Amanda Tokash-Peters Links the Microbiome to Ecology

The Centenary University professor studies the far-reaching effects of changes in the gut bacteria of mosquitos and other species.

Shawna Williams
May 1, 2021
ABOVE: JENNA O’CONNOR

Amanda Tokash-Peters’s research career hasn’t been a long one, but it’s already involved some dramatic changes in focus, including a switch from amphibians to mosquitos as subjects, and a recent foray into seal poop. The central question that unites her work, she says, is: “How is the environment . . . shaping microbiomes across different systems?”

Tokash-Peters first felt the pull of life science thanks to an honors biology course during her first year in a New Jersey high school, she recalls. The teacher “was no nonsense and expected you to really, truly understand and be able to apply material in a way that other folks hadn’t at that point.” And along with her high expectations, the teacher conveyed a passion for the subject, Tokash-Peters recalls.

Hooked, she went on to study biology as an undergraduate at Washington College in Maryland, where she sought out opportunities for hands-on learning, including a summer internship with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration at Elkhorn Slough in California where she worked on several research projects, including an investigation of factors that influence oyster attachment and fecundity and a study of sea otter behavior.

Being able to see how readily mosquito-borne disease affects people—it made my research feel much more tangible and much more applied.

—Amanda Tokash-Peters, Centenary University

For her graduate work, Tokash-Peters wanted to study interactions between ecology and disease. Doug Woodhams’s lab at the University of Massachusetts (UMass) Boston focuses on finding ways to manage the amphibian disease chytridiomycosis, and it “seemed like a pretty good fit right off the bat,” Tokash-Peters says. She started investigating the ability of the skin microbiome to combat infection by the chytrid fungus, and she also participated in a few other amphibian-related projects during her time in the lab. But she soon became interested in the mosquito microbiome, which influences the transmission of mosquito-borne pathogens, and a fellowship that took her to Rwanda in her second year sealed the deal.

“Being able to see how readily mosquito-borne disease affects people—it made my research feel much more tangible and much more applied,” she says. “At that point, I kind of fell in love with the topic.”

Back in Woodhams’s lab, Tokash-Peters set up an insectary for rearing the insects. One question Tokash-Peters was interested in had to do with Wolbachia, parasitic bacteria that, when they infect mosquitoes, limit the insects’ spread of disease. Tokash-Peters wondered whether rising temperatures as a result of climate change would affect Wolbachia’s ability to thrive in mosquitoes. Raising the insects at different temperatures and characterizing their microbiomes, she found that higher temperatures didn’t affect the quantity of a mosquito’s Wolbachia within its lifetime but did decrease the transmission of the bacteria from mother to offspring, ultimately reducing the Wolbachia population over multiple generations. That work has not yet been published.

“She was definitely a leader in the lab,” devising her own methods and training undergraduates to help out with the work, Woodhams says.
See “How Bacteria Interfere with Insect Reproduction”

In another graduate project, which is ongoing, Tokash-Peters began characterizing the microbiomes of mosquitoes captured at various sites in Rwanda. Ultimately, she says, better understanding of mosquito microbiomes could enable people “to better control and understand mosquitoes” over the long term.

A few years into her graduate studies, Tokash-Peters also began collaborating with another UMass Boston biologist, Stephanie Wood, on a study analyzing diet, microplastics, and microbiomes in gray seals using scat collected in Nantucket. That work, too, is ongoing. “Her energy and her enthusiasm and her level of engagement in the science and the work just struck me right from the start,” Wood says of Tokash-Peters.

After graduating last year, Tokash-Peters went straight into a faculty position in the science department at Centenary University, a small liberal arts college in New Jersey. She spends most of her time teaching, but has also continued her mosquito and seal microbiome research and has launched a new project examining the microbiomes of lanternflies, an agricultural pest.

She says she’s making it a priority “to develop a culture of inclusivity within my own lab,” by including undergraduates from diverse backgrounds in hands-on research that’s destined for publication.

Cities Have Distinct Microbial Signatures: Study

The researchers found thousands of species not previously documented.


Lisa Winter
May 27, 2021
ABOVE: © ISTOCK.COM, WILLIAM BARTON

Paris has the Eiffel Tower, New York has the Statue of Liberty, and Rome has the Colosseum, but a new study finds that cities also have other signature distinctions, even if they never appear on a postcard: their resident microbes. Over a three-year span, dozens of scientists took nearly 5,000 samples from 60 cities around the globe. As reported in Cell on Wednesday (May 26), these locales appear to have distinct microbial communities that include thousands of species of viruses and bacteria that had never been documented before.

The samples were taken between 2015 and 2017 on a variety of surfaces in transit stations of major cities. From ticket counters to turnstiles to seats on the subway, the scientists would swab surfaces for three minutes to gather genetic material for sequencing. The data, which the researchers uploaded to the open-source database MetaSUB, showed that the relative abundances of microbes varied greatly. Although 31 species could be found in 97 percent of the cities—what the authors call the “core urban microbiome”—each area’s microbiome was a unique mix.


