Science
For the first time, US approves sale of ‘lab-grown’ chicken meat
For the first time, U.S. regulators on Wednesday approved the sale of chicken made from animal cells, allowing two California companies to offer “lab-grown” meat to the nation’s restaurant tables and eventually, supermarket shelves.
The Agriculture Department gave the green light to Upside Foods and Good Meat, firms that had been racing to be the first in the U.S. to sell meat that doesn’t come from slaughtered animals — what’s now being referred to as “cell-cultivated” or “cultured” meat as it emerges from the laboratory and arrives on dinner plates.
Scientists say taurine, present in meat, may extend life
Meat grown from animal cells? Here's what it is and how it's madeThe move launches a new era of meat production aimed at eliminating harm to animals and drastically reducing the environmental impacts of grazing, growing feed for animals and animal waste.
“Instead of all of that land and all of that water that’s used to feed all of these animals that are slaughtered, we can do it in a different way,” said Josh Tetrick, co-founder and chief executive of Eat Just, which operates Good Meat.
The companies received approvals for federal inspections required to sell meat and poultry in the U.S. The action came months after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration deemed that products from both companies are safe to eat. A manufacturing company called Joinn Biologics, which works with Good Meat, was also cleared to make the products.
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Cultivated meat is grown in steel tanks, using cells that come from a living animal, a fertilized egg or a special bank of stored cells. In Upside’s case, it comes out in large sheets that are then formed into shapes like chicken cutlets and sausages. Good Meat, which already sells cultivated meat in Singapore, the first country to allow it, turns masses of chicken cells into cutlets, nuggets, shredded meat and satays.
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But don’t look for this novel meat in U.S. grocery stores anytime soon. Cultivated chicken is much more expensive than meat from whole, farmed birds and cannot yet be produced on the scale of traditional meat, said Ricardo San Martin, director of the Alt:Meat Lab at University of California Berkeley.
The companies plan to serve the new food first in exclusive restaurants: Upside has partnered with a San Francisco restaurant called Bar Crenn, while Good Meat dishes will be served at a Washington, D.C., restaurant run by chef and owner Jose Andrés.
Company officials are quick to note the products are meat, not substitutes like the Impossible Burger or offerings from Beyond Meat, which are made from plant proteins and other ingredients.
Globally, more than 150 companies are focusing on meat from cells, not only chicken but pork, lamb, fish and beef, which scientists say has the biggest impact on the environment.
Upside, based in Berkeley, operates a 70,000-square-foot building in nearby Emeryville. On a recent Tuesday, visitors entered a gleaming commercial kitchen where chef Jess Weaver was sauteeing a cultivated chicken filet in a white wine butter sauce with tomatoes, capers and green onions.
The finished chicken breast product was slightly paler than the grocery store version. Otherwise it looked, cooked, smelled and tasted like any other pan-fried poultry.
“The most common response we get is, ‘Oh, it tastes like chicken,’” said Amy Chen, Upside’s chief operating officer.
Good Meat, based in Alameda, operates a 100,000-square-foot plant, where chef Zach Tyndall dished up a smoked chicken salad on a sunny June afternoon. He followed it with a chicken “thigh” served on a bed of potato puree with a mushroom-vegetable demi-glace and tiny purple cauliflower florets. The Good Meat chicken product will come pre-cooked, requiring only heating to use in a range of dishes.
Chen acknowledged that many consumers are skeptical, even squeamish, about the thought of eating chicken grown from cells.
“We call it the ‘ick factor,’” she said.
The sentiment was echoed in a recent poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Half of U.S. adults said that they are unlikely to try meat grown using cells from animals. When asked to choose from a list of reasons for their reluctance, most who said they’d be unlikely to try it said “it just sounds weird.” About half said they don’t think it would be safe.
But once people understand how the meat is made, they’re more accepting, Chen said. And once they taste it, they’re usually sold.
“It is the meat that you’ve always known and loved,” she said.
Cultivated meat begins with cells. Upside experts take cells from live animals, choosing those most likely to taste good and to reproduce quickly and consistently, forming high-quality meat, Chen said. Good Meat products are created from a master cell bank formed from a commercially available chicken cell line.
