9. April 2026 um 14:36 Uhr

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Allgemein
23. September 2024
Budgetkürzungen treffen weltgrößten Förderer der Krebsforschung: Auswirkungen auf Wissenschaftler
Budgetkürzungen beim US National Cancer Institute könnten die Krebsforschung gefährden, während die Anzahl der Antragsteller steigt.
Allgemein
23. September 2024
Tintenfische und Fische jagen gemeinsam: Teamarbeit unter Wasser beobachten
Ein Team von Tauchern dokumentierte, wie Oktopusse und Fische gemeinsam auf Jagd gehen, um ihre Beute effektiver zu fangen.
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23. September 2024
Wissenschaftler simuliere erfolgreiche Nuklearexplosion eines Asteroiden im Labor
Wissenschaftler simulierten erfolgreich eine nukleare Ablenkung von Asteroiden im Labor, um die Erde zu schützen.
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Ein Advertorial bietet Unternehmen die Möglichkeit, ihre Botschaft direkt im redaktionellen Umfeld zu platzieren
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21. September 2024
Wissenschaftler entwickeln riesige Beweisspeicher zur Entwicklung effektiver Politiken
Wissenschaftler investieren Millionen in 'Evidenzbanken', um evidenzbasierte Politik weltweit zu stärken und drängende Probleme zu lösen.
Allgemein
20. September 2024
Belästigt oder eingeschüchtert? Ein Leitfaden hilft Wissenschaftlern in Krisensituationen
Ein neuer Leitfaden bietet Wissenschaftlern Strategien zum Schutz vor Belästigungen und Einschüchterungen, unterstützt von Institutionen und Organisationen.
Allgemein
20. September 2024
Neue Studie legt nahe, dass COVID-Pandemie ihren Ursprung im Tiermarkt von Wuhan hatte
Craft a short meta-description for an article about "COVID pandemic started in Wuhan market animals after all, suggests latest study", in German. The article contains the following content: " <p>The hunt for the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic has new leads. Researchers have identified half a dozen animal species that could have passed SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, to people, by reanalysing genomes collected from an animal market in Wuhan, China<a href="#ref-CR1" data-track="click" data-action="anchor-link" data-track-label="go to reference" data-track-category="references">1</a>. The study establishes the presence of animals and the virus at the market, although it does not confirm whether the animals themselves were infected with the virus.</p><p>Many of the earliest cases of COVID-19 were linked to the city’s <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00584-8" data-track="click" data-label="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00584-8" data-track-category="body text link">Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market</a>, and so it became a focus in the search for the pandemic’s origin. The study, published in Cell today, is the latest in a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01483-2#ref-CR1" data-track="click" data-label="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01483-2#ref-CR1" data-track-category="body text link">series</a> of analyses of the market samples. The researchers argue that their reanalysis adds more weight to the market being the site of the first spillover events, in which animals with the virus infected people, sparking the pandemic. This expands on a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00827-2" data-track="click" data-label="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00827-2" data-track-category="body text link">preliminary analysis</a> on a subset of the China CDC data, which the same team published in March 2023.</p><p>However, the team’s conclusion differs from the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00998-y" data-track="click" data-label="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00998-y" data-track-category="body text link">first peer-reviewed analysis</a> of the data, published in Nature<a href="#ref-CR2" data-track="click" data-action="anchor-link" data-track-label="go to reference" data-track-category="references">2</a> in April last year, in which a separate team also identified several animals and the virus but concluded the role of the market in the pandemic’s origin was unclear.</p><p>The search for how the pandemic began has been hugely controversial. <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00865-8" data-track="click" data-label="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00865-8" data-track-category="body text link">Most researchers</a> say the virus originated in bats who infected people, most probably through an intermediate animal, as has happened with <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9" data-track="click" data-label="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9" data-track-category="body text link">other pathogens</a> that have emerged in humans. But a lack of strong evidence for an intermediate host has led some researchers to argue that the virus could have escaped — deliberately or accidentally — from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.