Graphical representation of the study’s abstract, numerating 

total samples taken and all of the findings
D. DANKO ET AL., CELL, 2021

“Every city has its own ‘molecular echo’ of the microbes that define it,” coauthor Christopher Mason says in a press release. “If you gave me your shoe, I could tell you with about 90% accuracy the city in the world from which you came.” A companion paper in Microbiome, also published on Wednesday, analyzed air samples from transit stations of six cities for microbial genetic signatures and found that these, too, held geographical variations.

What isn’t as clear is why each area’s microbiome is so different. The authors speculate that it could be to do with the area’s climate, plant and wildlife, or the humans that live there.

The team examining microbes on surfaces found more than 4,000 known species and more than 14,000 species (nearly 11,000 of which are viruses) that had DNA sequences not found in any database. But at this point, researchers say that there isn’t a reason to suspect the newly discovered microbes pose a significant risk to human health.

“I think the most important thing is not to freak out,” Noah Fierer, a microbiologist at the University of Colorado Boulder who was not involved in the study, tells The New York Times. “Most of these aren’t pathogens, most of them are probably innocuous, and some may actually be beneficial.”

Still, the authors note that it would be beneficial for cities to keep tabs on any shifts in a city’s microbiome as it might help identify outbreaks before they become widely problematic. “The coronavirus disease 2019 crisis has thrown the need for broad microbial surveillance into sharp relief,” the authors write in the paper. “Microbial genetic mapping of urban environments will give public health officials tools to assess risk, map outbreaks, and genetically characterize problematic species.”

RIP
Salamander Expert David Wake Dies at 84

Throughout his career, the University of California, Berkeley, herpetologist named 144 species of salamanders.


Lisa Winter
May 21, 2021

Evolutionary biologist and famed herpetologist David Wake died on April 29 at his home in Oakland, California, at the age of 84. His wife of 52 years reports to The New York Times that he died of organ failure after a resurgence of cancer. Wake was highly regarded in his field and named 144 salamander species throughout his career.

David Wake in 2015
© MICHELLE KOO PHOTO COURTESY OF AMPHIBIAWEB, 2015

Born June 8, 1936, in South Dakota, Wake was taught a love for the natural world by his mother, a high school biology teacher. He attended Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, and intended to become an entomologist. However, when he started looking under logs for certain beetles, he came face to face with salamanders and knew what he truly wanted to study, Berkeley News reports. After graduating in 1958, he attended the University of Southern California for his graduate work and earned his PhD in 1964.

Wake met Marvalee Hendricks, now an evolutionary biologist retired from the University of California, Berkeley, when as an undergrad she took a class he was teaching while he completed his graduate training. After her graduation, she joined the same lab as David for her graduate studies. The two were married in 1962 and had one son, and continued to work alongside each other doing complementary research.

Wake’s first position teaching biology was at the University of Chicago beginning in 1964. Five years later, he accepted a position teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, and curating the school’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, where he would remain until his retirement in 2003.

Much of his research focused on the lungless salamanders of the family Plethodontidae. He wanted to understand the intricacies of how their features evolved and the driving forces of their evolution.

“It was molecules to morphology to ecology to behavior to development, overlaid by taxonomy—his was a deliberate conviction that in order to really understand the evolution of organisms, you have to focus on a particular group and get to know it extremely well,” James Hanken, the director of Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology and a former student of Wake, tells Berkeley News. “He is not the only person who chose that strategy. But what is unique is how successful Dave was at it. He took it to a level and a sophistication that few other people have done.”

In the 1980s, Wake was one of the first to realize that amphibians were suffering global decline and sought to understand all of the factors involved, including habitat destruction, climate change, and deadly fungi. In 2000, he created AmphibiaWeb to help aggregate research, allowing scientists to identify not only where different species were present, but what dangers they faced. To date, there are more than 8,000 species described on the website.


David Wake examining a jar of preserved salamanders in the 1970s.
© UC BERKELEY PHOTO BY SAXON DONNELLY

“Confronting the complicated issues of amphibian extinctions is a daunting task for conservation biologists, but solutions exist,” Wake wrote in an opinion piece for The Scientist in 2013. “Habitat protection, captive breeding programs, and attempts to mitigate effects of infectious disease could all have positive effects [on] amphibian populations.”

He became a professor emeritus in 2003, but still worked and continued to publish 160 more papers. In 2016, he fully retired, yet Berkeley News reports that he was still doing fieldwork and working on papers until a week prior to his death.

Wake (or Commander Salamander, as he was known in the lab) was elected into the National Academy of Sciences in 1998 and was a member of many other academic organizations. In 2006, he was honored with the Leidy Award for his excellence in “publications, explorations, discoveries or research in the natural sciences.” As a lasting tribute, a tiny salamander species has been named after him (Cryptotriton wakei), as well as a genus of skink (Davewakeum). A frog genus (Wakea) and a gecko species (Cyrtodactylus wakeorum) have also been named to honor Wake and his wife.