Once the cell lines are selected, they’re combined with a broth-like mixture that includes the amino acids, fatty acids, sugars, salts, vitamins and other elements cells need to grow. Inside the tanks, called cultivators, the cells grow, proliferating quickly. At Upside, muscle and connective tissue cells grow together, forming large sheets. After about three weeks, the sheets of poultry cells are removed from the tanks and formed into cutlets, sausages or other foods. Good Meat cells grow into large masses, which are shaped into a range of meat products.
Both firms emphasized that initial production will be limited. The Emeryville facility can produce up to 50,000 pounds of cultivated meat products a year, though the goal is to expand to 400,000 pounds per year, Upside officials said. Good Meat officials wouldn’t estimate a production goal.
By comparison, the U.S. produces about 50 billion pounds of chicken per year.
It could take a few years before consumers see the products in more restaurants and seven to 10 years before they hit the wider market, said Sebastian Bohn, who specializes in cell-based foods at CRB, a Missouri firm that designs and builds facilities for pharmaceutical, biotech and food companies.
Cost will be another sticking point. Neither Upside nor Good Meat officials would reveal the price of a single chicken cutlet, saying only that it’s been reduced by orders of magnitude since the firms began offering demonstrations. Eventually, the price is expected to mirror high-end organic chicken, which sells for up to $20 per pound.
San Martin said he’s concerned that cultivated meat may wind up being an alternative to traditional meat for rich people, but will do little for the environment if it remains a niche product.
“If some high-end or affluent people want to eat this instead of a chicken, it’s good,” he said. “Will that mean you will feed chicken to poor people? I honestly don’t see it.”
Tetrick said he shares critics’ concerns about the challenges of producing an affordable, novel meat product for the world. But he emphasized that traditional meat production is so damaging to the planet it requires an alternative — preferably one that doesn’t require giving up meat all together.
“I miss meat,” said Tetrick, who grew up in Alabama eating chicken wings and barbecue. “There should be a different way that people can enjoy chicken and beef and pork with their families.”
Groundbreaking: Scientists create first human synthetic model embryos
In a groundbreaking development, scientists have generated synthetic human embryos using stem cells that sidestep the need for eggs or sperm, The Guardian reports.
These model embryos, which mirror those in the earliest stages of human development, may offer a significant insight into the effects of genetic anomalies and the biological factors that contribute to recurrent miscarriage, according to scientists.
Since lab-grown entities are illegal in the UK and most other nations, the development also poses significant ethical and legal concerns.
The structures contain cells that would ordinarily develop into the placenta, yolk sac, and embryo itself but lack a beating heart and the beginnings of a brain, reports the Guardian.
Also read: Scientists say taurine, present in meat, may extend life
Prof Magdalena Żernicka-Goetz, of the University of Cambridge and the California Institute of Technology, described the work in a plenary address on Wednesday at the International Society for Stem Cell Research’s annual meeting in Boston.
“We can create human embryo-like models by the reprogramming of [embryonic stem] cells,” she told the meeting.
According to The Guardian, the use of synthetic embryos in clinical trials is not anticipated to happen anytime soon. It is currently unknown if these structures have the ability to continue maturing past the initial stages of development, making their implantation into a patient's womb illegal.
The goal of the research is to help scientists better comprehend the so-called "black box" period of development, which lasts for only 14 days in accordance with regulatory restrictions. They then pick up the development's course at a far later stage by examining donated embryos and pregnancy scans.
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“The idea is that if you really model normal human embryonic development using stem cells, you can gain an awful lot of information about how we begin development, what can go wrong, without having to use early embryos for research,” Robin Lovell-Badge, the head of stem cell biology and developmental genetics at the Francis Crick Institute in London, told The Guardian.
Previously, Żernicka-Goetz’s team and a rival group at the Weizmann Institute in Israel showed that stem cells from mice could be encouraged to self-assemble into early embryo-like structures with an intestinal tract, the beginnings of a brain and a beating heart.
Since then, a race has been under way to translate this work into human models, and several teams have been able to replicate the very earliest stages of development.
The current research from the Cambridge-Caltech lab has not yet been fully described in a scholarly article. However, addressing at the conference, Ernicka-Goetz recounted growing the embryos to a level barely past the point at which a natural embryo would develop after 14 days.
Also read: Did humans 3000 years ago have bigger brains than us?