</p>Market stalls<p>The genomic data used in the Cell, Nature and other analyses were collected by researchers at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) shortly after the market was shut down on 1 January 2020. Over several weeks, China CDC staff visited the market many times to swab stalls, rubbish bins, toilets, sewage, stray animals and abandoned frozen animal products. The samples contained lots of DNA and RNA from multiple sources that researchers had to sequence and sift through.</p><p>“It’s one of the most important data sets on the early pandemic and on the origin of SARS-CoV-2,” says Florence Débarre, an evolutionary biologist at the the French national research agency CNRS, and co-author of the Cell analysis.</p><p>When researchers at the China CDC published their analysis in Nature last April, they reported samples that contained SARS-CoV-2 and came from wild animals in the market, most noteably raccoon dogs (Nyctereutes procyonoides), which are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 and can spread the virus to other animals. But the team noted that there was no way to establish that the animals were infected with SARS-CoV-2. Even if they were infected, they could have caught the infection from a person who brought the virus to the market, which leaves open the possibility that the market was not the site of the pandemic’s emergence.</p>New techniques<p>The latest study used more-sophisticated genomic techniques to identify species represented in the samples, including half a dozen animals the team say are possible intermediate hosts of SARS-Cov-2. The most likely hosts include raccoon dogs and masked palm civet (Paguma larvata), which also might be susceptible to the virus. Other possible hosts include hoary bamboo rats (Rhizomys pruinosus), Amur hedgehog (Erinaceus amurensis) and the Malayan porcupine (Hystrix brachyura), but it is unclear whether these animals can catch SARS-CoV-2 and spread the infection. The team say the Reeves’s muntjac (Muntiacus reevesi) and the Himalayan marmot (Marmota himalayana) could also be carriers, but are less likely than the other species.</p><p>The co-location of viral and animal genetic material is “strongly suggestive” that the animals were infected, says Gigi Gronvall, a biosecurity specialist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. “I was quite amazed by how many animals were there,” she says.</p><p>Bats, from which the progenitor of SARS-CoV-2 probably originated, were not detected in the genetic data. The lack of bat DNA is unsurprising, says Alice Hughes, a conservation biologist at the University of Hong Kong who studies bats and the wildlife trade. Although bats are commonly eaten in southern China, they are not typically sold in the country’s markets.</p><p>The authors of the Cell study also argue that the viral diversity present in the market suggests it was the site of the pandemic’s emergence. In particular, they say the presence of two SARS-CoV-2 lineages — known as A and B — circulating in the market suggests that the virus <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02519-1" data-track="click" data-label="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02519-1" data-track-category="body text link">jumped twice</a> from animals to people. The researchers conclude that, although it is possible that infected humans brought the virus to the market on two separate occasions, that is a much less likely scenario than the virus jumping twice from animals, especially since their analysis suggests that very few people would have been infected at that point and it is unlikely that one person seeded both lineages. “It really just fits this ongoing infection in animal populations that spilled over multiple times to people,” says Gronvall.</p><p>Nature’s news team reached out to the authors of the Nature paper, asking them about the results and conclusions of the latest study, but did not receive a reply before deadline.</p>Southern China<p>The latest study also suggests that the raccoon dogs at the Huanan market were probably more closely related to wild raccoon dogs collected at other markets in the same province, and not as closely related to <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02871-y" data-track="click" data-label="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02871-y" data-track-category="body text link">farmed animals</a> found in northern Chinese provinces, suggesting they could have originated from central or southern China. The <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03611-w" data-track="click" data-label="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03611-w" data-track-category="body text link">closest-known relatives</a> of SARS-CoV-2 have been isolated from bats in southern China, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02596-2" data-track="click" data-label="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02596-2" data-track-category="body text link">Laos</a> and other countries in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03217-0" data-track="click" data-label="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03217-0" data-track-category="body text link">southeast Asia</a>.