OVERLOOKED NEWS ON HEALTH-RELATED BIOLOGY

One Health 2024-2025

This page was initiated in Hong Kong in year 2000, when blogs did not exist yet, at the HKU-Pasteur Research Centre Ltd, a joint venture between the University of Hong Kong and the Institut Pasteur, established by Antoine Danchin. It does not compete with information provided by news agencies such as Agence France Presse or Reuters but selects information occasionally not discovered by the mainstream media. It also provides some information on the History of Science and the creation of concepts used by modern biology. Access to the very nature of Science is discussed in a lecture given at Zhong Shan University (中山大學) in Guangzhou (广州). You can also follow our E-seminar for ongoing open discussions. Finally, the importance of China is stressed as an often enigmatic actor of the world development.

Unlike 10 years ago, when little information was available, there are now a multitude of data sources.  Crawford Kilian's blog, which has expanded to include all sorts of other diseases and which keeps track of the Web, is highly recommended. The Center for Infectious Disease Research Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota and the World Health Organization (WHO) sites are major sources of information. Many sites provide interesting information on seasonal flu (especially type A H3N2), avian flu (H5N1) and swine flu A (H1N1). For H7N7, H7N9, H3N8 and H9N2 influenza, see the Hong Kong Health Department alerts. In general, new emerging pathogens are mainly viruses. Note that among the possible outbreaks that would have negative consequences (much more so than the COVID-19 episode, which may be relatively mild, but would have negative consequences as it progresses) are influenza outbreaks, especially those related to the H2N2 serotype, which could be much more deadly. Hopefully, unlike SARS, the current outbreak will have served as a lesson.

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	12 April 2025. An outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease has just been discovered in Hungary. This has not happened in the country for over half a century, and European authorities fear it could spread.
	27 February 2025. A coronavirus related to the causative agent of MERS is discovered in Hong Kong. Although this discovery of a bat-borne virus(HKU5) is useful in establishing a link with the origin of MERS, which is spread by infection of dromedary camels, it is still a long way from identification of the origin of SARS-CoV-2. For the time being, the H5N1 influenza virus that is spreading in America seems to have acquired dangerous properties that allow it to infect mammals, including cows. It is not yet spreading from person to person (P2P), but this mode of transmission seems to have come closer.
	14 January 2025. The chikunguya epidemic in La Réunion has reached crisis level 3. The number of outbreaks of the disease and its distribution in this French overseas department are raising fears of an epidemic resurgence of this disease transmitted by the tiger mosquito Aedes albopictus.