The model structures, which were each developed from a single embryonic stem cell, have begun to undergo gastrulation, a developmental stage in which the embryo changes from being a continuous sheet of cells to generating discrete cell lines and establishing the basic axis of the body, the Guardian reports, citing Ernicka-Goetz.
The model demonstrated the presence of primordial cells, which are the precursor cells of egg and sperm, although the embryo at this stage does not yet have a beating heart, a functioning gut, or the beginnings of a brain.
The development highlights how rapidly the science in this field has outpaced the law, and scientists in the UK and elsewhere are already moving to draw up voluntary guidelines to govern work on synthetic embryos. “If the whole intention is that these models are very much like normal embryos, then in a way they should be treated the same,” Lovell-Badge told the Guardian. “Currently in legislation they’re not. People are worried about this.”
Read more: Scientists say taurine, present in meat, may extend life
Scientists say taurine, present in meat, may extend life
Taurine — a nutrient present in meat, fish, and taken as a supplement — extends life and improves health in a variety of animal species, scientists say.
Taurine levels fall with aging in animals, including humans, reports BBC.
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Experiments on middle-aged animals revealed that increasing taurine levels increased life span by more than 10% and enhanced physical and mental health.
According to the researchers, taurine may be a "elixir of life," although supplementing amounts in humans has not been explored.
As a result, scientists at Columbia University in New York advised against purchasing taurine tablets or energy drinks containing taurine in an attempt to live longer.
Also read: Beetroot: Nutrition, Health Benefits, Doses, Side Effects
The animal study, on the other hand, is the most recent advance in the search for strategies to slow the aging process, said the report.
This study began by analyzing chemicals in the blood of various species.
"One of the most dramatically degraded [molecules] was taurine," researcher Dr Vijay Yadav said. The levels were 80% lower in the elderly than in the young.
Taurine is almost non-existent in plants. So the vitamin originates from either animal protein in the food or is produced by the body.
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And the study team has been attempting to figure out its involvement in aging for the past 11 years, added the report.
'Improved memory'
A daily dosage was given to 14-month-old mice, which is roughly the age of 45 in people.
Male mice lived 10% longer, females 12% longer, and both looked to be in better condition, according to the findings published in the journal Science.
"Whatever we checked, taurine-supplemented mice were healthier and appeared younger," Yadav said.
"They were leaner, had an increased energy expenditure, increased bone density, improved memory and a younger-looking immune system."
The researchers examined 12,000 participants and discovered that those with higher levels of taurine in their blood had better overall health.
They claim that if the data from mice were applied to humans, it would be the equivalent of an extra seven to eight years of life.
However, genuine clinical studies — in which some patients are given the nutrient and others a placebo pill — will be required to see whether any effect can be found.
Differences in human biology may prevent taurine from functioning, or there may be an evolutionary rationale for levels to decline with age. Current data demonstrates that taurine is safe, despite the fact that energy drinks have been on the market for decades.
Alzheimer's drug gets FDA panel's backing, setting the stage for broader use
Health advisers on Friday unanimously backed the full approval of a closely watched Alzheimer's drug, a key step toward opening insurance coverage to U.S. seniors with early stages of the brain-robbing disease.
The drug, Leqembi, received conditional approval from the Food and Drug Administration in January based on early results suggesting it could slow Alzheimer's progression by several months. The FDA now is reviewing more definitive results to decide whether the drug should receive the agency's full endorsement.
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The decision carries extra significance because insurers have held off on paying for the infused treatment until it has full FDA approval.
The FDA panel of outside advisers voted 6-0 that a large company study confirmed the drug's benefits for patients with mild or early Alzheimer's. The nonbinding vote amounts to a recommendation for full approval, and the FDA is scheduled to issue a final decision on the matter by July 6.
The FDA's initial OK for Leqembi came via the agency's accelerated approval program, which allows early access to drugs based on laboratory or biological measures suggesting that they might help patients. The drug, marketed by Eisai and Biogen, helped clear a brain plaque that is a hallmark of Alzheimer's.
Also read: Drug slows Alzheimer's but can it make a real difference?
The FDA panel reviewed more recent data from an 1,800-patient study in which people taking the drug showed a modestly slower rate of decline on measures of memory, judgment and other cognitive tests.