</p><p>The next step would be to follow some of these leads by studying animals in the wildlife trade, says study co-author Joshua Levy, an applied mathematician at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. The paper provides actionable information about how to prevent future spillovers, he says, such as by tracking down stallholders and testing animals for viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2, as well as conducting studies on the susceptibility of the wild mammals found at the market to SARS-CoV-2, and whether these animals can readily transmit the virus.</p><p>For Hughes, the findings demonstrate that the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02052-7" data-track="click" data-label="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02052-7" data-track-category="body text link">wildlife trade</a> needs to be better regulated to minimize the risk of pathogen spread.</p> <br><ol class="c-article-references" data-track-component="outbound reference" data-track-context="references section"><li class="c-article-references__item js-c-reading-companion-references-item" data-counter="1."><p class="c-article-references__text" id="ref-CR1">Crits-Christoph, A. et al. Cell 187, 5468–5482 (2024).</p><p class="c-article-references__links u-hide-print"><a data-track="click||click_references" rel="nofollow noopener" data-track-label="10.1016/j.cell.2024.08.010" data-track-item_id="10.1016/j.cell.2024.08.010" data-track-value="article reference" data-track-action="article reference" href="https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.cell.2024.08.010" aria-label="Article reference 1" data-doi="10.1016/j.cell.2024.08.010">Article</a>  <a data-track="click||click_references" data-track-action="google scholar reference" data-track-value="google scholar reference" data-track-label="link" data-track-item_id="link" rel="nofollow noopener" aria-label="Google Scholar reference 1" href="http://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?&title=&journal=Cell&doi=10.1016%2Fj.cell.2024.08.010&volume=187&pages=5468-5482&publication_year=2024&author=Crits-Christoph%2CA."> Google Scholar</a>  </p></li><li class="c-article-references__item js-c-reading-companion-references-item" data-counter="2."><p class="c-article-references__text" id="ref-CR2">Liu, W. J. et al. Nature 631, 402–408 (2024).</p><p class="c-article-references__links u-hide-print"><a data-track="click||click_references" rel="nofollow noopener" data-track-label="10.1038/s41586-023-06043-2" data-track-item_id="10.1038/s41586-023-06043-2" data-track-value="article reference" data-track-action="article reference" href="https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fs41586-023-06043-2" aria-label="Article reference 2" data-doi="10.1038/s41586-023-06043-2">Article</a>  <a data-track="click||click_references" rel="nofollow noopener" data-track-label="link" data-track-item_id="link" data-track-value="pubmed reference" data-track-action="pubmed reference" href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=37019149" aria-label="PubMed reference 2">PubMed</a>  <a data-track="click||click_references" data-track-action="google scholar reference" data-track-value="google scholar reference" data-track-label="link" data-track-item_id="link" rel="nofollow noopener" aria-label="Google Scholar reference 2" href="http://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?&title=&journal=Nature&doi=10.1038%2Fs41586-023-06043-2&volume=631&pages=402-408&publication_year=2024&author=Liu%2CW.%20J."> Google Scholar</a>  </p></li></ol><p class="c-article-references__download u-hide-print"><a data-track="click" data-track-action="download citation references" data-track-label="link" rel="nofollow" href="https://citation-needed.springer.com/v2/references/10.1038/d41586-024-03026-9?format=refman&flavour=references">Download references</a></p>". Don't add the title at the beginning of the created content. Write it as if you want to inform the readers about who, what, when, where, why and how. Dont exceed 120 characters. Style: Maintain a professional level of formality suitable for a newspaper, but avoid overly complex language to ensure the content is accessible to a wide audience. Include keywords related to the news event and phrases likely to be used by readers searching for information on the topic. Tone: While keeping the tone professional, use engaging language to capture the reader's interest without sensationalizing. Reply in plain Text without putting the meta-description into any quotes. Excerpt:
Allgemein
20. September 2024
Produzieren KI-Modelle mehr originelle Ideen als Forscher?
Eine neue Studie zeigt, dass KI-Modelle mehr originelle Forschungsideen generieren können als 50 Wissenschaftler. Experten bewerten diese Ansätze.
