disease & medicine, microbiology

Mix-and-match shots could simplify vaccine rollout and stimulate more-robust immune responses. Ongoing clinical trials will soon give answers.

Instead, the full report will be available in mid-March.

Sam Wilson discusses a user-friendly set of resources that he and his collaborators developed to aid labs pivoting to study COVID-19.

The P.1 variant, which has also been detected in five US states, could be responsible for cases of reinfection, according to a preprint.

A treatment of two monoclonal antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 is ninefold less effective in the lab against the B.1.351 variant than against the dominant version of the virus.

Johnson & Johnson’s one-shot immunization could reach people’s arms as early as March 2.

B.1.525 shares a mutation with the B.1.351 variant first detected in South Africa that seems to allow the virus to dodge the immune system.

The newly discovered microbe seems to be responsible for a mysterious neurological disease that has killed dozens of critically endangered Western chimpanzees.

Bacteria-infecting viruses affect the composition and behavior of microbes in the mammalian gut—and perhaps influence human biology.

Phages interact with bacteria and eukaryotic cells in ways that researchers suspect influence mammalian health.

A preprint casts doubt on vaccine effectiveness in light of certain mutations in the 501Y.V2 variant that emerged from South Africa.

Host vouchering, the practice of preserving species known to harbor infectious diseases, can be used to help determine a pathogen’s source, scientists say.

It’s too early to know whether the L452R version of SARS-CoV-2 is highly infectious like the B.1.1.7 UK variant that is also spreading around the US.

Few peer-reviewed clinical papers on the pandemic contained original data, and many of those that did had poor experimental design.

Zoo officials say the captive primates are recovering, but scientists worry the virus could spread quickly through dwindling wild populations.

See a news report on a study of expectant mothers with SARS-CoV-2 infections.

Compared with Zika and cytomegalovirus, the virus that causes COVID-19 appears to have a harder time penetrating the placenta and moving to a woman’s unborn baby.

Last year humanity confronted our biggest challenge in a century. Science helped us see the light at the end of the tunnel. But we need to keep moving forward to emerge.

The virus rarely spreads from mother to child before birth, but it can—and researchers are starting to investigate the path it takes.