Gray seals perplex scientists with lack of response to flu infection

'That’s the big question we’re trying to understand – why is there a difference in the response in two different species that occupy the same space; why is one susceptible to the disease?'

University of Connecticut

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Something strange happens when two kinds of seals living in the waters around Cape Cod get infected with influenza – harbor seals get sick but gray seals don’t.

Scientists know that both gray seals and harbor seals can contract influenza. But, generally, only harbor seals get sick and may die from the virus.

This perplexing phenomenon led Milton Levin ‘04 Ph.D., associate research professor of pathobiology and veterinary science in the College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources (CAHNR), and his collaborators to investigate if a difference in a piece of the immune system called cytokines could be responsible for this difference.

“That’s the big question we’re trying to understand – why is there a difference in the response in two different species that occupy the same space; why is one susceptible to the disease?” Levin says.

Cytokines are a type of small protein produced by immune cells that work on other immune cells. They play a critical role in coordinating the body’s immune and inflammatory responses.

“They help initiate an immune response and then they help tamp down the immune response once a threat is gone,” Levin says.

Surprisingly, the team found no difference between the cytokine profiles in the gray seal pups that had contracted influenza and those that didn’t. These findings were published in Journal of Wildlife Diseases.

This indicates that the gray seals’ immune systems are not responding to the presence of the virus, or that the virus tamps down the immune response so much the scientists couldn’t detect it.

“Right now, it seems that the seals are not responding at all to influenza, and that’s probably why we’re not seeing clinical signs and why they don’t die,” Levin says.

This is not only a departure from what the researchers expected to see, but from research in many other kinds of animals. Other studies have found clear differences in the cytokine profiles of animals infected with a virus versus those that were not.

Levin and his team collected blood samples from over 100 gray seal pups. In the lab, they used a commercially available kit to measure the presence or absence, and concentration of 13 different cytokines. The kit was originally designed for canines, but Levin’s previous research established its efficacy for seals since the two groups are evolutionarily related.

Levin suggests the lack of cytokine response could be a protective mechanism that prevents the gray seals from getting sick. In humans, sometimes when we encounter a pathogen the body mounts a “cytokine storm,” an unregulated response where the immune system is just firing on all cylinders. This kind of response causes more damage than the pathogen the body is trying to fight.

“If we can understand why gray seals don’t generate that response, that could tell us more about the immune response in general in marine mammals versus other species,” Levin says.

The next step of this research is to measure cytokines in harbor seals. However, collecting samples from harbor seal pups will be a challenge. Gray seals separate from their mothers after just a few weeks and stay on the beach where researchers have easy access to them. Harbor seals, however, stay with their mothers for four to six weeks; and grown seals are much too large for researchers to handle safely.

The overarching goal of the research Levin and his collaborators have been conducting for over a decade is to understand how viruses circulate in marine populations and what makes an animal more or less susceptible to illness and death from these infections.

“We’re trying to understand how pathogens, viruses, and influenza in particular, are being passed between species and if it is being transmitted to humans or are humans transmitting it to seals,” Levin says.

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Journal

Journal of Wildlife Diseases

DOI

10.7589/JWD-D-24-00166 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Gray Seal (Halichoerus grypus) Pups Fail to Mount an Inflammatory Cytokine Response to Influenza A Virus

 

Registration opens for the World Conference of Science Journalists 2025 in South Africa

Social justice the theme of the in-person event taking place from 1 to 5 December 2025 in Pretoria, South Africa

World Conference of Science Journalists 2025

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Registration is open for the World Conference of Science Journalists, at https://www.wcsj2025.org/registration/. 

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Credit: WCSJ 2025

Registration for the World Conference of Science Journalists 2025 (WCSJ2025), due to take place 1-5 December at the CSIR International Convention Centre in Pretoria, is now open.

This is an unmissable event for science journalists, science communicators and scientists wanting to publicise their work. The international biennial conference is taking place for the first time ever on African soil and presents a unique opportunity for everyone interested in communicating science to hone their craft, to network with their peers, and to find stories about groundbreaking African science.

