Ian Sample Science editor
New data links Covid-19’s origins to raccoon dogs at Wuhan market

Analysis of gene sequences by international team finds Covid-positive samples rich in raccoon dog DNA

Newly released genetic data gathered from a live food market in Wuhan has linked Covid-19 with raccoon dogs, adding weight to the theory that infected animals sold at the site started the coronavirus pandemic, researchers involved in the work say.

Swabs collected from stalls at the Huanan seafood market in the two months after it was shut down on 1 January 2020 were previously found to contain both Covid and human DNA. When the findings were published last year, Chinese researchers stated that the samples contained no animal DNA.

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23:23 173月, 2023
Ian Sample Science editor
New data links Covid-19’s origins to raccoon dogs at Wuhan market

Analysis of gene sequences by international team finds Covid-positive samples rich in raccoon dog DNA

Newly released genetic data gathered from a live food market in Wuhan has linked Covid-19 with raccoon dogs, adding weight to the theory that infected animals sold at the site started the coronavirus pandemic, researchers involved in the work say.

Swabs collected from stalls at the Huanan seafood market in the two months after it was shut down on 1 January 2020 were previously found to contain both Covid and human DNA. When the findings were published last year, Chinese researchers stated that the samples contained no animal DNA.

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23:23 173月, 2023
Nicola Davis and Amy Hawkins
How seriously should we take the US DoE’s Covid lab leak theory?

Department of Energy’s updated report on origins of coronavirus pandemic jars with most scientists’ assessments

According to the Wall Street Journal, an updated and classified 2021 US energy department report has concluded that the coronavirus behind the recent pandemic most likely emerged from a laboratory leak but not as part of a weapons programme.

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02:24 282月, 2023
Kalpana Sunder
Plucky idea: the feather library providing a visual A to Z of India’s birds

Finding a trapped silverbill during lockdown inspired Esha Munshi to create an invaluable record of species in an uncertain world

  • Photographs supplied by the Feather Library

Esha Munshi, an architect based in Ahmedabad, has “breathed birds” as far back as she can remember. She has travelled all over India on birding trips and has, she says, spotted 1,060 of the 1,400 bird species in the country.

But it was at home, during the Covid-19 lockdown in 2020, that she saw an Indian silverbill caught in the protective netting on her balcony, attracting the attention of her cat. Although the bird escaped, some of its feathers were damaged. When Munshi saw the exquisite markings and patterns, she tried to identify the bird, but was struck by how little information there was online.

Feathers from a red-necked falcon

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16:00 241月, 2023
Graeme Green
Wolverine fish and blind eel among 212 new freshwater species

Report from Shoal on 2021’s newly described species shows ‘there are still hundreds and hundreds more freshwater fish scientists don’t know about yet’


Scientists are celebrating 212 “new” freshwater fish species, including a blind eel found in the grounds of a school for blind children and a fish named Wolverine that is armed with a hidden weapons system.

The New Species 2021 report, released by the conservation organisation Shoal, shows just how diverse and remarkable the world’s often undervalued freshwater species are, and suggests there is plenty more life still to be discovered in the world’s lakes, rivers and wetlands.

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18:00 243月, 2022
Kalpana Sunder. Photographs by Sarang Naik
‘Every time the tide recedes, it’s a new world’: Mumbai’s marine life revealed

A group of sea life enthusiasts is documenting a wealth of species thriving in the shadow of India’s most populous city, from glowing coral to octopuses

A hidden forest of algae sponges and hydroids photographed at low tide; a stunning night image of green button polyps under ultraviolet light; and a beautiful shot of a honeycomb moray eel stuck on a ledge on a rocky shore. Mumbai may be a bustling metropolis, but photographer Sarang Naik’s aesthetic and vibrant images of marine life show a different side of the city.

When Naik first started exploring the coast of urban Mumbai, India’s financial capital and home to Bollywood stars, he was astounded by the diversity of creatures that he came across – from hermit crabs, barnacles and a baby octopus to zoanthids (colourful disc-shaped relatives of coral) and prickly sea urchins. The intertidal zone or foreshore – where the land is exposed at low tide and is under water at high tide – is home to diverse marine life over different terrains, from mudflats to beaches and mangroves.

Clockwise from top: a honeycomb moray eel stranded at low tide at Breach Candy; a nudibranch sea slug on coralline algae; zoanthids glowing in UV Light at Malabar Hill rocky shore; squid babies inside an egg mass; an Elysia sea slug feeding on algae in a tide pool

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16:15 142月, 2022
Linda Geddes
Hamsters can transmit Covid to humans, data suggests

Research confirms a pet shop was the likely source of the recent Delta variant outbreak in Hong Kong

Pet hamsters can transmit Covid to humans and are the likely source of a recent outbreak of the Delta variant in Hong Kong, data suggests.

The research confirms fears that a pet shop was the source of a recent Covid outbreak in the city, which has seen at least 50 people infected and led to the culling of more than 2,200 hamsters.