"For an illness like this where we don't have very much, these are meaningful changes for patients with Alzheimer's," said Dr. Merit Cudkowicz of Harvard Medical School. "A couple more months in the highly functional state is really meaningful."
Drugs approved via the accelerated pathway can technically be withdrawn by the FDA if their benefits aren't confirmed, though regulators rarely take that step. Gaining full approval allows medications to stay on the market indefinitely.
Normally the process of converting an accelerated approval attracts little attention, and FDA rarely convenes its advisers to weigh in on such decisions.
But concerns about the cost and effectiveness of new plaque-targeting drugs like Leqembi have attracted new scrutiny to the process from academics, members of Congress and health insurers.
Also Read: Alzheimer's Disease: Symptoms, Causes, Preventions
Medicare, the federal health plan that covers 60 million seniors, has essentially blocked coverage of Leqembi and a similar drug, Aduhelm, pending full FDA approval. That policy, which has little precedent, was announced last year amid concerns that Aduhelm, priced at $28,000-a-year, would drive up costs for Medicare recipients.
The federal program provides health insurance for the vast majority of people with Alzheimer's, and private insurers tend to follow its lead.
Leqembi is priced similarly at $26,500 per year and the handful of patients who have received it to date have mainly had to pay out of pocket.
Facing pressure from Alzheimer's advocates and patients, Medicare's administrator, Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, has made clear the program will immediately begin covering the drug if it gets FDA's full OK.
But last week she announced extra requirements even after Medicare coverage begins: All patients receiving the drug will need to be enrolled in a federal registry to track Leqembi's safety and effectiveness. That approach is occasionally used for complex new medical devices, but rarely for drugs.
The move was criticized by advocacy groups, including the Alzheimer's Association, which has lobbied the federal government for months to begin paying a drug that they say could potentially help many thousands of Americans.
Leqembi is the first drug that's been convincingly shown to slow Alzheimer's by targeting the underlying biology of the disease. The delay in progression amounts to about five months, and some experts disagree on whether that difference is enough to meaningfully improve people's lives.
But most FDA panelists were impressed by Eisai's results, which they said showed significant differences in patients' cognitive abilities and functionality, as well as reduced burden for caregivers.
The study tracked patients for 18 months using a scale measuring key indicators of cognitive function. At the end of the trial, patients receiving Leqembi declined more slowly — a difference of less than half a point on the scale — than patients who received a dummy infusion.
The drug was also associated with potentially serious side effects, including swelling of the brain and small bleeds in brain vessels.
Three patients taking Leqembi died during the study, two after experiencing a stroke linked to brain bleeding. But FDA reviewers said it was unclear whether the drug played a role in the deaths due to other underlying factors affecting the patients, including the use of blood-thinning medications that can increase the risk of bleeding.
"There are adverse effects," said Dr. Robert Alexander of the University of Arizona, who chaired the panel. "But they're monitorable and I think the benefit is clear."
China launches new crew for space station, with eye to putting astronauts on moon before 2030
China launched a new three-person crew for its orbiting space station on Tuesday, with an eye to putting astronauts on the moon before the end of the decade.
The Shenzhou 16 spacecraft lifted off from the Jiuquan launch center on the edge of the Gobi Desert in northwestern China atop a Long March 2-F rocket just after 9:30 a.m. (0130 GMT) Tuesday.
The crew, including China’s first civilian astronaut, will overlap briefly with three now aboard the Tiangong station, who will then return to Earth after completing their six-month mission.
READ: China plans to land astronauts on moon before 2030, another step in what looks like a new space race
A third module was added to the station in November, and space program officials on Monday said they have plans to expand it, along with launching a crewed mission to the moon before 2030.
China built its own space station after it was excluded from the International Space Station, largely due to U.S. concerns over the Chinese space programs’ intimate ties with the People’s Liberation Army, the military branch of the ruling Communist Party.
China’s first manned space mission in 2003 made it the third country after the former Soviet Union and the U.S. to put a person into space under its own resources.
On the this latest mission, payload expert Gui Haichao, a professor at Beijing’s top aerospace research institute, will join mission commander Maj. Gen. Jing Haipeng, who is making his fourth flight to space, and spacecraft engineer Zhu Yangzhu.
SpaceX sends Saudi astronauts, including nation’s 1st woman in space, to International Space Station
Saudi Arabia's first astronauts in decades rocketed toward the International Space Station on a chartered multimillion-dollar flight Sunday.