The overarching theme is “Science journalism and social justice: journalism that builds understanding and resilience”. The programme is wide-ranging and includes discussions and practical workshops covering wellbeing for people and the planet; the state of the profession; the art of communication; and misinformation, disinformation and fake news.

A small sample of some of the sessions on the programme includes:

Bringing social justice into ocean science reporting

The world’s oceans are facing grave threats from climate change, overfishing, pollution, and biodiversity loss. Emerging industries such as deep-sea mining and marine geoengineering are adding further pressure. As well as ensuring that reporting on these topics is scientifically accurate, journalists must ensure that the voices of those most impacted are included. Journalists on this panel are from Australia, South Africa, India and the USA.

When industry endangers health and ecosystems

Can science journalism fight environmental injustice? In this session, learn how journalists safely expose polluters, turn data into evidence, and amplify marginalised voices. Through real cases and tools, the panellists will show how media can drive policy change and reduce pollution inequalities.

AI – Friend or Foe?

Artificial Intelligence is transforming journalism – supercharging investigations while enabling sophisticated deepfakes and automated disinformation that challenge both newsroom survival and editorial integrity. This session examines how journalists are fighting back, turning AI’s analytical power against digital manipulation and disinformation networks while maintaining trust in an era where seeing is no longer believing.

Reporting under fire: science journalism in conflict zones and authoritarian regimes

This session offers strategies for resilience and highlights the role of journalism in defending scientific truth and social justice. In regions where war, political repression, or disaster intersect with scientific misinformation, science journalists face grave risks. This session explores how journalists from Yemen, Lebanon and Nigeria confront censorship, security threats, and digital suppression to still report on public health, climate, and tech stories.

 

Challenging times: Communicating about climate change when politics promotes denial and misinformation

The World Meteorological Organization confirmed 2024 as the warmest year on record, yet a cocktail of fake news, narratives without evidence, and economic interests are promoting climate change denialism. What role has science journalism to play in countering this trend and dismantling such narratives?

Telling the stories of astronomy in Africa

Africa has become a key player in global astronomy, with South Africa hosting the largest share of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), as well as the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) and other projects. This session explores the major strides made since the early days of optical astronomy in South Africa, and what it means for international science reporting. Speakers will examine the challenges of covering “big science” projects, the politics of funding, and how to make cosmic research accessible to broad audiences.

Register now! https://www.wcsj2025.org/registration/

 

Ends

 

Media Contact Information

Mr Zamuxolo Matiwana

Local organising committee member

Telephone number: 082 901 2910

Email: info@wcsj2025.org

About WCSJ2025

The World Conference of Science Journalists takes place every two years and is the largest international event for science journalists to gather as peers, helping one another learn, grow, and thrive. It is an initiative of the World Federation of Science Journalists. During the conference, attendees will enjoy seminars, workshops, lectures and access to expertise from around the world.

An engaging, relevant and stimulating programme of content which will offer opportunities for both inspiration and growth, and a bouquet of day trips and longer options to explore our science and the natural and cultural glories of our country.

WCSJ2025 gives science journalists and their stakeholders an opportunity to interact, share ideas and information, stimulate debate and discussion and form solutions regarding how science journalists can contribute to building resilience in the face of the many challenges the people of the world face.

About SASJA

The SA Science Journalists’ Association is a non-profit, non-governmental, national organisation for science and technology writers. SASJA is the professional association of science media practitioners in South Africa. It is a non-profit, non-governmental, national organisation, mainly representing the interests of science and technology (including health, environmental, engineering, sports) journalists and other science media practitioners. SASJA encourages networking and training in the interest of sound science journalism.

SASJA strives to improve communication between the science community and general society by evaluating information according to strict journalism ethics and presenting it either in print, or via the electronic media – television, radio and internet – to the public.

The conference is organised by the South African Science Journalists’ Association (SASJA) and the Science Diplomacy Capital for Africa (SDCfA), an initiative and entity of the National Department of Science, Technology and Innovation (DSTI), in collaboration with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).

 

Bacteria that ‘shine a light’ on microplastic pollution

American Chemical Society

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Engineered microbes produce bioluminescence in the presence of microplastics, creating a living sensor seen here as a detectable green fluorescence signal, which is laid over a scanning electron microscope image.

