID-19 Vaccinations
Global Biodefense May 18, 2021 A team of researchers in the UK has developed the Our World in Data COVID-19 vaccination dataset, a global public dataset that tracks the scale and rate of the vaccine rollout across the world. The dataset includes data on the total number of vaccinations administered, first and second doses administered, daily vaccination rates and population-adjusted coverage for all countries for which data are available (169 countries as of 7 April 2021). It will be maintained as the global vaccination campaign continues to progress. Vaccination data are updated daily and are made available via two channels. […]
COVID-19 needs a Manhattan Project
Science Magazine March 23, 2020 According to the head of GAVI http://www.gavi.org/ there is a strong track record for publicly funded, large-scale scientific endeavors that bring together global expertise and resources toward a common goal. The Manhattan Project brought about nuclear weapons quickly (although with terrible implications for humanity) through an approach that led to countless changes in how scientists from many countries work together. The Human Genome Project and CERN engaged scientists from around the world to drive basic research from their home labs through local and virtual teamwork. Taking this big, coordinated approach to developing a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine […]
Over 24,000 coronavirus research papers are now available in one place
MIT Technology Review March 16, 2020 Today researchers collaborating across several organizations released the Covid-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19), which includes over 24,000 research papers from peer-reviewed journals as well as sources like bioRxiv and medRxiv. The research covers SARS-CoV-2, Covid-19 and the coronavirus group. The database was compiled under the request of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) through a collaboration between three organizations. The National Library of Medicine provided access to existing scientific publications; Microsoft used its literature curation algorithms to find relevant articles; and research nonprofit the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2) […]