WIKIMEDIA, PERETZ PARTENSKYResearchers this week (December 17) reported in Science the first small trial of a vaccine against the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in camels and, separately, the first direct evidence of camel-to-human MERS-CoV transmission.
“The state of the science on this emerging pathogen is still relatively young and there is much to learn about MERS-CoV biology, pathogenesis, and epidemiology,” Kayvon Modjarrad the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Bethesda, Maryland, who was not involved in the study, wrote in an email to The Scientist.
WIKIMEDIA; BRIAN BAER, NEERJA HAJELAEscherichia coli bacteria kept in a constant environment for nearly three decades show signs of continuing evolution, scientists at Michigan State University reported in Proceedings of the Royal Society B this week (December 16). Among other things, the team observed subpopulations of these bacteria increasing in fitness over time, but at different rates. Whether these experimentally controlled results might apply to organisms outside the lab is a matter of debate.
“We would certainly expect, in the real world, where environments are more heterogeneous, where populations are coevolving with other populations, that evolution is going to continue,” said John Thompson of the University of California, Santa Cruz, who did not take part in the study. “But what this [paper] says ...
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