which can harbour human pathogens and must be kept at precise temperatures and fed particular nutrients.
For example, the rare lysosomal storage disease mucopolysaccharidosis I is treated using enzyme-replacement therapy. The enzymes must be made in cells,
Need for flu surveillance reiteratedthe emergence of the H1n1 influenza virus that leapt from pigs to humans in 2009,
triggering a global pandemic, reminded us of the need to monitor animals such as pigs that can host the development of dangerous viral strains.
and his colleagues have isolated a new strain of H1n2 influenza from Korean pigs that kills infected ferrets the model animal of choice for influenza work
Like that responsible for the 2009 pandemic, the new strain, known as Sw/1204, is a'triple-reassortant'virus that is, one with genes from avian, swine and human flu.
Choi wanted to assess the pandemic potential of Korean strains. His team tested two H1n2
and two H3n2 viruses isolated from pig abattoirs before the 2009 pandemic. Most of these viruses did not cause any signs of serious disease in ferrets.
but not transmissibility, in the pandemic H1n1 strain. NA315N has also been found before, but its role is less clear.
Recent experiments show how Avian flu may become transmissible among mammals. In an era of constant and rapid international travel,
global pandemics and/or deliberate biological attacks? To further improve preparedness, we must continue to invest in the best public health monitoring systems that can be built.
and manufacturing to increase scientific understanding of new pathogens and improve response time when they emerge.
One in four people were getting sick every year due to food-borne illness, and children and the elderly were more at risk.
bolstered surveillance used to detect contamination problems earlier, and responded to illness outbreaks faster. I am also working to bolster the use of organic farming methods
and minimize pesticides and antibiotics in our food. I set the ambitious goal to increase the number of certified organic operations by 20 percent â oe
Preventive practices are the best tool to reduce the incidence of food-borne illnesses because they provide the greatest control over the potential risks of contamination
and are generally the most cost-effective. These practices are developed best by growers, handlers, processors,
to develop specific guidance for the commodities most often associated with food-borne illness outbreaks.
boosting the risk of food-borne illnesses and diarrhoeal diseases, they add.""Food safety will in future be a crucial issue.
Subsequent epidemiological studies involving tens of thousands of people have looked for links between acrylamide and various forms of cancer in humans
among those who had smoked never, women consuming about 40 â°micrograms of acrylamide per day doubled their risk of developing cancers of the womb
Phones and tumours Italy s highest civil court has stated that mobile phones can cause brain tumours to the dismay of medical experts who say no study has proven a clear causal link between health risks
the court ruled in favour of a commerce manager who claimed his tumour was a consequence of the heavy phone usage demanded by his job.
The cull was scheduled to start imminently as part of efforts to control bovine tuberculosis, which badgers can transmit to cattle (see Nature 490,317-318;
spent more than a decade developing a spinal-cord-injury treatment derived from human embryonic stem cells
saying that Geron s cancer therapeutics are a better investment. See go. nature. com/tihbe6 for more.
WHONEW cases of tuberculosis (TB) fell by 2. 2%between 2010 and 2011, the World health organization said in its annual report on the disease.
and noticed these lesions that looked like they were from injuries, explains Joseph Peterson, a palaeontologist at the University of Wisconsin in Oshkosh.
He wondered whether the fossilized injury was one of a kind or whether such lesions were common.
To find out, Peterson and his colleague Collin Dischler started examining more domes. Together, they were able to look at 102 domes from fossil collections around the world.
Of these, 23 had lesions. Fascinated by the presence of so many injuries, Peterson and Dischler produced a three-dimensional computer model of a pachycephalosaur skull
and mapped injuries onto it. They noted that the shape of the dome differed from fossil to fossil
and that the placement of the injuries depended on the shape of the skull. Skulls with low domes tended to have injuries at the front,
whereas skulls with higher domes had distributed lesions evenly between the front and back. The finding hinted that the pachycephalosaurs with differently shaped skulls were bumping heads in different ways.
To find out what those ways were considered, the researchers the butting of sheep, goats and bison."
