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May 07, 2020 , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Researchers in the US and UK have identified hundreds of mutations to the virus which causes the disease Covid-19.

But none has yet established what this will mean for virus spread in the population and for how effective a vaccine might be.
Viruses mutate - it's what they do.
The question is: which of these mutations actually do anything to change the severity or infectiousness of the disease?
Preliminary research from the US has suggested one particular mutation - D614G - is becoming dominant and could make the disease more infectious.
It hasn't yet been reviewed by other scientists and formally published.
The researchers, from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, have been tracking changes to the "spike" of the virus that gives it its distinctive shape, using a database called the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID).
They noted there seems to be something about this particular mutation that makes it grow more quickly - but the consequences of this are not yet clear.
The research team analysed UK data from coronavirus patients in Sheffield. Although they found people with that particular mutation of the virus seemed to have a larger amount of the virus in their samples, they didn't find evidence that those people became sicker or stayed in hospital for longer.

'Mutations not a bad thing'

Another study from University College London (UCL) identified 198 recurring mutations to the virus.
One of its authors, Professor Francois Balloux, said: "Mutations in themselves are not a bad thing and there is nothing to suggest SARS-CoV-2 is mutating faster or slower than expected.
"So far, we cannot say whether SARS-CoV-2 is becoming more or less lethal and contagious."
A study from the University of Glasgow, which also analysed mutations, said these changes did not amount to different strains of the virus. They concluded that only one type of the virus is currently circulating.
Monitoring small changes to the structure of the virus is important in understanding the development of vaccines.
Take the 'flu virus: it mutates so fast that the vaccine has to be adjusted every year to deal with the specific strain in circulation.

Drug development

Many of the Covid-19 vaccines currently in development target the distinctive spikes of the virus - the idea is that getting your body to recognise a unique element of the spike will help it to fight off the whole virus. But if that spike is changing, a vaccine developed this way could become less effective.
At the moment this is all theoretical. Scientists don't yet have enough information to say what changes to the virus's genome will mean.
Dr Lucy van Dorp, UCL study co-author, said being able to analyse a large number of virus genomes could be "invaluable to drug development efforts".
However, she told the BBC: "I love genomes, but there is only so much they can say."
Source: By Rachel Schraer
Health reporterDate: 6th May, 2020
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May 02, 2020 , , , , , , ,
Native woodlands can resist the spread of invasive species by blocking daylight reaching the forest floor, researchers have suggested.
They found the amount of light available in the spring and the autumn was "critical" for buckthorn, an alien invasive species in North America.
Invasive species dominate a local habitat and squeeze out native species and cost a vast sum to control.
The findings appear in the Forest Ecology and Management journal.
The team, comprising researchers from US and Australian universities, decided to focus its attention on common buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica), which is an invasive shrub species in North America.
It out-competes native plants and degrades soils and forests, to the detriment of humans and other wildlife.

Uninvited guest

"In Minnesota alone, we spend millions of dollars each year managing buckthorn invasions and lose much more in the form of reduced forest quality," said co-author Michael Schuster from the Department of Forest Resources at the University of Minnesota.
Dr Schuster explained that in order to create environments that resist invasion by buckthorn, and thus avoid those costs and impacts of the natural capital, it was necessary to understand which forest characteristics offered the greatest influence on the success or failure of buckthorn plants becoming established.
"Canopy structure determines a lot about the conditions experienced by invading buckthorn, so we asked how changes in the composition of forest canopies might make those forests more or less vulnerable to buckthorn invasions," he told BBC News.

In their experiment, the team grew buckthorn seedlings under a variety of different canopies and measured the light available to the seedlings.
These included one made up from deciduous species, such as birch, another from evergreen species, such as pine, and another from a mixture of deciduous and evergreen species.
At the end of the three-year experiment, Dr Schuster observed: "Using these observations in combination with a statistical model of forest light availability, we showed that forests that are able to block out 96% of incoming light in the spring or autumn can successfully resist buckthorn invasion."
He added that, in general, evergreen species were much more capable of creating this level of shade compared with deciduous species.
"We anticipated that buckthorn would fail in areas with extremely low light levels, since having some light is necessary for [most] plants to live," he said.

Spring sunshine

Yet the team were surprised by how much the buckthorn seedlings depended upon light availability in the spring or autumn.
"Light availability in the spring and autumn was massively influential compared with mid-summer light," explained Dr Schuster.
"Whether a canopy produced a lot of shade in the summer or none at all, it really did not make much of a difference.
"For buckthorn, it was all about the spring and autumn."
Phenology - the study of the seasons, especially regarding how it affects wildlife, such as flowering and nesting/hatching times - has a long history stretching back to the 19th Century.
It is widely accepted that changes to the seasons affect the natural equilibrium in the natural world.
Dr Schuster and colleagues' study showed that there were "critical windows' of opportunity for buckthorn at the beginning and end of growing seasons.
"Certain forest types may be inherently vulnerable to invasion by buckthorn as a consequence of when they gain and lose their leaves," he said.
He added that if forest managers were seeking to improve the long-term resistance of their forests to buckthorn invasions then it might be necessary to introduce species that helped reduce the amount of light reaching the forest floor but historically were not present in the area, such as evergreens.
But this approach was not risk-free, warned Dr Schuster.
"For example, many oak forests in our region may simply lack the capacity to resist buckthorn - they leaf in late spring and create understories that do not get particularly dark," he observed.
But, he added: "If we change forests to have phenologies that exclude buckthorn, we may inadvertently push out some desirable native species at the same time.
"So, the question becomes whether we can curate plant communities to both have the species we want and also to produce ample shade in the spring and autumn to keep buckthorn out."
The team is currently investigating how to create dense shading in order to exclude buckthorn using a mixture of native plant species.
Success will help protect vulnerable native plants and animals in the future, and help curb the ever growing cost of tackling the relentless march of invasive species.
Source: By Mark Kinver, Environment reporter (BBC NEWS)
Date: 2 May, 2020

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