SpaceX launched the ticket-holding crew, led by a retired NASA astronaut now working for the company that arranged the trip from Kennedy Space Center. Also on board: a U.S. businessman who now owns a sports car racing team.
The four should reach the space station in their capsule Monday morning; they'll spend just over a week there before returning home with a splashdown off the Florida coast.
Sponsored by the Saudi Arabian government, Rayyanah Barnawi, a stem cell researcher, became the first woman from the kingdom to go to space. She was joined by Ali al-Qarni, a fighter pilot with the Royal Saudi Air Force.
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They're the first from their country to ride a rocket since a Saudi prince launched aboard shuttle Discovery in 1985. In a quirk of timing, they'll be greeted at the station by an astronaut from the United Arab Emirates.
"Hello from outer space! It feels amazing to be viewing Earth from this capsule," Barnawi said after settling into orbit.
Added al-Qarni: "As I look outside into space, I can't help but think this is just the beginning of a great journey for all of us."
Rounding out the visiting crew: Knoxville, Tennessee's John Shoffner, former driver and owner of a sports car racing team that competes in Europe, and chaperone Peggy Whitson, the station's first female commander who holds the U.S. record for most accumulated time in space: 665 days and counting.
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"It was a phenomenal ride," Whitson said after reaching orbit. Her crewmates clapped their hands in joy.
It's the second private flight to the space station organized by Houston-based Axiom Space. The first was last year by three businessmen, with another retired NASA astronaut. The company plans to start adding its own rooms to the station in another few years, eventually removing them to form a stand-alone outpost available for hire.
Axiom won't say how much Shoffner and Saudi Arabia are paying for the planned 10-day mission. The company had previously cited a ticket price of $55 million each.
NASA's latest price list shows per-person, per-day charges of $2,000 for food and up to $1,500 for sleeping bags and other gear. Need to get your stuff to the space station in advance? Figure roughly $10,000 per pound ($20,000 per kilogram), the same fee for trashing it afterward. Need your items back intact? Double the price.
At least the email and video links are free.
The guests will have access to most of the station as they conduct experiments, photograph Earth and chat with schoolchildren back home, demonstrating how kites fly in space when attached to a fan.
After decades of shunning space tourism, NASA now embraces it with two private missions planned a year. The Russian Space Agency has been doing it, off and on, for decades.
"Our job is to expand what we do in low-Earth orbit across the globe," said NASA's space station program manager Joel Montalbano.
SpaceX's first-stage booster landed back at Cape Canaveral eight minutes after liftoff — a special treat for the launch day crowd, which included about 60 Saudis. "It was a very, very exciting day," said Axiom's Matt Ondler.
Ancient viruses can help fight cancer, scientists say
Scientists have said relics of ancient viruses that have spent millions of years hiding within human DNA help the body battle cancer, according to a BBC report.
When cancerous cells escalate out of control, dormant remnants of these old viruses are reawakened, according to a study by the Francis Crick Institute.
This resurgence of these old viruses “unintentionally” helps the body’s immune system by targeting and attacking the tumour.
The study – published in the journal Nature – suggested a correlation between increased lung cancer survival and the presence of B-cells aggregating around tumours, according to the researchers.
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B-cells usually manufacture antibodies in our body and are better known for their vital role in battling infections, such as Covid-19, BBC reports.
Although the exact functionality of these cells are yet to be identified, it was evidenced -- based on a series of intricate experiments using samples from patients and animals – that they are attempting to fight viruses.
"It turned out that the antibodies are recognising remnants of what's termed endogenous retroviruses," Prof Julian Downward, an associate research director at the Francis Crick Institute, told BBC.
Retroviruses have the clever ability to insert their genetic instructions into our own.
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Some of these foreign instructions have been adopted over time and serve beneficial purposes within our cells, while others are tightly regulated to prevent their spread, according to the researchers.
These ancient genetic instructions are no longer able to resurrect whole viruses but they can create fragments of viruses that are enough for the immune system to spot a viral threat.
"The immune system is tricked into believing that the tumour cells are infected and it tries to eliminate the virus, so it's sort of an alarm system," Prof George Kassiotis, head of retroviral immunology at the biomedical research centre, told BBC.