Allgemein
20. September 2024
Vogelgrippe: Ausbreitung unter Menschen und wachsende Datenlücken stellen Forscher vor Herausforderungen
Craft a short meta-description for an article about "Is bird flu spreading among people? Data gaps leave researchers in the dark", in German. The article contains the following content: "<div class="c-article-body main-content"> <figure class="figure"> <picture class="embed intensity--high"> <source type="image/webp" srcset="https://media.nature.com/lw767/magazine-assets/d41586-024-03089-8/d41586-024-03089-8_27692490.jpg?as=webp 767w, https://media.nature.com/lw319/magazine-assets/d41586-024-03089-8/d41586-024-03089-8_27692490.jpg?as=webp 319w" sizes="(max-width: 319px) 319px, (min-width: 1023px) 100vw, 767px"> <img class="figure__image" alt="Avian influenza virus particles as a coloured transmission electron micrograph." loading="lazy" src="https://media.nature.com/lw767/magazine-assets/d41586-024-03089-8/d41586-024-03089-8_27692490.jpg"> <figcaption> </figcaption> </source></picture> </figure><p>All eyes are on Missouri.</p><p>Researchers are anxiously awaiting data from the midwestern state about a mysterious bird flu infection in a person who had no known contact with potential animal carriers of the disease. The data could reveal whether <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01256-5" data-track="click" data-label="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01256-5" data-track-category="body text link">the ongoing US bird flu outbreak in dairy cattle</a> has reached a dreaded turning point: the emergence of a virus capable of spreading from human to human.</p><p> </p><p>Thus far, data from the mysterious infection are few and far between: small snippets of the H5N1 virus’s genome sequence and an incomplete infection timeline. Ratcheting up concerns is the fact that no Missouri dairy farms have reported a <a href="https://www.nature.com/collections/jicdgbcgda" data-track="click" data-label="https://www.nature.com/collections/jicdgbcgda" data-track-category="body text link">bird </a><a href="https://www.nature.com/collections/jicdgbcgda" data-track="click" data-label="https://www.nature.com/collections/jicdgbcgda" data-track-category="body text link">flu</a> outbreak; this might be because there really are no infections, or because the state does not require farmers to test their cows for the virus.</p><p>“The fear is that the virus is spreading within the community at low levels, and this is the first time that we’re detecting it,” says Scott Hensley, a viral immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia. “There’s no data to suggest that to be the case, but that’s the fear.”</p><h2>A mystery case</h2><p>On 6 September, Missouri public-health officials and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that an adult in the state had developed symptoms including chest pain, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, and was hospitalized owing to other medical conditions. That person did not become severely ill and has recovered from the infection. Tests revealed it to be H5N1 influenza, often referred to as bird flu.</p><p>Since March, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01036-1" data-track="click" data-label="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01036-1" data-track-category="body text link">when the H5N1 virus was first detected in US dairy cattle</a>, there have been more than a dozen cases of human infection that were traced back to contact with infected animals, including cows and birds. The Missouri case stands out because investigators found no such link and no tie to unprocessed food products, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01624-1" data-track="click" data-label="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01624-1" data-track-category="body text link">such as raw milk</a>, from potentially infected livestock.</p><p> </p><p>This raised the possibility that the virus might have evolved to not only infect humans, but also to spread between people. If so, this increases the risk of it sweeping through human populations, potentially triggering a dangerous outbreak.</p><p>But that’s not the only possibility, cautions Jürgen Richt, a veterinary virologist at Kansas State University in Manhattan. “It’s a mystery case,” he says. “So you have to throw your net a little wider. Maybe they cleaned out a bird feeder in the household. Did they go to a state fair? What kind of food did they consume?”</p><p>More concerns were raised about the Missouri case on 13 September, when the CDC announced that two people who had close contact with the hospitalized person had also become ill around the same time. One of them was not tested for flu; the other tested negative.