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Credit: Song Lin Chua

Microplastics are tiny, plastic fragments — many too small to see — found in the air, soil and water. Measuring their abundance in nature can direct cleanup resources, but current detection methods are slow, expensive or highly technical. Now, researchers publishing in ACS Sensors have developed a living sensor that attaches to plastic and produces green fluorescence. In an initial test on real-world water samples, the biosensor could easily detect environmentally relevant levels of microplastics.

Currently, scientists detect microplastics in water samples using microscopes or analytical tools, such as infrared or Raman spectroscopy. While these techniques are accurate, they require multiple steps to prepare samples before analysis and can be expensive and time-consuming. In a step toward a simpler method, Song Lin Chua and colleagues created a living microplastics sensor from the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa. This bacterium is commonly found in the environment and can naturally establish biofilms on plastic materials, though some strains are opportunistic human pathogens. The team wanted to modify the bacterium slightly to create a living sensor that easily detects microplastics in water samples.

The researchers added two genes to a non-infectious laboratory strain of P. aeruginosa to make the sensor. One gene produces a protein that activates when bacterial cells contact plastic, and the other gene produces a green-fluorescent protein in response. In lab tests, the engineered bacteria fluoresced in vials containing plastic pieces and a growth medium, but not in separate vials of other materials such as glass and sand. A measurable fluorescence was produced within 3 hours for various plastics, including polyethylene terephthalate (recycling symbol 1) and polystyrene (recycling symbol 6). Additionally, the modified bacterial cells stayed active for up to 3 days in the refrigerator (39 degrees Fahrenheit, 4 degrees Celsius), which the researchers say indicates it could be transported to field locations.

To test the living microplastics sensor as an environmental monitoring tool, the researchers added the engineered P. aeruginosa to seawater from a city waterway. The seawater was first filtered and then treated to remove organic matter before the bacteria were added. Based on the fluorescence intensity values, the water samples contained up to 100 parts per million of microplastics. Further water analysis with Raman microspectroscopy revealed that the microplastics were primarily biodegradable types, such as polyacrylamide, polycaprolactone and methyl cellulose, which the biosensor detected despite the initial tests being done on traditional polymers.

“Our biosensor offers a fast, affordable and sensitive way to detect microplastics in environmental samples within hours,” says Chua. “By acting as a rapid screening tool, it could transform large-scale monitoring efforts and help pinpoint pollution hotspots for more detailed analysis.”

The authors acknowledge funding from the Environment and Conservation Fund, Health and Medical Research Fund, Research Centre for Deep Space Explorations, and Pneumoconiosis Compensation Fund Board.

The paper’s abstract will be available on Sept. 3 at 8 a.m. Eastern time here: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acssensors.5c01120

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The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1876 and chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS is committed to improving all lives through the transforming power of chemistry. Its mission is to advance scientific knowledge, empower a global community and champion scientific integrity, and its vision is a world built on science. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, e-books and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world’s scientific knowledge. ACS’ main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

Registered journalists can subscribe to the ACS journalist news portal on EurekAlert! to access embargoed and public science press releases. For media inquiries, contact newsroom@acs.org.

Note: ACS does not conduct research but publishes and publicizes peer-reviewed scientific studies.

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Journal

ACS Sensors

DOI

10.1021/acssensors.5c01120 

Article Title

Detection of Microplastics Pollution Using a Green Fluorescent Protein-Based Microbial Biosensor Coupled with Raman Spectroscopy

Article Publication Date

3-Sep-2025

 

Colorless solar windows: Transforming architecture into clean power plants

Cholesteric liquid crystal coatings enable transparent, unidirectional solar concentrators compatible with modern windows.

Chinese Society for Optical Engineering

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This semi-transparent solar concentrator uses liquid crystal films to reflect and guide circularly polarized sunlight, enabling colorless energy harvesting for next-generation green buildings.

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Credit: Center for Liquid Crystal and Photonics/ Nanjing University

A research team led by Nanjing University has introduced a transparent, colorless, and unidirectional solar concentrator that can be directly coated onto standard window glass. Utilizing cholesteric liquid crystal (CLC) multilayers with submicron lateral periodicities, this diffractive-type solar concentrator (CUSC) selectively guides sunlight toward the edge of the window where photovoltaic cells are installed. The study appears in PhotoniX.