The antibodies stimulate other parts of the immune system that eliminate the "infected" cells -- the immune system is attempting to stop a virus, but in this case is eliminating cancerous cells, according to Professor Kassiotis.
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Meanwhile, Dr Claire Bromley, from Cancer Research UK said that the study adds to the growing body of research that could one day see this innovative approach to cancer treatment become a reality.
Did humans 3000 years ago have bigger brains than us?
According to an analysis of cranial fossils, human brains have reduced in size over the years. Scientists have even identified the possible time when the shrinkage started: Approximately 3,000 years ago, according to a BBC report.
The shrinkage, according to Jeremy DeSilva, an anthropologist at Dartmouth College in the US, would be roughly equivalent to that of “four ping pong balls”.
According to the National Geographic Society, agriculture emerged sometime between 5,000-10,000 years ago. Soon after the emergence of agriculture, civilizations, full of architecture and machinery started to emerge in various parts of the world. According to the BBC, the first writing also appeared at the same time.
However, one question that left the researchers scratching their heads is why exactly did the human brain start to shrink in size while there were extraordinary technological advances going on at the same time?
Apart from the reason behind this shrinkage, another question which hovers around is whether the size of the brain affects an animal's cognitive ability and intelligence.
According to DeSilva and his colleagues, it is difficult to know what prompts brains to get bigger or smaller over time. In their study, the researchers note that human bodies have shrunk over time, but not sufficiently to account for our diminishing brain size.
To understand the phenomenon, DeSilva and his colleagues sought inspiration from a very unlikely source – the humble ant, according to BBC.
At first glance, ant brains may appear insignificant compared to ours. They are approximately one tenth of a cubic millimeter in volume, or one-third the size of a grain of salt, and contain approximately 250,000 neurons. In comparison, the human brain has roughly 86 billion neurons.
However, some ant societies are strikingly identical to our own. Incredibly, there are ant species that engage in a form of agriculture in which they cultivate vast swaths of fungus within their colonies.
When DeSilva's team compared the brain sizes of various ant species, they discovered that those with vast societies had sometimes evolved larger brains, unless they had also evolved a preference for fungus farming, BBC reports.
This finding suggests that for an ant, having a bigger brain is important for doing well in large society.
It also suggests that more complex social systems with great division of labor might prompt their brains to shrink.
DeSilva believes this could be the case for humans as well.
"What if, in humans, we reached a threshold of population size, a threshold in which individuals were sharing information and externalizing information in the brains of others?" he told BBC.
One other reason which might prompt the shrinkage in human brains is writing, according to DeSilva. He questioned whether the emergence of writing could have influenced brain volume through “externalizing information in writing and being able to communicate ideas by accessing information that’s outside your own brain”.
Although these hypotheses are nowhere near conclusion, it could be a starting point to think about what might cause the “notable and relatively recent” reduction in human brain size, DeSilva says.
Another question which needs to be addressed is whether smaller brains mean humans became stupider.
A team of researchers in 2018 analyzed a vast amount of data collected from UK Biobank, a biomedical database that contains, among other things, brain scans and IQ test results for thousands of people.
Analysis of the data collected from 13,600 people found that a bigger brain was, on average, associated with doing slightly better on IQ tests but, crucially, the relationship was non-deterministic, according to BBC.
That means that there were some people who did very well on the tests despite having relatively small brains and vice versa.
New COVID origins data suggests pandemic linked to animals
International scientists who examined previously unavailable genetic data from samples collected at a market close to where the first human cases of COVID-19 were detected in China said they found suggestions the pandemic originated from animals, not a lab.
Other experts have not yet verified their analysis, which also has not appeared so far in a peer-reviewed journal. How the coronavirus first started sickening people remains uncertain.
“These data do not provide a definitive answer to how the pandemic began, but every piece of data is important to moving us closer to that answer,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at a Friday press briefing.
He also criticized China for not sharing the genetic information earlier, adding that “this data could have and should have been shared three years ago.”
The samples were collected from surfaces at the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan after the first human cases of COVID-19 were found in late 2019.
Tedros said the genetic sequences were uploaded to the world's biggest public virus database in late January by scientists at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention; the data have since been removed from the database.
A French biologist spotted the information by chance while scouring the database and shared it with a group of scientists based outside China and looking into the origins of the coronavirus.