Since his death, “[h]undreds of messages [are] coming in worldwide that pretty much say the same thing, talking about his high level of integrity, his ethical nature, his warmth and friendliness, his intellectual curiosity and intellectual scope,” his wife tells The Daily Californian.

He is survived by Marvalee and their son, Thomas, along with a brother, sister, and granddaughter.

Liber Libræ sub figurâ XXX

The Book of the Balance




A∴A∴
Publication in Class A.



Issued by order:
D.D.S.
7○ = 4□
Premonstrator

O.S.V.
6○ = 5□
Imperator

N.S.F.
5○ = 6□
Cancellarius


0. Learn first — Oh thou who aspirest unto our ancient Order! — that Equilibrium is the basis of the Work. If thou thyself hast not a sure foundation, whereon wilt thou stand to direct the forces of Nature?

1. Know then, that as man is born into this world amidst the Darkness of Matter, and the strife of contending forces; so must his first endeavour be to seek the Light through their reconciliation.

2. Thou then, who hast trials and troubles, rejoice because of them, for in them is Strength, and by their means is a pathway opened unto that Light.

3. How should it be otherwise, O man, whose life is but a day in Eternity, a drop in the Ocean of time; how, were thy trials not many, couldst thou purge thy soul from the dross of earth?
Is it but now that the Higher Life is beset with dangers and difficulties; hath it not ever been so with the Sages and Hierophants of the past? They have been persecuted and reviled, they have been tormented of men; yet through this also has their Glory increased.

4. Rejoice therefore, O Initiate, for the greater thy trial the greater thy Triumph. When men shall revile thee, and speak against thee falsely, hath not the Master said, “Blessed art thou!”?

5. Yet, oh aspirant, let thy victories bring thee not Vanity, for with increase of Knowledge should come increase of Wisdom. He who knoweth little, thinketh he knoweth much; but he who knoweth much hath learned his own ignorance. Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? There is more hope of a fool, than of him.

6. Be not hasty to condemn others; how knowest thou that in their place, thou couldest have resisted the temptation? And even were it so, why shouldst thou despise one who is weaker than thyself?

7. Thou therefore who desirest Magical Gifts, be sure that thy soul is firm and steadfast; for it is by flattering thy weaknesses that the Weak Ones will gain power over thee. Humble thyself before thy Self, yet fear neither man not spirit. Fear is failure, and the forerunner of failure: and courage is the beginning of virtue.

8. Therefore fear not the Spirits, but be firm and courteous with them; for thou hast no right to despise or revile them; and this too may lead thee astray. Command and banish them, curse them by the Great Names if need be; but neither mock nor revile them, for so assuredly wilt thou be lead into error.

9. A man is what he maketh himself within the limits fixed by his inherited destiny; he is a part of mankind; his actions affect not only what he calleth himself, but also the whole universe.

10. Worship and neglect not, the physical body which is thy temporary connection with the outer and material world. Therefore let thy mental Equilibrium be above disturbance by material events; strengthen and control the animal passions, discipline the emotions and the reason, nourish the Higher Aspirations.

11. Do good unto others for its own sake, not for reward, not for gratitude from them, not for sympathy. If thou art generous, thou wilt not long for thine ears to be tickled by expressions of gratitude.

12. Remember that unbalanced force is evil; that unbalanced severity is but cruelty and oppression; but that also unbalanced mercy is but weakness which would allow and abet Evil. Act passionately; think rationally; be Thyself.

13. True ritual is as much action as word; it is Will.

14. Remember that this earth is but an atom in the universe, and that thou thyself art but an atom thereon, and that even couldst thou become the God of this earth whereon thou crawlest and grovellest, that thou wouldest, even then, be but an atom, and one amongst many.

15. Nevertheless have the greatest self-respect, and to that end sin not against thyself. The sin which is unpardonable is knowingly and wilfully to reject truth, to fear knowledge lest that knowledge pander not to thy prejudices.

16. To obtain Magical Power, learn to control thought; admit only those ideas that are in harmony with the end desired, and not every stray and contradictory Idea that presents itself.

17. Fixed thought is a means to an end. Therefore pay attention to the power of silent thought and meditation. The material act is but the outward expression of thy thought, and therefore hath it been said that “the thought of foolishness is sin.” Thought is the commencement of action, and if a chance thought can produce much effect, what cannot fixed thought do?

18. Therefore, as hath already been said, Establish thyself firmly in the equilibrium of forces, in the centre of the Cross of the Elements, that Cross from whose centre the Creative Word issued in the birth of the Dawning Universe.

19. Be thou therefore prompt and active as the Sylphs, but avoid frivolity and caprice; be energetic and strong like the Salamanders, but avoid irritability and ferocity; be flexible and attentive to images like the Undines, but avoid idleness and changeability; be laborious and patient like the Gnomes, but avoid grossness and avarice.