"The lesions we were seeing were strikingly similar to those that we often see on the skulls of modern mammals that ram heads,
says Peterson. The team found that bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) charge each other head on; that mountain goats (Oreamos americanus) bump one another in the flanks;
On the basis of these examples, Peterson and Dischler speculate that the high-domed pachycephalosaurs with parietal injuries were side-bumping like mountain goats,
and that the frontal injuries are indicative of bison-like wrestling.""It could be that we are seeing two different species bashing in different ways,
whether the lesions really are butt prints.""It is an intriguing study but after examining one of these injuries
I found it hard to rule out the possibility that this might have simply been the skull being chipped after death,
if the lesion sites actually suffered trauma, he says. Whatever the outcome, seven-year-olds will undoubtedly keep on bashing
Alzheimer s disease and type 2 diabetes in the United states cannot be taken seriously. But the film reflects attitudes that have thwarted Van Eenennaam s research into the genetic modification of animals to reduce food costs
the childhood diarrhoea that the goats milk is intended to treat is a serious problem in the north of the country.
including chickens engineered to be resistant to the bird-flu virus. A BBSRC spokesperson told Nature:"
it is a menace that infects their cattle with bovine tuberculosis (TB). The disease, caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium bovis,
but they hope that it will at least help to stabilize infection rates. Boyd insists that the new policy is rooted in the science of the RBCT.
Roundup, showed increased incidences of cancer (G.-E. SÃ ralini et al. Food Chem. Toxicol. http://doi. org/jgq;
but industry officials continue to question the source of the contamination. see go. nature. com/xzorhp for more. UK funding boost The UK government will add £200 million (US$321 million to a fund to promote research partnerships between universities and industry,
Dystrophy drug hope The experimental drug eteplirsen may help patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), a clinical trial of 12 boys with the condition reported on 3 october.
which is caused by mutations in a gene on the X chromosome and eventually leads to paralysis and death.
One of those animals, a cow, secretes milk that lacks an allergy-inducing protein because researchers accurately blocked its production using the technique of RNA interference1.
For years, researchers tried to remove the allergy-inducing milk protein beta-lactoglobulin from cow's milk
which can cause diarrhea and vomiting in some toddlers. They tried replacing the gene encoding beta-lactoglobulin with a defective form,
LDLS build up and lead to atherosclerosis. Pigs with this condition may be reliable models of human atheroscelerosis in biomedical research.
The TALEN-modified pig is not the first model of human heart disease (see Model pigs face a messy path),
Breast-milk molecule raises risk of HIV transmissiona type of sugar that occurs naturally in breast milk can double the likelihood of a HIV-negative baby acquiring the virus through breast feeding
if the mother has HIV. The molecule, called 3'-sialyllactose (3'-SL), is found in varying concentrations in the milk of different women.
In a study in Zambia, HIV-negative newborns breastfed by HIV-positive mothers are twice as likely to catch the virus during their first month of life
HIV-negative infants who consumed these sugars had a better chance of reaching their second birthday than did HIV-negative babies who drank breast milk lacking those sugars irrespective of their mothers'HIV status. Once a baby had caught HIV, however
And, potentially, those women whose milk is found to contain less favourable biochemical characteristics such as HIV-positive mothers who make lots of 3'-SL might consider giving their infants donor breast milk in place of their own.
whether a HIV-positive woman in Zambia who learns that she produces 3'-SL-rich breast milk should switch to formula feeding,
which would raise the chance of her baby succumbing to other intestinal and respiratory infections.
Newberg was part of a team that reported2 an association between a dangerous gut disease in babies called necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC)
So the pig became the first model for retinitis pigmentosa, a cause of blindness. And four years ago, researchers created a pig model of cystic fibrosis2 that
and then suffer for it to develop models of diabetes. One pig model carries a mutant transgene that limits the effectiveness of incretin,
Mice with the transgene developed unexpectedly severe diabetes, but the pigs have a more subtle pre-diabetic condition that better models the human disease."
"This shows the importance of using an animal with a relevant physiology, says Wolf. Pig models are now being developed for other common conditions,
including Alzheimer s disease, cancer and muscular dystrophy. This work will be enriched by the discovery, reported in the genome paper,
early knowledge about the pig genome led to the discovery in 1991 of a gene involved in porcine stress syndrome, in
Having the full genome should also help investigators to breed out susceptibility to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS),
Fungal meningitis pathogen discovers new appetite for human brainsthe nation's ongoing fungal meningitis outbreak has killed 30
But just how a pathogen typically associated with the great outdoors got into the three lots of injectable steroids prepared inside an admittedly filthy laboratory
when he heard the identity of the pathogen in the epidemic that originated with the New england Compounding Center pharmacy in Framingham, Mass."
and defensive enzymes and proteins typically were sufficient to keep the infection in check, but not strong enough to eliminate it.