</p><p>That test result is encouraging but not definitive, says Hensley, because the sample could have been collected when the individual’s viral levels were too low for detection — after they started to recover, for instance. A key next step will be to test all three people for antibodies against the strain of H5N1 bird flu that has been infecting cattle. Such antibodies, particularly in the two contacts, would be definitive evidence of past infection.</p><h2>Genomic sleuthing</h2><p>While researchers await the antibody results, they are combing through patchy genome-sequence data from virus samples from the hospitalized person. This could yield any signs that the virus might have adapted to human hosts. The search is a challenge, however: the samples contained very low levels of viral RNA — so little that some researchers have shied away from analysing the sequences altogether.</p><p> </p><p>“What I would want to see is higher quality,” says Ryan Langlois, a viral immunologist at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis. “I am very leery about interpreting anything from partial sequences.”</p><p>But for Hensley, one feature of the sequence fragments immediately leapt out: a single change in the string of amino acids that form a flu protein called hemagglutinin (the ‘H’ in H5N1). That protein sits on the surface of influenza viruses, where it helps the viruses bind to and infect host cells. It is also a target of flu vaccines.</p><p>The change that Hensley found creates a site to which a large sugar molecule can bind. That sugar, he says, could then act as an umbrella, shielding the swath of hemagglutinin beneath it. It is a change that his laboratory has studied in other flu strains, and it could affect how the virus binds to host cells — as well as whether vaccines being developed against the H5N1 virus found in cattle can recognize and perform well against the virus detected in Missouri.</p><h2>Surveillance gaps</h2><p>Even if the sequences were available, researchers know little about which genetic changes might allow bird flu viruses to better infect humans or to become airborne, says virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Previous studies<sup><a href="#ref-CR1" data-track="click" data-action="anchor-link" data-track-label="go to reference" data-track-category="references">1</a></sup><sup>,</sup><sup><a href="#ref-CR2" data-track="click" data-action="anchor-link" data-track-label="go to reference" data-track-category="references">2</a></sup> had suggested that changes to a gene encoding a protein responsible for copying the viral genome could be crucial for allowing the virus to replicate in mammalian cells. But researchers were unable to sequence that gene from the isolate from Missouri.</p><p>Meanwhile, the CDC has issued contracts to five companies in the United States to provide testing services for H5N1 and other emerging pathogens. Testing of cattle also needs to be improved so that public-health officials will know which regions of the country to surveil for infections in humans, says Seema Lakdawala, a virologist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. In the United States, most testing of cattle is regulated at the state level, but only a handful of states have required routine testing on some dairy farms.</p><p>Public-health workers still don’t have a good handle on how many US herds have cows infected with H5N1, or whether cattle have immunity after contracting bird flu or can become reinfected, she says.</p><p>While researchers wait for more information, Hensley cautions against panic. “This could still be a one-off case and not the sign of something bigger,” he says.</p> </div><br><div class="c-article-section__content" id="Bib1-content"><div data-container-section="references"><ol class="c-article-references" data-track-component="outbound reference" data-track-context="references section"><li class="c-article-references__item js-c-reading-companion-references-item" data-counter="1."><p class="c-article-references__text" id="ref-CR1">Imai, M. <i>et al.</i> <i>Nature</i> <b>486</b>, 420-428 (2012).</p><p class="c-article-references__links u-hide-print"><a data-track="click||click_references" rel="nofollow noopener" data-track-label="10.1038/nature10831" data-track-item_id="10.1038/nature10831" data-track-value="article reference" data-track-action="article reference" href="https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fnature10831" aria-label="Article reference 1" data-doi="10.1038/nature10831">Article</a>  <a data-track="click||click_references" rel="nofollow noopener" data-track-label="link" data-track-item_id="link" data-track-value="pubmed reference" data-track-action="pubmed reference" href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=22722205" aria-label="PubMed reference 1">PubMed</a>  <a data-track="click||click_references" data-track-action="google scholar reference" data-track-value="google scholar reference" data-track-label="link" data-track-item_id="link" rel="nofollow noopener" aria-label="Google Scholar reference 1" href="http://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?