20. So shalt thou gradually develop the powers of thy soul, and fit thyself to command the Spirits of the elements. For wert thou to summon the Gnomes to pander to thine avarice, thou wouldst no longer command them, but they would command thee. Wouldst thou abuse the pure beings of the woods and mountains to fill thy coffers and satisfy thy hunger of Gold? Wouldst thou debase the Spirits of Living Fire to serve thy wrath and hatred? Wouldst thou violate the purity of the Souls of the Waters to pander to thy lust of debauchery? Wouldst thou force the Spirits of the Evening Breeze to minister to thy folly and caprice? Know that with such desires thou canst but attract the Weak, not the Strong, and in that case the Weak will have power over thee.

21. In the true religion there is no sect, therefore take heed that thou blaspheme not the name by which another knoweth his God; for if thou do this thing in Jupiter thou wilt blaspheme יהוה and in Osiris יהשוה. Ask and ye shall have! Seek, and ye shall find! Knock, and it shall be opened unto you!

Technical Libers

 The Holy Books

 Holy Scholarship 

Scholarship Suggestions

 Official Ritual and Instruction 

Public Statements

 Unclassified A∴A∴ O.T.O.
Aleister Crowley Figures

 Hermetic Library

Stress-Response Compound Widespread in Animals Is Found in Plants

TMAO appears to both stabilize other plant proteins and influence the expression of stress-response genes, researchers report.


Shawna Williams
May 22, 2021
ABOVE: Tomato plants watered with a high-salt solution. The water of the plant on the right was supplemented with TMAO, while that of the plant on the left was not.

RAFAEL CATALÁ

Amolecule made famous by its association with human heart disease and marine animals’ ability to survive high-pressure conditions turns out to be made by plants too, researchers report this week (May 19) in Science Advances. As it does in animals, trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) helps plants cope with stressful conditions, according to the study. The authors have already licensed the discovery to a company that is working to commercialize TMAO as a way to boost yields in agriculture.

“Nobody has published before that plants have TMAO in the tissues,” says study coauthor Rafael Catalá of the Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas (CIB) Margarita Salas in Madrid.

The new study grew out of earlier work in which Catalá and his colleagues looked for genes in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana whose expression was changed by exposure to cold. One gene they found turned out to code for a type of enzyme called a flavin-containing monooxygenase (FMO) called FMOGS-OX5. In further analyses, reported in the current study, the team found that the expression of several other FMO genes is also dialed up in Arabidopsis in response to cold.

FMOs are known to make TMAO in animals in response a variety of stressors. Wondering what the connection was between the FMOs and the plant’s cold response, the team used nuclear magnetic resonance to look for TMAO in wildtype Arabidopsis. They found it, and confirmed its presence with liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry. The team also verified that FMOGS-OX5 can generate TMAO from its precursor, TMA, in vitro.

In animals, TMAO functions as an osmolyte, a type of molecule cells use to maintain the properties of their fluid and prevent proteins from becoming misfolded when confronted with conditions such as high salt concentrations. To see whether it plays a similar role in plants, Catalá and his colleagues treated Arabidopsis roots with tunicamycin, a compound that makes proteins unfold, as can happen under abiotic stress conditions such as cold or lack of water. The tunicamycin made the roots grow more slowly, but this effect was mitigated if the roots were grown in medium supplemented with TMAO, the researchers report.

When the researchers engineered Arabidopsis to overexpress FMOGS-OX5, the plant also increased the expression of 184 other genes, many of which had been previously linked to responses to abiotic stressors, the authors report. Applying TMAO to wildtype plants had a similar effect on gene expression, although it did not change FMOGS-OX5’s expression level, suggesting that TMAO acts downstream of FMO to enhance the expression of stress-response genes.

To find out whether TMAO is widespread in plant species, the team also looked for it in tomato, maize, barley, and a relative of tobacco, and found it was present in all of them. Moreover, their TMAO content rose when the plants were subjected to conditions of low water, high salt, or low temperatures (except barley, in which TMAO did not increase in the high-salt test but did in the other conditions). Spraying or watering tomato plants with a TMAO-containing solution made them visibly healthier, with more leaves, when they were exposed to each of the three stress conditions.

Catalá says externally applied TMAO has the potential to be “a very powerful tool for agriculture.” He and the paper’s senior author, Julio Salinas, also of the CIB Margarita Salas, have filed patents on the agricultural use of TMAO, which is being commercialized by the company Plant Response. The company’s field tests have had good results, Catalá adds.

Paul Verslues, who studies plant drought response at the Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan, questions whether TMAO will be useful agriculturally. “TMAO protection of protein folding may be relevant to plant survival of severe stress but it is unknown whether it is also beneficial to protecting plant growth under less severe drought or salinity stress,” he writes in an email to The Scientist. The stresses the researchers subjected the plants to were too harsh to be reflective of agricultural conditions, and more experiments would be needed to determine whether TMAO also helps plants cope with milder stress conditions.