I think it's just a general weak pathogen of plants, Leonard says, something that can infect plants
although it was not nearly as common as several more severe corn pathogens. It was an opportunist
and protects human skin seem to be generating more human infections for reasons he does not understand.
in addition to causing soft-tissue infections, has provoked also rarely sinus or eye infections, primarily in immunocompromised patients.
an environment where the immune system has a very difficult time eliminating or even just controlling infection.
Those who suffered the worst infections, he speculates, were probably those in whom the needle accidentally penetrated the dura mater,
The deadly disease, Bogia Coconut Syndrome, is threatening the survival of a gene bank of region's most important tree
At present, both the pathogen and its epidemiology are understood poorly. We are supporting research to try to identify the Bogia Coconut Syndrome vector
and better understand the host range of this disease. Once we have that information, everyone will be placed better to assess the threat both to coconuts and livelihoods in general
Fossil evidence implies that this zombifying infection might have been happening for at least 48 million years. Recent research also suggests that different species of the fungus might specialize to infect different groups of ants across the globe.
added together, make this parasite one of the most insidious infections or perhaps that honor goes to the parasite that ultimately kills the killer parasite.
Deadly infection This clever Ophiocordyceps fungus depends on ants to reproduce and spread, but it has found an abundant host animal.
displaying convulsions that make them fall down and thus preclude them from returning to the canopy,
Ants that have been dissected at this stage of infection reveal heads already full of fungal cells. Eventually, an affected ant will stop on the underside of one leaf, roughly 25 centimeters from the forest floor,
Scientists have found that the fungus also triggers atrophy in its victim's muscles specifically those around its mandibles.
This atrophy is prompted by metabolites that purge the muscle cells of mitochondria and sarcoplasmic reticulum (which provide energy and signals), according to the BMC Ecology research.
when the infected ant bites onto the leaf vein in it's so-called death grip this atrophy causes it to have lockjaw,
As a deadly infection it could severely damage an ant colony. But, if another parasite renders more than half of its mature spores infertile
but this will not stop the pathogen from killing up to 99%of the ash trees in the country,
500 square kilometres of British countryside looking for sites of infection, which as of today number 129.
Because the sites of infection are scattered across the country, the spores were blown probably on the wind from continental Europe,
"If a small number of trees have survived the very intense epidemic in Demark, then there is hope for us here,
and meanwhile the pathogen moved west across Europe. The latest research indicates that H. pseudoalbidus is native to Japan,
the trees had little ability to cope with the pathogen, and Woodward says that there is little that can be done now."
the worldwide spread of plant pathogens shows little sign of abating in a globalized economy."
Food and Rural affairs. We need to treat plant diseases as seriously as we do said animal diseases, Paterson this morning."
"We need a radical rethink in how we deal with plant diseases, and the word is radical
and was part-funded by the US National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney diseases,
including higher incidence of tumours and earlier mortality than controls. The review s conclusion that the study was designed"inadequately,
Mess in Texas The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) announced the freezing of an US$11-million commercialization grant to Peloton Therapeutics in Dallas on 29 november,
The finding comes on the heels of months of controversy about an $18-million unreviewed CPRIT grant to the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston (see Nature 486,169-171;
and BRCA2 gene variants linked to inherited breast and ovarian cancer. See go. nature. com/jbqdxl for more.
HSCICMMR vaccination The immunization of children in England against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) by 24 Â months of age has reached now more than 90,
about safety data from clinical trials of a drug for Alzheimer s disease before the results were made public.
whereas industry funding has grown (mostly owing to investments in trials for dengue vaccines). 7 december Climate negotiators end a fortnight of debate at the United nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Doha. go. nature. com/wnhovv12 December British scientists start 100
Global Fund boost Germany has announced a donation of  1  billion (US$1. 3  billion) to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS
Tuberculosis and Malaria for the period 2012-16, of which  600  million is new money.
and to find molecular markers that distinguish between different strains of the pathogen and that could be used to develop tailored strategies for its control.
as well as from Kenya, India, Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe, to screen for resistant coffee plants and to analyse varieties of the pathogen."
where it is required to provide local solutions to the epidemics, he says
Obama rekindles climate hopesthroughout his reelection campaign, US President Barack Obama rarely said the words climate change.
with countries claiming that there is new information on harm caused by the crops that is yet to be evaluated.
stance on food-borne illness. One of the two proposed regulations requires food makers to develop plans for preventing contamination;
the other sets safety standards for farms that grow produce, including, for example, permitted levels of microbes in irrigation water.