Unlike conventional luminescent or scattering-based concentrators, which often suffer from visual distortion, low efficiency, and poor scalability, the new CUSC achieves broadband polarization-selective diffraction and waveguiding without compromising clarity. The device maintains a high average visible transmittance (64.2%) and color rendering index (91.3), enabling clean energy generation without altering the appearance of the window.

“By engineering the structure of cholesteric liquid crystal films, we create a system that selectively diffracts circularly polarized light, guiding it into the glass waveguide at steep angles,” said Dr. Dewei Zhang, co-first author. “This allows up to 38.1% of incident green light energy to be collected at the edge.”

Experiments showed that a 1-inch-diameter prototype could directly power a 10-mW fan under sunlight. Modeling suggests a typical 2-meter-wide CUSC window could concentrate sunlight by 50 times, significantly reducing the number of photovoltaic cells required by up to 75%. The system supports integration with high-performance PV cells such as gallium arsenide for enhanced power conversion.

The multilayered CLC films are fabricated via photoalignment and polymerization techniques and are scalable via roll-to-roll manufacturing. The design remains stable under long-term exposure and can be retrofitted onto existing windows for sustainable urban upgrades.

“The CUSC design is a step forward in integrating solar technology into the built environment without sacrificing aesthetics,” said Professor Wei Hu. “It represents a practical and scalable strategy for carbon reduction and energy self-sufficiency.”

Future work will focus on enhancing broadband efficiency, polarization control, and adapting the technology for agricultural greenhouses and transparent solar displays. Their vision: to turn passive glass into active, energy-generating surfaces worldwide.

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Journal

PhotoniX

DOI

10.1186/s43074-025-00178-3 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Colorless and Unidirectional Diffractive-type Solar Concentrators Compatible with Existing Windows

 

Groundbreaking study suggests that mutations driving evolution are informed by the genome, not random

Empirical evidence supports a new theory of how mutations arise

University of Haifa

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A groundbreaking study published in this week’s issue of PNAS by scientists from Israel and Ghana shows that an evolutionarily significant mutation in the human APOL1 gene arises not randomly but more frequently where it is needed to prevent disease, fundamentally challenging the notion that evolution is driven by random mutations and tying the results to a new theory that, for the first time, offers a new concept for how mutations arise.  

Implications for biology, medicine, computer science, and perhaps even our understanding of the origin of life itself, are potentially far reaching.

A random mutation is a genetic change whose chance of arising is unrelated to its usefulness. Only once these supposed accidents arise does natural selection vet them, sorting the beneficial from the harmful. For over a century, scientists have believed that a series of such accidents has built up over time, one by one, to create the diversity and splendor of life around us.

However, it has never been possible to examine directly whether mutations in the DNA originate at random or not. Mutations are rare events relative to the genome’s size, and technical limitations have prevented scientists from seeing the genome in enough detail to track individual mutations as they arise naturally. To overcome this, Prof. Adi Livnat of the University of Haifa, director of the Sagol Lab for Evolution Research, lead author Dr. Daniel Melamed and the team developed a new ultra-accurate detection method and recently applied it to the famous HbS mutation, which protects from malaria but causes sickle-cell anemia in homozygotes. Results showed that the HbS mutation did not arise at random, but emerged more frequently exactly in the gene and population where it was needed. Now, they report the same nonrandom pattern in a second mutation of evolutionary significance.

The new study examines the de novo origination of a mutation in the human APOL1 gene that protects against a form of trypanosomiasis, a disease that devastated central Africa in historical times and until recently has caused tens of thousands of deaths there per year, while increasing the risk of chronic kidney disease in people with two copies. If the APOL1 mutation arises by chance, it should arise at a similar rate in all populations, and only then spread under Trypanosoma pressure. However, if it is generated nonrandomly, it may actually arise more frequently where it is useful. Results supported the nonrandom pattern: the mutation arose much more frequently in sub-Saharan Africans, who have faced generations of endemic disease, compared to Europeans, who have not, and in the precise genomic location where it confers protection. “The new findings challenge the notion of random mutation fundamentally,” said Livnat.   