Verslues also notes other reservations about the study’s findings, including that Arabidopsis made to overexpress FMOGS-OX5 had greater stress tolerance than did wildtype plants but did not accumulate more TMAO, which he says suggests that FMOs may “also produce some other compound that promotes stress tolerance” apart from TMAO. Additionally, the authors did not take the step of knocking out all of a plant’s FMO genes to test whether those genes are truly required for TMAO production in plants.

Catalá argues that the study’s main finding, that TMAO exists in plants and has “a key role in plant tolerance to abiotic stress,” stands without testing such mutants. And he says it’s likely that FMOs do indeed produce other compounds involved in the stress response, but that the paper shows they are involved in making TMAO and that TMAO enhances stress tolerance.

Aleksandra Skirycz, a plant biologist at the Boyce Thompson Institute who was not involved in the study, calls it “a very nicely designed story.” For her, the “really exciting aspect of this work is that you have a molecule that would work as an osmolyte for protection [and] at the same time would probably have other signaling functions,” a phenomenon she calls “moonlighting.” It’s not yet clear how TMAO influences gene expression, Catalá says, and that will be an avenue for the group to pursue in the future.

In the biomedical literature, TMAO tends to come up in a negative context rather than a positive one, as high levels of it in patients’ blood have been linked to an elevated risk for blood clots. Studies have suggested that gut microbes break down choline, a nutrient present in high levels in meat, to generate TMAO and related compounds, providing a mechanistic link between a meat-heavy diet and risk of heart attack and stroke. Catalá says it’s not at all clear what implications, if any, the finding of TMAO in plants could have for human diet and health.

Correction (May 24): The original version of this article mistakenly referred to TMAO as a protein and referred to the Boyce Thompson Institute by an outdated name. The Scientist regrets the errors.

Mammals Can Use Their Intestines to Breathe

Researchers show that both mice and pigs are capable of oxygenating their blood via the colon—a capacity that, if shared by humans, could be leveraged in the clinic to minimize the need for mechanical ventilation.


Abby Olena
May 14, 2021



Mammalian preclinical models, including pigs and mice, are capable of intestinal breathing, which may offer an additional route of oxygen administration to patients who need respiratory support.
ASUKA KODAKA, YCU

Ventilators—machines that force air into the lungs—can be lifesaving for patients who can’t breathe on their own due to injury or illness. But they can also cause lung damage because of the strong pressure they exert. Plus, ventilator numbers are limited, which has infamously created critical shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a study published today (May 14) in Med, researchers present an alternative oxygenation route: through the anus. They introduced oxygen in either gas or liquid form to the intestines of both mice and pigs that had experienced asphyxia or low-oxygen conditions and showed that the animals survived much longer than did those without the treatment.

“I’ve never read about or thought about ventilation using the enteral system,” says Divya Patel, a pulmonary and critical care physician at the University of Florida College of Medicine who did not participate in the work. “Mechanical ventilators are a bridge. They buy us time for the body to heal, [but] the problem with them is that they also cause injury to the lungs themselves,” she explains. These authors are “really being open-minded and thinking outside of the box.”

I’ve never read about or thought about ventilation using the enteral system.
—Divya Patel, University of Florida College of Medicine

Takanori Takebe, who is affiliated with Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, and Yokohama City University, typically focuses on manipulating stem cells to grow functional human organs in a petri dish. But three years ago, his father, who has a chronic lung condition, developed acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS)—a pulmonary complication that can be lethal and is common in patients with severe COVID-19—and needed to be ventilated. His father survived, but the experience impressed upon Takebe how limited the treatments for respiratory failure are.

“The standard of care is really damaging to native lung function,” he says. His father now has compromised lung function, which is not uncommon in patients who’ve been ventilated, particularly for an extended period of time. “I realized we need different ways of respiration support without engaging the native lung,” he adds.

Takebe and his team did some reading and learned that many organisms—including fish such as loaches, and arthropods—use organs including the skin and the intestines to acquire oxygen. To determine whether mammals have such abilities, they started with mice. Mice given hypoxic air through their tracheas survived for an average of 18 minutes when the researchers introduced oxygen gas into their intestines via their anus, but only about 11 minutes without. When the researchers abraded the intestinal lining with a brush and then introduced oxygen gas, most of the animals survived for at least 50 minutes.

“When you apply lethal hypoxic conditions in the mouse and supply oxygen enterally, the survival was doubled in terms of time,” he explains. “That will give us a lot more time to manage the condition to actually bridge until treatment is available.”

Next, the researchers tried a more feasible method than abrading the lining of the gut and pumping in gas: introducing an oxygenated liquid known as perfluorocarbon through the anus. In previous clinical studies, perfluorocarbons carrying dissolved oxygen have been administered directly into human eyes and blood vessels, as well as to the airways of premature infants to help reduce lung injuries. The researchers infused either oxygen-loaded perfluorocarbon or saline through the rectums of mice in a low-oxygen chamber. The animals that received the oxygenated liquid showed improvements in the oxygen pressure in their blood, and were more active after their perfluorocarbon infusion than were the mice that received saline.