Boston pathogen lab The US National institutes of health (NIH) will support a plan for a laboratory in Boston, Massachusetts,
to work with some of the world s most dangerous pathogens. On 2 Â January, the NIH announced its final determination that Boston University s National Emerging Infectious diseases Laboratory poses little risk to the surrounding community.
The laboratory, which had been under review at NIH since 2001, must win approvals from state and local authorities before it can upgrade its research to biosafety level 4, the highest level of containment.
It will transfer cell lines, its early clinical programme in spinal-cord injury, and some 400 patents and patent applications to a subsidiary of Biotime, a company in Alameda,
Verinata Health, based in Redwood City, California, markets a test for chromosomal abnormalities, such as Down s syndrome,
and food safety groups are concerned about contamination of food crops with products from a new generation of crops engineered to produce chemicals or pharmaceuticals.
It gave birth to blind, hairless young, one at a time. Its brain was folded highly, and it had three pairs of molars on each jaw."
But thousands of residents soon complained of nausea, chest pains and rashes, suggesting that the all-clear had been sounded too early.
Eleven days after the accident, the national government designated the area a special disaster zone,
So far more than 12,000 Â people have claimed compensation for their injuries, and Woo Kuck Hyeun,
recreated the trauma, says Kim Sangho, an elementary-school teacher, explaining why he has returned not yet to his home."
Mapping the H7n9 avian flu outbreakssources: Multiple, including WHO and Xinhua News agency. To download map file to view in Google earth,
The first known cases of human infection with H7n9 were reported in China on 31 march, with two cases in Shanghai on the eastern seaboard and one in the neighbouring province of Anhui.
Risk maps developed for human infection by another, well-established avian flu virus H5n1 may help to target H7n9 surveillance and control efforts.
The map shows human cases of H7n9 (blue circles) superimposed on a risk map developed for H5n1,
Marius Gilbert, a co-author of one such study published in PLOS Pathogens in 20111, and an expert in the epidemiology and ecology of avian flu viruses at the Free University of Brussels, says that
although the risk factors for H7n9 may be given different the current dearth of information, H5n1 risk maps are probably a good starting point for identifying areas most at risk.
an animal epidemic that has spread abroad, or the international spread of a partially or fully human-adapted virus. Maps presented are for data-visualization purposes only;
and Republican senator Roger Wicker (Mississippi) was charged with threatening injury and death by the Federal bureau of investigation on 18 april.
Lawsuit settlement Cancer researcher Philippe Bois has settled a lawsuit against the US Department of health and human services (DHHS) over scientific misconduct, according to an announcement on 18 Â April.
even though burning them would cause a catastrophic rise in global temperatures. 24-25 april On World Malaria Day (25 april),
scientists review research advances at the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. go. nature. com/wfnyw227-30 april Flu pandemics,
the resurgence of measles and antimicrobial resistance are discussed all at the European Society of Clinical Microbiology
and Infectious diseases meeting in Berlin. go. nature. com/jyfhwf
Europe debates risk to beesdebate over neonicotinoids has become fierce. Conservation groups and politicians in the United kingdom and Europe have called for a ban on their use,
but agricultural organizations have said that farmers will face hardship if that happens. Next Monday, European governments will take a crucial vote on
because many of the lab studies that have shown harm may have fed bees unrealistically high doses of neonicotinoids.
HIV in breastmilk spikes at weaningthe amount of HIV in an infected mother s breast milk spikes
and abruptly are no more likely to avoid contracting HIV than do those who continue to breastfeed, a finding from in a randomized clinical trial of 958 HIV-infected women in Lusaka,
The milk from women who then stopped breastfeeding abruptly contained markedly higher levels of HIV than did milk from the women who continued to breastfeed exclusively:
including how much HIV was in the mother s blood. The team also analysed changes within individual women,
HIV levels in milk rose markedly between samples taken just before weaning and those taken two weeks later;
"Weaning leads to increases in HIV concentrations in breast milk. That s the big message of the paper, says Aldrovandi."
adds Lynne Mofenson, head of the Maternal and Pediatric Infectious disease Branch at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Bethesda, Maryland.
if mother-to-child transmission of HIV is to be prevented. The current practice of giving mothers one to two weeks of anti-retroviral therapy after weaning may not be enough,
The authors hypothesize that HIV crosses more easily from blood to milk during weaning because the tight junctions between mammary epithelial cells become leaky,
H7n9 bird flu poised to spreadthe H7n9 avian flu virus greatly expanded its geographical range over the weekend,
Though these can arise by infection from a common source, they can also signal that limited human-to-human transmission has occurred.
