Starting with a bacterial protein, directed evolution in the laboratory has been used to produce a virus-like capsid that binds and protects RNA. This finding has implications for the origins of viruses. One view of the evolution of life is that viruses were present even before the first cells in ...

Gertrud U. Rey Vaccination against the vaccine-preventable diseases is preferable to natural infection because it prevents illness and the long-term effects associated with many infections; and in most cases, it also leads to better immunity. In the case of immunity induced by SARS-CoV-2 vaccination, it is slowly becoming clear that ...

All human viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, arose from spillovers from other animals. Results of a recent study of bat samples collected in a small region of Yunnan Province, China revealed additional close relatives of SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV. After the identification of SARS-CoV-2 in early 2020, wildlife sampling and retrospective genome sequencing ...

The emergence and spread throughout Europe of a SARS-CoV-2 variant, 20E (EU1) in the summer of 2020 illustrates how a virus may become dominant not by increased transmissibility but through travel and lack of effective containment and screening. The SARS-CoV-2 variant 20E (EU1) emerged in Spain in the summer of ...

by Gertrud U. Rey The absence of infection with some parasitic worms (also known as helminths) often coincides with the development of asthma, allergy, and autoimmune disorders, suggesting that these worms may have co-evolved a commensal relationship with their human hosts. However, infection with these worms may also lead to ...