Then the team tested the oxygenated liquid strategy in anesthetized pigs, which share more physiology with humans than mice do. They used a ventilator only five or six times per minute to induce nonlethal respiratory failure and then rescued the pigs from hypoxia with an enema-like administration of oxygen-loaded perfluorocarbon and observed no obvious side effects. To further test safety, they did infusions of perfluorocarbon into the intestines of rats. The rats were not dehydrated, did not experience diarrhea, and the levels of organ toxicity markers were the same or less than observed in the saline control

The vascular network is labeled in purple in this image of a dissected mouse intestine. Takebe and colleagues hypothesize that the mammalian gut provides access to this network of blood vessels for potential gas exchange.
YOSUKE YONEYAMA AND AKIKO KINEBUCHI, TMDU

These findings are “an example of evolution tinkering with some system that likely evolved for another purpose—that is, to digest food and to move nutrients around in the body—and then co-opting that system to do something else that’s really useful for the organism,” says Art Woods, a biologist at the University of Montana. He was not involved in the new study, but in a 2017 paper that inspired it, he showed with colleagues that sea spiders use their guts to transport oxygen. “It’s pretty clever to do this in some kind of interventional way, as a medical technique,” he adds.

Based on prior approval of perfluorocarbons by the US Food and Drug Administration for other indications, “we are very optimistic about the safety [and] tolerability in human applications,” Takebe says. He and his colleagues are forming a startup company to conduct further preclinical safety analyses and also evaluate more animal disease models. He says they hope to start clinical trials next year, but cautions that it’s not yet clear whether improving oxygenation via this method would be helpful in coronavirus patients. “COVID-19 is not just about ARDS or a lung oxygenation problem, but there are a number of different pathologies involved,” he explains.

“Understanding the mechanism would help to encourage people to adopt and do further research on it,” says Patel. Other next steps include investigating the strategy’s effectiveness in an ARDS or pneumonia type of model, as well as looking more into safety for this application of perfluorocarbons in people, she adds. If the technique proves effective and safe, it “potentially could be a way to avoid the mechanical ventilator or be able to set it to very low settings, so that you’re not causing that ventilator-induced lung injury.”

R. Okabe et al., “Mammalian enteral ventilation ameliorates respiratory failure,” Med, doi:10.1016/j.medj.2021.04.004, 2021

100-Year-Old Lungs Yield Genetic Samples of 1918 Flu Viruses

Influenza RNA sequences from three sets of lungs preserved in formalin since 1918 provide new insights into the deadly pandemic.

Christie Wilcox
May 18, 2021
ABOVE: Masked Red Cross workers in Saint Louis, Missouri, during the fall wave of the 1918 influenza A pandemic.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Three teenagers—two soldiers and a civilian—were among the 50 million or more estimated casualties of the 1918 influenza A pandemic. However, unlike most people who were killed by the virus, the lungs of the three were saved, preserved in formalin for more than one hundred years. Now, according to a preprint uploaded to bioRxiv on May 14, these organs are providing genetic clues as to why the virus took so many lives, Science reports.
See “Looking Back, Looking Ahead”

The 1918 pandemic, a zoonotic disease thought to have jumped into people from birds, was one of the deadliest pandemics on record. Especially lethal were the second and third waves of cases, which occurred starting in the fall of that year. It’s likely that variants of the virus played a role in the differing damage caused by each wave. Unfortunately, obtaining viral RNA sequences from samples that old is technically fraught. In fact, until recently, extracting RNA from century-old specimens would have been considered “a fantasy,” Hendrik Poinar, an ancient DNA scientist at McMaster University who was not involved in the study, tells Science.

Even obtaining samples is hard, preprint coauthor Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona, tells Science. Still, the team was able to secure a total of 13 lung tissue samples from people who died between 1900 and 1931 from specimens that were being housed in the Berlin Museum of Medical History and the pathology collection of the Natural History Museum in Vienna; three of them, all from 1918, contained influenza RNA.

While the RNA was highly fragmented, the team was able to reconstruct between 60 and 90 percent of the genomes of the viruses that killed the two soldiers, and the entire genome of the virus that killed the civilian. The new sequences are all from the first wave of the pandemic, and when compared with the previously described strains from later on in the pandemic, they hint at how the virus may have become deadlier. For example, the two partial genomes from the soldiers contain sequences that are more “bird-like,” reports Science—a sign that early versions of the virus may have had more difficulty infecting people.

See “1918 Flu Spread Before Peak”

Most telling, though, was the whole genome. From it, researchers were able to recreate the virus’s polymerase complex, and put it head-to-head against the polymerase complex resurrected from a previously published virus strain sequenced from person who died in Alaska in November 1918. In cell cultures, the complex from the first wave virus constructed RNA at roughly half the efficiency of the virus from a later wave.

“The fact that you can test, in vitro, the effects of an ‘extinct’ strain has huge implications in understanding evolution of virulence and possible countermeasures should we encounter another flu epidemic,” Poinar tells Science.

