GoKawiilPhotosynthetic machinery from spinach can help to soothe eye inflammation in mice. Plus, an Ebola outbreak has been declared a global health emergency and the science skills you might not know you have.
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A chloroplast (green) dotted with the membranous stacks called thylakoid grana (black blocks). Scientists have harnessed grana to induce photosynthesis in mammalian cells.Credit: Biophoto Associates/SPL
Photosynthetic machinery can be harvested from spinach and transplanted into the eyes of mice, where it transforms light into molecules that carry energy and can tame inflammation. To see how this approach might someday translate into therapeutic applications, researchers made drops, containing light-harvesting apparatus from spinach (Spinacia oleraceae) cells, that soothed dry-eye disease in mice. “This is very exciting, even if it’s a bit crazy now,” says biologist and study co-author David Tai Leong.
Nature | 4 min read
Reference: Cell paper
An outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been declared a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organization. At least 10 people had tested positive for the Ebola virus and more than 330 people had suspected infections, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Sunday. Infections have also been reported in neighbouring Uganda. A lab in the DRC confirmed that the outbreak was caused by the Bundibugyo species of Ebola virus, for which there is no approved vaccine or treatment. The outbreak has almost certainly been spreading undetected for weeks, and the most important action is getting more diagnostic tests to the DRC and surrounding nations, say researchers.
Nature | 5 min read
10,091 The number of potential new exoplanets spotted in data gathered by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite — which, if confirmed, would add substantially to the 6,287 currently known. (Bad Astronomy blog | 7 min read) Reference: arXiv preprint
Three senior officials at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) have been given the choice to either accept reassignment outside the institute or resign, sources at the NIAID have told Nature. With these departures, scientists in most senior positions at the NIAID will have been ousted from their jobs, including officials in eight of the top ten leadership spots, since President Donald Trump began his second term as president. The reassignment of career scientists is highly unusual, and feeds some scientists’ fears of a growing political influence over science at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), which oversees the NIAID.
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