&title=&journal=Nature&doi=10.1038%2Fnature10831&volume=486&pages=420-428&publication_year=2012&author=Imai%2CM."> Google Scholar</a>  </p></li><li class="c-article-references__item js-c-reading-companion-references-item" data-counter="2."><p class="c-article-references__text" id="ref-CR2">Herfst, S. <i>et al.</i> <i>Science</i> <b>336</b>, 1534-1541 (2012).</p><p class="c-article-references__links u-hide-print"><a data-track="click||click_references" rel="nofollow noopener" data-track-label="10.1126/science.1213362" data-track-item_id="10.1126/science.1213362" data-track-value="article reference" data-track-action="article reference" href="https://doi.org/10.1126%2Fscience.1213362" aria-label="Article reference 2" data-doi="10.1126/science.1213362">Article</a>  <a data-track="click||click_references" rel="nofollow noopener" data-track-label="link" data-track-item_id="link" data-track-value="pubmed reference" data-track-action="pubmed reference" href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=22723413" aria-label="PubMed reference 2">PubMed</a>  <a data-track="click||click_references" data-track-action="google scholar reference" data-track-value="google scholar reference" data-track-label="link" data-track-item_id="link" rel="nofollow noopener" aria-label="Google Scholar reference 2" href="http://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?&title=&journal=Science&doi=10.1126%2Fscience.1213362&volume=336&pages=1534-1541&publication_year=2012&author=Herfst%2CS."> Google Scholar</a>  </p></li></ol><p class="c-article-references__download u-hide-print"><a data-track="click" data-track-action="download citation references" data-track-label="link" rel="nofollow" href="https://citation-needed.springer.com/v2/references/10.1038/d41586-024-03089-8?format=refman&flavour=references">Download references<svg width="16" height="16" focusable="false" role="img" aria-hidden="true" class="u-icon"><use xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="#icon-eds-i-download-medium"></use></svg></a></p></div></div>". Don't add the title at the beginning of the created content. Write it as if you want to inform the readers about who, what, when, where, why and how. Dont exceed 120 characters. Style: Maintain a professional level of formality suitable for a newspaper, but avoid overly complex language to ensure the content is accessible to a wide audience. Include keywords related to the news event and phrases likely to be used by readers searching for information on the topic. Tone: While keeping the tone professional, use engaging language to capture the reader's interest without sensationalizing. Reply in plain Text without putting the meta-description into any quotes. Excerpt:
Allgemein
19. September 2024
Vogelgrippe: Ausbreitung unter Menschen und wachsende Datenlücken stellen Forscher vor Herausforderungen
Craft a short meta-description for an article about "Is bird flu spreading among people? Data gaps leave researchers in the dark", in German. The article contains the following content: "<div class="c-article-body main-content"> <figure class="figure"> <picture class="embed intensity--high"> <source type="image/webp" srcset="https://media.nature.com/lw767/magazine-assets/d41586-024-03089-8/d41586-024-03089-8_27692490.jpg?as=webp 767w, https://media.nature.com/lw319/magazine-assets/d41586-024-03089-8/d41586-024-03089-8_27692490.jpg?as=webp 319w" sizes="(max-width: 319px) 319px, (min-width: 1023px) 100vw, 767px"> <img class="figure__image" alt="Avian influenza virus particles as a coloured transmission electron micrograph." loading="lazy" src="https://media.nature.com/lw767/magazine-assets/d41586-024-03089-8/d41586-024-03089-8_27692490.jpg"> <figcaption> </figcaption> </source></picture> </figure><p>All eyes are on Missouri.</p><p>Researchers are anxiously awaiting data from the midwestern state about a mysterious bird flu infection in a person who had no known contact with potential animal carriers of the disease. The data could reveal whether <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01256-5" data-track="click" data-label="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01256-5" data-track-category="body text link">the ongoing US bird flu outbreak in dairy cattle</a> has reached a dreaded turning point: the emergence of a virus capable of spreading from human to human.</p><p> </p><p>Thus far, data from the mysterious infection are few and far between: small snippets of the H5N1 virus’s genome sequence and an incomplete infection timeline. Ratcheting up concerns is the fact that no Missouri dairy farms have reported a <a href="https://www.nature.com/collections/jicdgbcgda" data-track="click" data-label="https://www.nature.com/collections/jicdgbcgda" data-track-category="body text link">bird </a><a href="https://www.nature.com/collections/jicdgbcgda" data-track="click" data-label="https://www.nature.com/collections/jicdgbcgda" data-track-category="body text link">flu</a> outbreak; this might be because there really are no infections, or because the state does not require farmers to test their cows for the virus.