“It’s absolutely fantastic work,” he adds. “The researchers have made reviving RNA viruses from archival material an achievable goal.”

DEA Moves Toward Approving More Research Marijuana Growers

A regulatory change initiated during the Obama administration appears set to be put into practice, allowing more than one supplier of cannabis research products.

Shawna Williams
May 19, 2021
ABOVE: © ISTOCK.COM, NASTASIC

Some 36 states now permit marijuana to be used medically, and 17 allow recreational use. Yet researchers who wish to study the drug’s health effects have been limited since 1968 to a single legal supplier of the drug, the University of Mississippi. That looks set to change soon, as the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) announced Friday (May 14) that it has sent memorandums of agreement (MOAs) to hopeful growers “outlining the means by which the applicant and DEA will work together to facilitate the production, storage, packaging, and distribution of marijuana under the new regulations.”

“We were euphoric. This is a victory for scientific freedom. It’s finally a chance to use real-world cannabis in our own studies and supply genetically diverse cannabis to scientists across the nation,” says Sue Sisley, the president and principal investigator at the Scottsdale Research Institute (SRI), tells Science.


According to Science, some researchers, such as Sisley, say marijuana from the University of Mississippi is low-quality, while others don’t see an issue with its quality but nonetheless welcome the prospect of additional suppliers. “Older people are not going to smoke. . . . They will take a brownie, a gummy. New manufacturers could give us those products,” Igor Grant, the director of the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research at the University of California, San Diego, tells the publication. “What’s needed is more product and more diversity.”

The DEA’s action was a long time coming. In 2016, during the final year of President Barack Obama’s administration, the agency announced that it would begin accepting applications from aspiring new growers of marijuana for research. But according to The Wall Street Journal, during President Donald Trump’s tenure, officials such as then–Attorney General Jeff Sessions opposed the change on the grounds that it might violate a United Nations treaty against drug trafficking, and the application process stalled. In 2019, the DEA announced plans to develop new regulations that would govern growing for scientific and medical use, and late last year, the new rule was finalized.

See “DEA Again Promises to Improve Access to Marijuana for Research”

The DEA’s latest announcement did not say how many MOAs had been sent out, but the Journal identifies three organizations that have received them, including SRI. “To the extent these MOAs are finalized, DEA anticipates issuing DEA registrations to these manufacturers. Each applicant will then be authorized to cultivate marijuana—up to its allotted quota—in support of the more than 575 DEA-licensed researchers across the nation,” the agency says in Friday’s announcement.

“This is a monumental step,” George Hodgin, whose firm Biopharmaceutical Research Company received an MOA, tells the Journal. “This type of long-term thinking from the government will allow companies like ours to pioneer a federally legal cannabis market for products that are tested and approved to help the public.”

Long-Delayed EPA Report Details Dire Nature of Climate Disaster

The Climate Change Indicators site was not updated during Donald Trump’s presidency.

Lisa Winter
May 13, 2021
ABOVE: © ISTOCK.COM, CERI BREEZE

The US Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Change Indicators website, which explains different facets of our ever-warming planet, had laid dormant since the end of 2016, right before Donald Trump became president. Yesterday (May 12), Michael Regan, EPA administrator, announced the site has been relaunched. It includes data from a 2017 report that had been delayed and then downplayed by the Trump Administration.

“EPA’s Climate Indicators website is a crucial scientific resource that underscores the urgency for action on the climate crisis,” Regan says in the agency’s statement. “With this long overdue update, we now have additional data and a new set of indicators that show climate change has become even more evident, stronger, and extreme—as has the imperative that we take meaningful action.”

On the main page, the website lists human activity as one of the causes of climate change. According to the BBC, this is the first time that the agency has directly acknowledged the role that humans have and continue to play, though experts in the field have been in agreement for nearly a century.

The updated information does not bear good news when it comes to some of the most well-known indicators. 2016 was the warmest year on record, followed by 2020. Deaths due to heat have grown threefold over the last 80 years. Since 1960, the sea levels along the East and Gulf coasts have risen as much as eight inches in some areas, making devastating flooding more commonplace. The permafrost in Alaska continues to dwindle. And some marine species are being displaced due to rising temperatures while others are being gravely harmed by ocean acidification.

The data illustrate how climate change has and will affect all Americans, albeit in different ways, based on where they live. For instance, the warming climate has extended farmers’ growing season by two weeks, particularly in western states. On the other side of the country, some of the oldest coastal cities settled long before the industrial revolution, such as Boston, are grappling with increased costs of staving back the rising coastline, The Washington Post reports.

See “EPA Purges Trump Administration’s Science Advisors”

“We want to reach people in every corner of this country because there is no small town, big city or rural community that’s unaffected by the climate crisis,” says Regan, according to the Post. “Americans are seeing and feeling the impacts up close with increasing regularity.”

In addition to updates to indicators from the previous iteration of the site, there are a dozen additions, including seasonal temperature, Great Lakes ice cover, freeze-thaw conditions, and more.

