Friday, February 06, 2026

Breakthrough in human norovirus research: Researchers overcome major obstacle to grow and study the virus

Baylor College of Medicine

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine report in Science Advances a breakthrough in human norovirus (HuNoV) research. Norovirus is a leading cause of acute viral gastroenteritis worldwide with severe outcomes mostly among young children, the elderly and people with weakened or compromised immune systems. There are currently no approved vaccines or antiviral therapies, and management strategies rely solely on supportive care, including fluid and electrolyte replacement.

Until now, HuNoV research has been limited by the amount of virus scientists could grow in the lab. In the current study, the Baylor team has overcome a major obstacle that limited their ability to continuously grow virus, which they require to conduct experiments needed to develop strategies to prevent and treat infections and better understand HuNoV biology. The researchers identified factors that restrict viral replication and developed a way to overcome them to optimize long-term viral cultivation.

“In 2016, a previous breakthrough occurred when scientists in our lab and collaborators successfully grew HuNoV in human intestinal enteroids (HIEs), or ‘mini-guts’– miniature, lab grown versions of the human gut,” said first author Gurpreet Kaur, graduate student in molecular virology and microbiology at Baylor working in Dr. Mary Estes’ lab. “While this system allowed researchers to infect cells and study the virus, it still had a major shortcoming – the virus would not grow through repeated rounds, the way scientists can grow many other microorganisms. After just a few rounds, norovirus replication would stop, making it impossible to build up long lasting viral stocks.”

Because of this limitation, researchers have depended on virus collected from infected patients’ stool samples, which are limited, inconsistent and make large scale experiments difficult.

“Looking to overcome this obstacle, we studied several versions of HIEs to understand why norovirus growth usually stops,” said co-author Dr. Sue Crawford, assistant professor of molecular virology and microbiology at Baylor. “Using RNA sequencing, a method that measures gene activity, we discovered that infected HIEs produced high levels of chemokines, molecules that help the body mount an immune response. Three chemokines stood out: CXCL10, CXCL11 and CCL5.”

“We then investigated whether blocking signaling of these chemokines through their receptors would allow human norovirus to replicate better in HIEs,” Kaur said. “We tested a drug called TAK 779, originally developed to block chemokine effects. When TAK 779 was added to the HIE cultures, norovirus replication increased dramatically – virus spread throughout the cells in the cultures, and we achieved replication for 10 to 15 consecutive passages.”

“TAK 779 allowed us to generate, consistent batches of infectious virus from lab cultures instead of human stool — something we and other researchers have been seeking for decades,” Crawford said.

The team also learned that not all HuNoV strains respond to TAK 779 the same way. TAK-779 enhanced replication of strain GII.3, and the growth of strains GII.17 and GI.1.

“We observed that TAK 779 did not enhance replication of GII.4 strains, the most common cause of human outbreaks,” said corresponding author Dr. Mary K. Estes, Distinguished Service Professor and Cullen Foundation Endowed Chair of molecular virology and microbiology at Baylor. Estes also is the co-director of the Gastrointestinal Experimental Model Systems core at the Texas Medical Center Digestive Diseases Center and a member of Baylor’s Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center. “This difference appears to be because GII.4 viruses do not trigger chemokine secretion in HIEs, meaning there’s no chemokine response for TAK 779 to block. This suggests that a different process limits GII.4 growth in HIEs. We are currently optimizing our HIE culture conditions to enable efficient passaging of additional HuNoV strains, including GII.4.”

This work represents a major leap forward for norovirus research. By continuously growing and maintaining norovirus strains in the lab and producing stable virus stocks for experiments, researchers can conduct comprehensive studies of viral structure, antiviral drug screening and vaccine development, even in labs without access to patient stool samples.

For the complete list of authors and financial support for this work, see the publication.

