#vaccine-carrying-mosquitoes

#vaccine-carrying-mosquitoes

In a study published in Science Advances, researchers in China fed Aedes aegypti mosquitoes blood that contained either a vaccine against Nipah virus or the rabies virus. The viruses, contained in the vaccines, replicated inside the insects and reached their salivary glands, allowing them to pass on the vaccine when feeding on bats or when the bats ate the insects.

Bats carry a lot of very deadly pathogens like Ebola virus, Nipah, Hendra, coronavirus, and also rabies virus. People are finding more and more bat-borne viruses. When such viruses are transmitted to humans, the results are often fatal so there's a lot of interest in trying to prevent spillover in the first place.

Temperature and rainfall influence where malaria-carrying mosquitoes such as Anopheles species can survive and how well malaria parasites, such as Plasmodium falciparum, develop in them. Past predictions have been inconsistent and have often focused on where malaria might spread, rather than on how severely it could intensify where it already exists.

For the first time, cameras in Africa captured a 'dynamic network' of wildlife interacting with thousands of infected bats believed to be carrying the Marburg virus, which is a rare but extremely dangerous disease that belongs to the same family as Ebola. The new videos revealed at least 14 different types of animals, including leopards, hyenas, monkeys, birds and rats, actively hunting herds of Egyptian fruit bats.

DNA variants near a gene called MSRB3 - which is important for hearing in humans - could determine whether a dog's ears are pendulous like a basset hound's or stubby like a rottweiler's. Researchers analysed the genomes of thousands of canines and found that small, single-letter changes to DNA in a region of the genome near MSRB3 could boost the gene's activity. The boost can increase the rate at which ear cells proliferate, resulting in longer ears.

In September, the USDA warned that an 8-month-old cow with an active NWS infection was found in a feedlot in the Mexican state of Nuevo León, just 70 miles from the border. The finding prompted Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller to step up warnings about the threat. " The screwworm is dangerously close," Miller said at the time. "It nearly wiped out our cattle industry before; we need to act forcefully now."

Florida Department of Health tracking shows that as of Feb. 7, the most recent data available, most cases in the state of the highly infectious disease are in Collier County, where, each day, more students and professors at Ave Maria University near Naples are showing symptoms. Although the state's tracking charts show 45 cases in college-aged students in the area, the university said in a statement this week that the total number of cases is nearer to 60.