	19 December 2024. Human transmission of H5N1 bovine influenza virus continues to emerge. Since cattle herds in the United States have been infected with the H5N1 avian flu, the number of people ill with the disease has increased and a first case of grave infection has been identified. It has become a fashionable trend in this country to drink raw milk, especially after the practice was promoted by Donald Trump's possible pick for Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy Jr.
	11 December 2024. Laboratory accidents involving deadly viruses do happen and they take far too long to detect. Samples of potentially lethal Hendra virus, lyssavirus (rabies) and hantavirus are unaccounted for after a deepfreeze storage system broke down at the state-run Forensic Science Queensland lab laboratory in Autralia. An investigation has been launched after it was revealed that 323 virus samples went missing from the Virology Laboratory in 2021 in a "major breach" of biosecurity protocol, Health Minister Tim Nicholls announced.
	22 November 2024. The international conference on genomics ICG-19 “Omics for All” is taking place at the BGI in Shenzhen. The theme of one session explores new metagenomic techniques for healthcare. New devices for single-cell metagenomic methods are presented, such as the application of long reads in single cells to identify alternative splicing expression of pre-messenger RNAs. The BGI is also developing an integrated approach to cataloging gene expression in all the cell types of an organism.
	2 October 2024. A new highly transmissible SARS-CoV-2 subvariant is rapidly spreading in Europe spread. Appearing in Germany in June 2024 before spreading rapidly throughout Europe, this new variant, named XEC, is a subvariant of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron strain, which has spawned many descendants since it emerged in 2021. The reason why we report here its emergence is not that it causes different symptoms (except for a higher proportion of diarrhoea as a symptom) or is more severe disease than other recent strains but because it is a recombinant strain—a hybrid resulting from a merger and rearrangement of two pre-existing omicfon subvariants, sublineages KP.3.3 and KS.1.1. Recombination is infrequent as it requires one person to be infected with two different strains of the same virus, or sometimes of other viruses, which implies contamination via multiple sources. This molecular process has previously contributed to the evolution of many viruses and was investigated at the origin of SARS in 2003.
	11 August 2024. The Western Passage north of Canada is open between Europe and Japan. This year, it is not yet possible to travel to Japan by sea via northern Russia, but the Western Passage is open. Autumn and winter are the time of year when respiratory viruses are most numerous. When COVID-19 appeared in 2020, SARS-CoV-2 joined influenza and syncytial viruses, which peak in the colder months. Since then, COVID-19 has become endemic, peaking twice a year, with one wave in summer. Several factors are responsible for the summer waves. By mid- to late summer, many people's immunity—either from their last vaccination in the autumn, or from a previous infection—has weakened. Human behavior also plays an important role. As the weather warms, we spend more time in air-conditioned places, where most virus transmission takes place. Finally, the proportion of asymptomatic people is increasing, which favors the spread of the virus.
	20 May 2024. The International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC) publishes guidance for prospective new members. The INSDC, which, since 1995, associates the DNA database of Japan (DDBJ), the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA-EBI) and the USA Genbank has finally decided to extend its international scope by associating new partners. The present guidance updates the INSDC mission, vision, governance, and provides a technical documentation for new members to apply. This is particularly important for open science at a time when sequencing genes and genomes has become common place.
	18 April 2024. A biodegradable gel containing nematodes protects corn against a caterpillar pest. The widespread abuse of pesticides not only contaminates the environment, but also leads to the rapid selection of resistant insect pests. Swiss researchers have come up with the idea of using a natural predator, encased in a gel that sticks to the plant, as an insecticidal agent. The armyworm Spodoptera frugiperda is fond of the gel stuck to the plant, and becomes infected by the nematodes trapped there, which multiply by killing it. This approach can be generalized and should soon be imitated.
	28 March 2024. Animals are heavily contaminated by human viruses. Genomic analysis of more than 12 million viral genomes performed by scientists at the University College in London, showed than among those, more than 3,000 jumped from one species to another vertebrate species. 79% jumped from one animal to another one, while the remaining involved our species. However, two third of the infections were from man-to-animal when one third was from animal-to-man. A considerable proportion involved domesticated animals and pets in particular. Change of host is always associated to a burst in the number of mutations affecting the virus, following its adaptation to its new host.
	23 January 2024. Catastrophic death score of elephant seal pups in South Argentina. The new influenza virus strain H5N1 is creating havoc in the Argentina's Valdés Peninsula: more than 17,000 elephant seal pups died suddently from the disease with corpses everywhere on shores. The most concerning observation is that contagion seems to have happen from pup to pup, and not from contact with other dead animals. Until recently the virus did not transmit within mammalian species but from infected birds to mammals. This new development should be closely monitored as the scope of infection might reach man.
	21 January 2024. A Chinese researcher uploaded a genetic sequence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus to a database linked to the INSDC on December 28, 2019, 2 weeks before the Chinese government formally released the sequence. The sequence was quickly deleted from the database (January 16, 2020), about one week after the China CDC entered an almost identical sequence on January 10, 2020 in a database associated to GenBank, an INSDC partner, on January 12. This information, previously mentioned, reinforces the mystery surrounding the origin of the pandemic.
	16 January 2024. We are not out of the woods yet: Laboratory experiments in China test a highly lethal coronavirus. In virology accidents are the rule, not the exception. How can we perceive the fact that at a high security laboratory of the chinese People Liberation Army, a group of "humanized" mice were administered with SARS-CoV-2-related pangolin coronavirus GX_P2V to test its effect. All mice died, after the disease had spread from the lungs to the brain. Notably, the virus had been adapted to mice cells through serial cell culture passages. The study is published in bioRxiv.
	1 January 2024. Anti-COVID-19 vaccines and emerging diseases. The USA-based project NextGen for a life-long vaccine against COVID-19 will begin large scale human experiments. Three vaccines have been chosen for phase 2b trials (10,000 participants): A self-amplifying synthetic RNA vaccine aiming to be “variant-proof” from Gritstone Bio; Covi-Vac/CoviLiv: A live virus intranasal vaccine from Codagenix; Castlevax viral vector intranasal vaccine, from a Mount Sinai Hospital spin-off. In this context it is important to remember that synthetic RNA slips into ribosomes when being translated, generating spurious polypeptides that are immunogenic. The consequences of this situation is not yet explored. In the case of possible flu epidemics, the reassortment of influenza viruses must be closely monitored. Finally, there is a strong and very dangerous propaganda trying to allow the development of "gain of function" (GoF) experiments, using the fact that the expression is extremely ambiguous. Supporters of the concept, for example, stress that heterologous expression of proteins in cells could be considered as resulting from a gain of function. This is obscuring the fact that making viruses innocuous to man propagate efficiently in human cells, for example, is a very dangerous GoF experiment, with no serious justification. It only serves to ensure the notoriety of its authors.