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Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.aeb0455

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Lab-produced tissue samples

Article Title

Overcoming host restrictions to enable continuous passaging of GII.3 human norovirus in human intestinal enteroids

Article Publication Date

4-Feb-2026

New acoustic study reveals deep-diving behavior of elusive beaked whales

Findings provide the first detailed look at Gervais’ beaked whale dives anywhere in the world

University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science

New acoustic study reveals deep-diving behavior of elusive beaked whales — video:
Animation illustrating the dive paths of three goose-beaked whales, shown in different colors, reconstructed from acoustic tracking data collected by two underwater listening stations (black dots).
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Credit: Heloise Frouim-Mouy, CIMAS

Scientists have captured a rare view of one of the ocean’s least understood whales—without ever seeing it. By listening to the sounds beaked whales naturally produce, researchers have reconstructed a three-dimensional picture of their deep-diving behavior in the Gulf of Mexico.

The study provides the first detailed description of the deep-diving behavior of a Gervais’ beaked whale (Mesoplodon europaeus) anywhere in the world. Using passive acoustic data alone, the research offers a unique window into how this elusive species moves and forages far below the ocean’s surface.

Beaked whales spend most of their lives at extreme depths and surface only briefly, making them exceptionally difficult to study using traditional visual surveys or animal-borne tags. Instead, the research team relied on passive acoustics—underwater listening systems that record whales’ species-specific echolocation clicks—to track their movements during deep foraging dives. The approach provides a scalable, non-invasive way to study deep-diving whales and collect data critical for conservation and management.

“These findings come at a critical time for beaked whales in this heavily industrialized region,” said Héloïse Frouin-Mouy, Ph.D., lead author of the study and a bioacoustics scientist at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science’s Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies. “There is an urgent need for reliable data on the populations and behavior of these whales, which are believed to be in decline.”

Previous research has shown that beaked whale populations in the Gulf of Mexico may have declined by as much as 83% since the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, underscoring the need to better understand these hard-to-study species and the threats they face.

For the new study, researchers deployed specialized underwater listening systems on the seafloor off the coast of Louisiana at a depth of approximately 1,100 meters (3,600 feet). Two High-Frequency Acoustic Recording Packages, or HARPs, equipped with multiple time-synchronized sensors, recorded echolocation clicks from beaked whales during 50 deep foraging dives. By measuring tiny differences in the time it took each click to reach individual sensors, scientists were able to estimate the direction of the sound. Combining data from both systems allowed them to reconstruct the whales’ three-dimensional underwater movements.

The team tracked the dive behavior of three species—goose-beaked, Gervais’, and Blainville’s beaked whales—and found that goose-beaked whales were detectable for longer periods and tended to make deeper foraging dives than the other species, often approaching the seafloor.

The study marks the first time this acoustic tracking technology has been used to generate detailed dive behavior and movement data for beaked whales in the Gulf of Mexico. The results demonstrate the power of passive acoustics to study some of the ocean’s most elusive mammals in regions where traditional research methods are difficult or impractical.

The work was conducted as part of the LISTEN (Long-term Investigations into Soundscapes, Trends, Ecosystems, and Noise) project, an ongoing collaboration led by NOAA’s Southeast Fisheries Science Center, Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, and other partners.

The study, titled “Beaked whale dive behavior and acoustic detection range off Louisiana using three-dimensional acoustic tracking,” was published February 4, 2026, in the journal PLOS One

This research was funded by NOAA’s RESTORE Science Program under a grant to the Southeast Fisheries Science Center for the project “Assessing long-term trends and processes driving variability in cetacean density throughout the Gulf of America (2019–2029).” Additional support came from the Deepwater Horizon Open Ocean Trustee Implementation Group’s “Reduce Impacts of Anthropogenic Noise on Cetaceans” project, which aims to restore natural resources injured by the 2010 oil spill.

The authors include Héloïse Frouin-Mouy1, Kaitlin E. Frasier2, John A. Hildebrand2, Eric R. Snyder2, Sean M.Wiggins2, Lance P. Garrison3, Melissa S. Soldevilla3

1Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies (CIMAS), University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science, Miami, FL, USA, 2 Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD, San Diego, CA, USA,3 NOAA Southeast Fisheries Science Center, Miami, FL, USA

Illustration showing a goose-beaked whale emitting an echolocation click while foraging, with the sound waves reaching hydrophones on acoustic recorders at different times. This time difference allows estimation of the whale’s 3D position and reconstruction of its dive profile during foraging.

Credit

Heloise Frouin-Mouy

Cuvier's beaked whale

Credit

NOAA Fisheries (Permit #21938)