</p><p>“The fear is that the virus is spreading within the community at low levels, and this is the first time that we’re detecting it,” says Scott Hensley, a viral immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia. “There’s no data to suggest that to be the case, but that’s the fear.”</p><h2>A mystery case</h2><p>On 6 September, Missouri public-health officials and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that an adult in the state had developed symptoms including chest pain, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, and was hospitalized owing to other medical conditions. That person did not become severely ill and has recovered from the infection. Tests revealed it to be H5N1 influenza, often referred to as bird flu.</p><p>Since March, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01036-1" data-track="click" data-label="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01036-1" data-track-category="body text link">when the H5N1 virus was first detected in US dairy cattle</a>, there have been more than a dozen cases of human infection that were traced back to contact with infected animals, including cows and birds. The Missouri case stands out because investigators found no such link and no tie to unprocessed food products, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01624-1" data-track="click" data-label="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01624-1" data-track-category="body text link">such as raw milk</a>, from potentially infected livestock.</p><p> </p><p>This raised the possibility that the virus might have evolved to not only infect humans, but also to spread between people. If so, this increases the risk of it sweeping through human populations, potentially triggering a dangerous outbreak.</p><p>But that’s not the only possibility, cautions Jürgen Richt, a veterinary virologist at Kansas State University in Manhattan. “It’s a mystery case,” he says. “So you have to throw your net a little wider. Maybe they cleaned out a bird feeder in the household. Did they go to a state fair? What kind of food did they consume?”</p><p>More concerns were raised about the Missouri case on 13 September, when the CDC announced that two people who had close contact with the hospitalized person had also become ill around the same time. One of them was not tested for flu; the other tested negative.</p><p>That test result is encouraging but not definitive, says Hensley, because the sample could have been collected when the individual’s viral levels were too low for detection — after they started to recover, for instance. A key next step will be to test all three people for antibodies against the strain of H5N1 bird flu that has been infecting cattle. Such antibodies, particularly in the two contacts, would be definitive evidence of past infection.</p><h2>Genomic sleuthing</h2><p>While researchers await the antibody results, they are combing through patchy genome-sequence data from virus samples from the hospitalized person. This could yield any signs that the virus might have adapted to human hosts. The search is a challenge, however: the samples contained very low levels of viral RNA — so little that some researchers have shied away from analysing the sequences altogether.</p><p> </p><p>“What I would want to see is higher quality,” says Ryan Langlois, a viral immunologist at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis. “I am very leery about interpreting anything from partial sequences.”</p><p>But for Hensley, one feature of the sequence fragments immediately leapt out: a single change in the string of amino acids that form a flu protein called hemagglutinin (the ‘H’ in H5N1). That protein sits on the surface of influenza viruses, where it helps the viruses bind to and infect host cells. It is also a target of flu vaccines.</p><p>The change that Hensley found creates a site to which a large sugar molecule can bind. That sugar, he says, could then act as an umbrella, shielding the swath of hemagglutinin beneath it. It is a change that his laboratory has studied in other flu strains, and it could affect how the virus binds to host cells — as well as whether vaccines being developed against the H5N1 virus found in cattle can recognize and perform well against the virus detected in Missouri.</p><h2>Surveillance gaps</h2><p>Even if the sequences were available, researchers know little about which genetic changes might allow bird flu viruses to better infect humans or to become airborne, says virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Previous studies<sup><a href="#ref-CR1" data-track="click" data-action="anchor-link" data-track-label="go to reference" data-track-category="references">1</a></sup><sup>,</sup><sup><a href="#ref-CR2" data-track="click" data-action="anchor-link" data-track-label="go to reference" data-track-category="references">2</a></sup> had suggested that changes to a gene encoding a protein responsible for copying the viral genome could be crucial for allowing the virus to replicate in mammalian cells. But researchers were unable to sequence that gene from the isolate from Missouri.