See “White House Assembles Task Force to Sever Politics from Science”

The data on the website were compiled from 50 different sources both in government and academia. The statement from the EPA says that independent experts peer reviewed all of the indicators.

“This site does a great job of compiling a lot of indicators from a lot of different sources,” Kristina Dahl, a senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, tells the Post. “So it’s a really important clearinghouse of this kind of information.”

While Some Sharks Flee, Tiger Sharks Brave Stormy Seas

For the first time, scientists tracked large shark movements during hurricanes and found that tiger sharks may find the turmoil opportunistic for feeding.

Nikk Ogasa
May 12, 2021
ABOVE: A tiger shark
NEIL HAMMERSCHLAG

Sharks aren’t flying through tornados, but it appears some of them are weathering tropical hurricanes. Thanks to the surprise arrival of two tempests during two separate shark monitoring projects in 2016 and 2017, researchers were able to track four large shark species before, during, and after the storms. In a study that appeared online April 22 in Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, researchers reported that while other species retreated from the hurricanes, tiger sharks held fast.

The team took advantage of an opportunity to monitor something that hadn’t been tracked before, says Marcus Drymon, a marine scientist from Mississippi State University who was not involved in the work, but has collaborated with two of the study’s authors in the past. “It’s a really interesting study.”

Hurricanes can devastate coastal communities, and their damage extends below the water’s surface too. Surging storms can destroy reefs, displace marine fauna, and upwell nutrients to spawn harmful algal blooms. To evade the turmoil, some animals will evacuate the shallows. For example, scientists detected fewer dolphins off the Maryland coast during and after intense storms. And when Tropical Storm Gabrielle hit the Florida Coast in 2001, researchers observed that juvenile blacktail sharks retreated into deeper waters.

But it wasn’t until 2016 and 2017, when Hurricane Irma swept past Miami and Hurricane Matthew slammed into the Bahamas, that scientists gleaned insights into the storm response of large sharks. Hammerschlag and his colleagues were conducting unrelated shark monitoring projects—on how urbanization influenced the movements of nurse sharks (Ginglymostoma cirratum), bull sharks (Carcharhinus leucas), and great hammerhead sharks (Sphyrna mokarran) in Miami, and how dive tourism is affecting tiger shark (Galeocerdo cuvier) movement in the Bahamas—when the storms arrived.

Having already tagged the sharks with acoustic signalers and deployed acoustic telemetry arrays—devices that pinged the team whenever a tagged shark was near—the researchers found themselves well prepared to track the large sharks during the hurricanes. “We looked at their space use and movement before, during, and after the storm,” says Neil Hammerschlag, a shark ecologist from the University of Miami and a coauthor on the study.

When Hurricane Irma arrived in Biscayne Bay just north of Key Largo, Hammerschlag and his colleagues were tracking nine nurse sharks, three bull sharks, and seven great hammerhead sharks. They found that during the hurricane, most of these sharks had left the study area. The sharks, they reasoned, must have fled for the refuge of deeper waters. “We found a similar pattern to what has been found for small sharks,” says Hammerschlag.

“But tiger sharks in the Bahamas didn’t behave that way at all,” he says. Even as the eye of the Category 5 hurricane barreled down on the study site there, the researchers continued to observe about one of the 12 tagged tiger sharks each day before and during the storm. And just after the hurricane passed, daily counts of tiger shark detections doubled and remained high for weeks.

A tiger shark
NEIL HAMMERSCHLAG

As for why tiger sharks exhibited this behavior when the others did not, Hammerschlag speculates there could be a couple of reasons. Tiger sharks can weigh more than 1,900 pounds and grow to 18 feet long, making them the biggest species the researchers tracked; the next largest, the great hammerhead, reaches a similar body length but its weight tops out around 1,000 pounds. Tiger sharks’ robustness might help them endure rougher conditions, says Hammerschlag. And tiger sharks have “an incredibly diverse diet,” he adds. “From sea birds to sea turtles to dolphins to fish to other sharks, [they eat] almost anything in the water. [They] were probably taking advantage of all the new scavenging opportunities from dead animals that were churned up in the storm.”

Shark biologist Kim Holland of the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa says more work will be needed to explain the sharks’ behavior. “You would think that if running away from a storm would be appropriate for one species, it would be good for all species, but here that isn’t the case,” he says. And scientists aren’t sure how sharks sense incoming storms—they could be responding to changes in atmospheric pressure or perhaps surf noise, but that hasn’t been established yet, he adds. “There are as many questions generated as questions answered.”

Looking toward the future, Hammerschlag says he believes it will become increasingly important to understand how shark populations react to hurricanes. “The number of major storms like hurricanes are increasing in frequency and ferocity, and large sharks help keep checks and balances in ecosystems,” he says. “How these animals respond to global change could have ecological or economic consequences.

L.F.G. Gutowsky et al., “Large sharks exhibit varying behavioral responses,” Estuar Coast Shelf Sci, 256:107373, 2021.