In late 2020, COVID-19’s global death toll was rising as cold weather in the Northern Hemisphere and holiday gatherings spurred rapid transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in the absence of a vaccine. Scientists and public-health officials were desperate for new ways to track the virus, which often moved faster than contact tracers could follow it. Tong Zhang, … Read more
Hello Nature readers, would you like to get this Briefing in your inbox free every day? Sign up here. A typical mouse embryo (left) has four limbs. An embryo in which a particular gene was switched off halfway through development has six limbs, and several of its internal organs protrude from its abdomen.Credit: Anastasiia Lozovska … Read more
When Lisa McCorkell got COVID-19 in March 2020, her symptoms were mild. Her physicians told her to isolate from others and that she would recover in a few weeks. But the weeks stretched into months and McCorkell, who was working on a master’s degree in public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, started having … Read more
Hello Nature readers, would you like to get this Briefing in your inbox free every day? Sign up here. Surgeons at Xijing Hospital in Xi’an, China, performed the first transplantation of a non-human liver into a human body.Credit: Xijing Hospital, Air Force Medical University in Xi’an China Surgeons in China say they have transplanted a … Read more
People with long COVID often struggle to get sufficient support in the workplace; researchers are no exception.Credit: Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/Shutterstock Abby Koppes got COVID-19 in March 2020, just as the world was waking up to the unprecedented scale on which the virus was spreading. Her symptoms weren’t bad at first. She spent the early lockdown … Read more
Hello Nature readers, would you like to get this Briefing in your inbox free every day? Sign up here. The Nigerian health ministry has been told to investigate reports of deaths in the northeastern state of Gombe (pictured).Credit: Tolu Owoeye/Shutterstock Nigeria’s National Assembly has instructed the country’s health ministry to investigate a “strange disease” said … Read more
Landmark study contradicts misinformation about brain development and conditions like autism in children. The COVID vaccine is safe to administer during pregnancy, reports UC San Francisco in an important finding on the safety of the vaccine in infants — despite widespread fear and misinformation. The study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, is the first scientific inquiry … Read more
mRNA vaccines developed against the spike glycoprotein of severe acute respiratory syndrome type 2 coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), displayed remarkable efficiency in combating coronavirus 19 (COVID-19). These vaccines work by triggering both cellular and humoral immune responses against the spike protein of the virus. Cellular immunity may play a more protective role than humoral immunity to variants … Read more