</p><p>Meanwhile, the CDC has issued contracts to five companies in the United States to provide testing services for H5N1 and other emerging pathogens. Testing of cattle also needs to be improved so that public-health officials will know which regions of the country to surveil for infections in humans, says Seema Lakdawala, a virologist at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. In the United States, most testing of cattle is regulated at the state level, but only a handful of states have required routine testing on some dairy farms.</p><p>Public-health workers still don’t have a good handle on how many US herds have cows infected with H5N1, or whether cattle have immunity after contracting bird flu or can become reinfected, she says.</p><p>While researchers wait for more information, Hensley cautions against panic. “This could still be a one-off case and not the sign of something bigger,” he says.</p> </div><br><div class="c-article-section__content" id="Bib1-content"><div data-container-section="references"><ol class="c-article-references" data-track-component="outbound reference" data-track-context="references section"><li class="c-article-references__item js-c-reading-companion-references-item" data-counter="1."><p class="c-article-references__text" id="ref-CR1">Imai, M. <i>et al.</i> <i>Nature</i> <b>486</b>, 420-428 (2012).</p><p class="c-article-references__links u-hide-print"><a data-track="click||click_references" rel="nofollow noopener" data-track-label="10.1038/nature10831" data-track-item_id="10.1038/nature10831" data-track-value="article reference" data-track-action="article reference" href="https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fnature10831" aria-label="Article reference 1" data-doi="10.1038/nature10831">Article</a>  <a data-track="click||click_references" rel="nofollow noopener" data-track-label="link" data-track-item_id="link" data-track-value="pubmed reference" data-track-action="pubmed reference" href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=22722205" aria-label="PubMed reference 1">PubMed</a>  <a data-track="click||click_references" data-track-action="google scholar reference" data-track-value="google scholar reference" data-track-label="link" data-track-item_id="link" rel="nofollow noopener" aria-label="Google Scholar reference 1" href="http://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?&title=&journal=Nature&doi=10.1038%2Fnature10831&volume=486&pages=420-428&publication_year=2012&author=Imai%2CM."> Google Scholar</a>  </p></li><li class="c-article-references__item js-c-reading-companion-references-item" data-counter="2."><p class="c-article-references__text" id="ref-CR2">Herfst, S. <i>et al.</i> <i>Science</i> <b>336</b>, 1534-1541 (2012).</p><p class="c-article-references__links u-hide-print"><a data-track="click||click_references" rel="nofollow noopener" data-track-label="10.1126/science.1213362" data-track-item_id="10.1126/science.1213362" data-track-value="article reference" data-track-action="article reference" href="https://doi.org/10.1126%2Fscience.1213362" aria-label="Article reference 2" data-doi="10.1126/science.1213362">Article</a>  <a data-track="click||click_references" rel="nofollow noopener" data-track-label="link" data-track-item_id="link" data-track-value="pubmed reference" data-track-action="pubmed reference" href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=22723413" aria-label="PubMed reference 2">PubMed</a>  <a data-track="click||click_references" data-track-action="google scholar reference" data-track-value="google scholar reference" data-track-label="link" data-track-item_id="link" rel="nofollow noopener" aria-label="Google Scholar reference 2" href="http://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?&title=&journal=Science&doi=10.1126%2Fscience.1213362&volume=336&pages=1534-1541&publication_year=2012&author=Herfst%2CS."> Google Scholar</a>  </p></li></ol><p class="c-article-references__download u-hide-print"><a data-track="click" data-track-action="download citation references" data-track-label="link" rel="nofollow" href="https://citation-needed.springer.com/v2/references/10.1038/d41586-024-03089-8?format=refman&flavour=references">Download references<svg width="16" height="16" focusable="false" role="img" aria-hidden="true" class="u-icon"><use xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="#icon-eds-i-download-medium"></use></svg></a></p></div></div>". 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18. September 2024
Quantensprung: Physiker beobachten erstmals verschränkte Quarks
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