Genetic sequencing data showed that some of the samples, which were known to be positive for the coronavirus, also contained genetic material from raccoon dogs, indicating the animals may have been infected by the virus, according to the scientists. Their analysis was first reported in The Atlantic.
“There’s a good chance that the animals that deposited that DNA also deposited the virus," said Stephen Goldstein, a virologist at the University of Utah who was involved in analyzing the data. “If you were to go and do environmental sampling in the aftermath of a zoonotic spillover event … this is basically exactly what you would expect to find.”
Ray Yip, an epidemiologist and founding member of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control ffice in China, said that even though the new findings weren’t definitive, they were significant.
“The market environmental sampling data published by China CDC is by far the strongest evidence to support animal origins,” Yip told the AP in an email. He was not connected to the new analysis.
Scientists have been looking for the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic since the virus first emerged, but that search has been complicated by factors including the massive surge of human infections in the pandemic's first two years and an increasingly bitter political dispute.
It took virus experts more than a dozen years to pinpoint the animal origin of SARS, a related virus.
The researchers say their analysis is the first solid indication that there may have been wildlife infected with the coronavirus at the market. Some of the samples with raccoon dog DNA were collected from a stall that tested positive for COVID-19 and was known to be involved in the wildlife trade, Goldstein said.
But it is also possible that humans might have first brought the virus to the market and infected the raccoon dogs, or that infected humans happened to leave traces of the virus near the animals.
After scientists in the group contacted the China CDC, they say, the sequences were pulled from the global virus database. Researchers are puzzled as to why data on the samples collected over three years ago wasn’t made public sooner.
Earlier this week, some of the scientists presented their findings to an advisory group the World Health Organization has tasked with investigating COVID's origins, Goldstein confirmed.
Mark Woolhouse, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Edinburgh, said it will be crucial to see how the genetic sequences from the raccoon dogs match up to what's known about the historic evolution of the COVID-19 virus.
He said that if the analysis shows the animal viruses have earlier origins than the ones that infected people, “that’s probably as good evidence as we can expect to get that this was a spillover event in the market.”
After a weeks-long visit to China to study the pandemic's origins, WHO released a report in 2021 concluding that COVID most probably jumped into humans from animals, dismissing the possibility of a lab origin as “extremely unlikely.”
But the U.N. health agency backtracked the following year, saying “key pieces of data” were still missing.
In recent months, WHO director Tedros has said all hypotheses remained on the table, while he and senior officials pleaded with China to share more data about their COVID-19 research.
The China CDC scientists who previously analyzed the samples published a paper as a preprint in February. Their analysis suggested that humans brought the virus to the market, not animals, implying that the virus originated elsewhere.
The paper did not mention that animal genetic material was found in samples that tested positive for COVID-19, and the authors didn’t upload the raw data until March. Gao Fu, the former head of the China CDC and lead author of the paper, didn’t immediately respond to an email requesting comment.
Wuhan, the Chinese city where COVID-19 was first detected, is home to several labs involved in collecting and studying coronaviruses, fueling theories that the virus may have leaked from one.
In February, the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Department of Energy had assessed “with low confidence” that the virus had leaked from a lab. But others in the U.S. intelligence community disagree, believing it more likely it first came from animals. Experts say the true origin of the pandemic may not be known for many years — if ever.
NASA Webb telescope captures star on cusp of death
The Webb Space Telescope has captured the rare and fleeting phase of a star on the cusp of death.
NASA released the picture Tuesday at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas.
The observation was among the first made by Webb following its launch in late 2021. Its infrared eyes observed all the gas and dust flung into space by a huge, hot star 15,000 light-years away. A light-year is about 5.8 trillion miles.
Shimmering in purple like a cherry blossom, the cast-off material once comprised the star's outer layer. The Hubble Space Telescope snapped a shot of the same transitioning star a few decades ago, but it appeared more like a fireball without the delicate details.
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Such a transformation occurs only with some stars and normally is the last step before they explode, going supernova, according to scientists.
“We’ve never seen it like that before. It’s really exciting,” said Macarena Garcia Marin, a European Space Agency scientist who is part of the project.
This star in the constellation Sagittarius, officially known as WR 124, is 30 times as massive as our sun and already has shed enough material to account for 10 suns, according to NASA.