From random mutation to natural simplification

Historically, there have been two basic theories for how evolution happens—(1) random mutation and natural selection, and (2) Lamarckism—the idea that an individual directly senses its environment and somehow changes its genes to fit it. Lamarckism has been unable to explain evolution in general, so biologists have concluded that mutations must be random.

Livnat’s new theory moves away from both of these concepts, proposing instead that two inextricable forces underlie evolution. While the well-known external force of natural selection ensures fitness, a previously unrecognized internal force operates inside the organism, putting together genetic information that has accumulated over generations in useful ways.

To illustrate, take fusion mutations, a type of mutation where two previously separate genes fuse to form a new gene. As for all mutations, it has been thought that fusions arise by accident: one day, a gene moves by error to another location and by chance fuses to another gene, once in a great while leading to a useful adaptation. But Livnat’s team has recently shown that genes do not fuse at random. Instead, genes that have evolved to be used together repeatedly over generations are the ones that are more likely to get fused. Because the genome folds in 3D space, bringing genes that work together to the same place at the same time in the nucleus with their chromatin open, molecular mechanisms fuse these genes rather than others. An interaction involving complex regulatory information that has gradually evolved over generations leads to a mutation that simplifies and “hardwires” it into the genome.

In the PNAS paper, they argue that fusions are a specific example of a more general and extensive internal force that applies across mutation types. Rather than local accidents arising at random locations in the genome disconnected from other genetic information, mutational processes put together multiple meaningful pieces of heritable information in many ways. Genes that evolved to interact tightly are more likely to be fused; single-letter RNA changes that evolved to occur repeatedly across generations via regulatory phenomena are more likely to be “hardwired” as point mutations into the DNA; genes that evolved to interact in incipient networks, each under its own regulation, are more likely to be invaded by the same transposable element that later becomes a master-switch of the network, streamlining regulation, and so on. Earlier mutations influence the origination of later ones, forming a vast network of influences over evolutionary time.

“Previous studies examined mutation rates as averages across genomic positions, masking the probabilities of individual mutations. But our studies suggest that, at the scale of individual mutations, each mutation has its own probability, and the causes and consequences of mutation are related,” says Livnat. “At each generation, mutations arise based on the information that has accumulated in the genome up to that time point, and those that survive become a part of that internal information.” This vast array of interconnected mutational activity gradually hones in over the generations on mutations relevant to the long-term pressures experienced, leading to long-term directed mutational responses to specific environmental pressures, such as the malaria and Trypanosoma–protective HbS and APOL1 mutations.

New genetic information arises in the first place, they argue, as a consequence of the fact that mutations simplify genetic regulation, hardwiring evolved biological interactions into ready-made units in the genome. This internal force of natural simplification, together with the external force of natural selection, act over evolutionary time like combined forces of parsimony and fit, generating co-optable elements that themselves have an inherent tendency to come together into new, emergent interactions. “Co-optable elements are generated by simplification under performance pressure, and then engage in emergent interactions—the source of innovation is at the system level,” said Livnat. “Understood in the proper timescale, an individual mutation does not arise at random nor does it invent anything in and of itself.”

Redefining how evolution works

The potential depth of evolution from this new perspective can be seen by examining other networks. For example, the gene fusion mechanism—where genes repeatedly used together across evolutionary time are more likely to be fused together by mutation—echoes chunking, one of the most basic principles of cognition and learning in the brain, where pieces of information that repeatedly co-occur are eventually chunked into a single unit. Yet fusions are only one instance of a broader principle: diverse mutational processes respond to accumulated information in the genome, combining it over generations into streamlined instructions. This view recasts mutations not as isolated accidents, but as meaningful events in a larger, long-term process.

The study was funded by the John Templeton Foundation, the Israel Science Foundation, and the Sagol Network through the Sagol Lab for Evolution Research. The opinions expressed in the publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.

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Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2424538122 

Article Title

De novo rates of a Trypanosoma-resistant mutation in two human populations