That is because reduced virulence can often point to further genetic adaptation of the virus to infection of human beings and thus greater potential to spread.
with 63 infections and 14 deaths reported as of Monday, up from 24 cases barely a week ago.
even if it remains an infection that people catch from animals, says Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public health in Boston, Massachusetts.
or control because it does not cause serious illness in poultry and other birds has been reinforced by the new cases in Beijing and Henan province.
says Marius Gilbert, an expert in the epidemiology and ecology of avian flu viruses at the Universitã libre de Bruxelles in Belgium.
such as the pesticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and the herbicide Agent orange, can cause diseases such as cancers, neurological disorders, reproductive dysfunction and birth defects.
Urgent search for flu sourcevirologists know its name: H7n9. What they don t yet know is
whether this novel avian influenza virus first reported in humans in China less than two weeks ago will rapidly fizzle out,
or morph into a virus that can spread easily between people and spark a deadly pandemic.
who heads the University of Minnesota s Center for Infectious disease Research and Policy in Minneapolis. As Nature went to press,
Scientists urgently want to find out which sources are stoking the human infections that result in flu-like symptoms and, in most reported cases, severe pneumonia.
says Malik Peiris, a flu virologist at the University of Hong kong. Sources: WHO/ECDC/Xinhua state mediabut the various bird species found to be infected may not be the original source,
because much cross-infection can occur in live markets. Investigators must now trace which farms
Researchers know that H7 flu viruses mainly infect wild birds such as ducks, geese, waders and gulls,
Kwok-Yung Yuen, an infectious-disease expert at the University of Hong kong, notes the proximity of the reported human cases to the Yangtze river delta
He also co-convenes the Asia-Pacific Working group on Migratory Waterbirds and Avian influenza with the Food and agriculture organization of the united nations (FAO.
creating a reservoir that might lead to continued, sporadic human infections. Health authorities in China are trying to learn to what extent that has happened already.
says Masato Tashiro, a virologist at the Influenza Virus Research center in Tokyo, the World health organization s influenza reference
and research centre in Japan. Each time the virus encounters new human hosts, it has fresh opportunities to mutate
and track new cases of suspicious severe pneumonia and their close contacts, and to isolate people if necessary.
Researchers working on the molecular biology of the virus say that it seems to derive from a reassortment of genetic material from at least three known bird-flu groups (see Nature http//doi. org/k4j;
Because flu viruses evolve rapidly, comparing viral sequences from each of the human cases might reveal
says Andrew Rambaut, an expert in the evolution of human viral pathogens at the University of Edinburgh, UK.
it would imply that each person had picked separately up infections from birds. Only four sequences from four human cases are so far available,
and posting them on the GISAID flu database. If human-to-human transmission does start to occur,
Humanity has never been exposed widely to H7 or N9 flu viruses, and so lacks resistance to these subtypes.
If a pandemic were to occur, it would probably have a severe toll. But it is too early to predict how events will unfold;
experts in emerging infectious disease are only just becoming acquainted with the latest villain in their roster
Lack of water makes plants less capable of fending off pathogens and insects. After the 2003 heatwave, caterpillars devastated Mediterranean oak forests near Montpellier in France.
"In others, even significant anomalies seem to cause only little harm. CARBO-Extreme teams have conducted field experiments that simulated drought in different climates and vegetation types, from Atlantic pine forests to alpine meadows.
Bird flu deaths Two men have died after being infected with a type of bird flu never before seen in humans
The nation s support for cheap generic drugs has reduced prices, notably those of anti-HIV medicines.
Diabetes drug US regulators have given the green light to the first in a new class of drugs to treat diabetes.
last year regulators shot down another such drug, dapagliflozin, citing cancer concerns. Source: US National Snow and Ice Data Centera record low in the extent of sea ice in the Arctic last September has been followed by a record refreezing of uncovered ocean surface,
and"the increasing dominance of first-year ice in the Arctic. 6-10 april Discussions on mapping the epigenomes of cancer take place at the American Association for Cancer Research s annual meeting in WASHINGTON DC. go. nature. com
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