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02:00 92月, 2022
Reuters in Tokyo
Scientists use ostrich cells to make glowing Covid detection masks

Japanese researchers use bird antibodies to detect virus under ultraviolet light

Japanese researchers have developed masks that use ostrich antibodies to detect Covid-19 by glowing under ultraviolet light.

The discovery, by Yasuhiro Tsukamoto and his team at Kyoto Prefectural University in western Japan, could provide for low-cost testing of the virus at home.

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17:43 1012月, 2021
Helen Davidson in Taipei
Beijing school pupils in lockdown after staff tests positive for Covid

Parents alarmed as children held overnight before some sent to centralised quarantine for two weeks

Children as young as seven were held for hours in a Beijing school before being sent to centralised quarantine for two weeks after a staff member tested positive for Covid-19.

The incident, which drew alarm from parents and observers, came amid a rush of extreme measures imposed on the city over about 40 cases of the Delta variant, part of a national outbreak affecting at least 16 of China’s 31 provinces. Tighter curbs are expected after the National Health Commission reported a near three-month high on Tuesday, with 93 new local symptomatic cases, up from 54 a day earlier.

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19:32 311月, 2021
Hazem Badr, Helen Mendes and Papiya Bhattacharya
Local Covid vaccines fill gap as UN Covax scheme misses target

India, Egypt and Cuba among first states to develop and make their own vaccines as Covax falls behind

Developing countries are increasingly turning to homegrown Covid vaccinations as the UN-backed Covax programme falls behind.

While western countries roll out booster jabs to their own populations, Covax, which was set up by UN agencies, governments and donors to ensure fair access to Covid-19 vaccines for low- and middle-income countries, has said it will miss its target to distribute 2bn doses globally by the end of this year.

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15:00 1310月, 2021
Reuters
Prenatal gene test Nifty under international scrutiny amid links to Chinese military

Five countries are assessing the BGI Group test amid regulatory concerns about genetic data being sent abroad

Health regulators in five countries are examining a prenatal test that collects the DNA of women and foetuses for research after it emerged the test’s manufacturer has links to China’s military.

Some doctors and clinics that promoted and sold the test, marketed under the brand name Nifty, said they were unaware that Shenzhen-based BGI Group also conducts research with the Chinese military.

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10:36 79月, 2021
Robin McKie Science Editor
The Wuhan lab leak theory is more about politics than science

Whatever this week’s Biden review finds, the cause of the pandemic lies in the destruction of animal habitats

If Joe Biden’s security staff are up to the mark, a new report on the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic will be placed on the president’s desk this week. His team was given 90 days in May to review the virus’s origins after several US scientists indicated they were no longer certain about the source of Sars-CoV-2.

It will be intriguing to learn how Biden’s team answers the critically important questions that still surround the origins of Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. Did it emerge because of natural viral spillovers from bats to another animal and then into humans? Or did it leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology? And, if so, had it been enhanced to make it especially virulent?

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17:30 228月, 2021
Helen Davidson in Taipei
China refuses further inquiry into Covid-19 origins in Wuhan lab

WHO proposal to audit Chinese laboratories is ‘arrogance towards science’, says health official

China’s government has refused to cooperate with the second stage of an international investigation into the origins of Covid-19, labelling a proposal to audit Chinese labs as “arrogance towards science”.

Chinese health officials held a press conference on Thursday to respond to last week’s proposal by the World Health Organization that the second phase of its investigation into the origins of the pandemic should include “audits of relevant laboratories and research institutions operating in the area of the initial human cases identified in December 2019”, meaning the city of Wuhan.

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17:59 227月, 2021
Letters
Reasons to be fearful of China’s data-gathering | Letters

We should be suspicious of the role of the Chinese Communist party in the harvesting of genetic data from unborn babies, argues William Matthews

In her column (What does the Chinese military want with your unborn baby’s genetic data?, 10 July), Arwa Mahdawi suggested that the alleged involvement of the People’s Liberation Army (which is directly answerable to the Chinese Communist party) with BGI’s data-gathering (likewise answerable as a China-based company) is essentially equivalent to data-gathering by western companies. To suggest that the former case is worse, she argued, “smacks of Sinophobia”.

As a scholar of China, I cannot agree. While the harvesting of genetic data by any company is frightening and fraught with ethical issues, it should be obvious that this is a false equivalence. It is undoubtedly worse if genetic data is gathered by a company which must also comply with the rule of the Chinese Communist party (CCP) and its military-industrial complex, a regime which harvests and aggregates data on its citizens on a massive scale and uses it directly to implement the most repressive system of social control on earth in Xinjiang.

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22:00 177月, 2021
Peter Beaumont
Leading biologist dampens his ‘smoking gun’ Covid lab leak theory

Nobel laureate David Baltimore says he overstated case, and the origins of the virus are still unknown

A Nobel prize-winning US biologist, who has been widely quoted describing a “smoking gun” to support the thesis that Covid-19 was genetically modified and escaped from a Wuhan lab, has said he overstated the case.

David Baltimore, a distinguished biology professor, had become one of the most prominent figures cited by proponents of the so-called lab leak theory.

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20:48 96月, 2021
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