Physiology

Building a better green workhorse | The Source | Washington University in St. Louis – Washington University in St. Louis Newsroom

Himadri Pakrasi, the George William and Irene Koechig Freiberg Professor in biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, leads a team awarded $1.7 million from the National Science Foundation to streamline the genome of a cyanobacterium with the goal of developing a green cellular factory for sustainable production of food, feed and fuels.

In this project, we are aiming to redesign the genome of a photosynthetic organism without sacrificing its production capacity. This is a tall task, never attempted before, Pakrasi said.

Researchers will use a genome reduction strategy to develop a photosynthetic production platform out of a fast-growing cyanobacterium, Synechococcus 2973, that can efficiently convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into products of interest. This strain has the fastest doubling time of any known species of cyanobacteria and the highest rate of biomass production observed in cyanobacteria, making it a prime target for bioproduction.

Pakrasi and members of his research group, including postdoctoral research associate Anindita Banerjee and research scientist Deng Liu in biology in Arts & Sciences, have worked with Synechococcus 2973 before, including on projects that required expertise in cyanobacterial physiology, systems and synthetic biology.

Their collaboration includes pioneering geneticist George Church of Harvard Medical School and MIT and computational scientist Costas Maranas at Penn State. The Pakrasi and Maranas research groups have worked together for nearly a decade.

The new project involves state-of-the-art genome editing technology, guided by metabolic modeling and experimental analysis. The project will also train a number of undergraduate students, teaching the design and implementation of molecular tools and cyanobacterial physiology.

Cyanobacteria are photosynthetic and can thrive with sunlight and consume carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, Pakrasi said. Bioproduction using such microbial cell factories is expected to be environmentally sustainable, as compared to the current heterotrophic production hosts.

More:
Building a better green workhorse | The Source | Washington University in St. Louis - Washington University in St. Louis Newsroom

Physiology

S.8, E.1: Service and Tennis – Learning for Life @ Gustavus host Greg Kaster interviews Gustavus alum Mason Bultje ’18 about his equity work and…

Mason Bultje 18 talks about majoring in Exercise Physiology and playing tennis at Gustavus, assisting Minneapolis children and youth through nonprofit InnerCity Tennis, and his experience as a young Black man both on and off the Hill.

Season 8, Episode 1: Service and Tennis

Greg Kaster:

Hello and welcome to Learning for Life @ Gustavus, the podcast about people teaching and learning at Gustavus Adolphus College, and the myriad ways that Gustavus liberal arts education provides a lasting foundation for lives of fulfillment and purpose. Im your host Greg Kaster, faculty member in the Department of History.

For a lot of us, I suspect the sport we most associate with inner city youth is basketball. And for those of us living in Minnesota, the year-round indoor-outdoor sport that comes first to mind is most likely hockey. Which is why for people unfamiliar with it as I was, the Minneapolis organization, InnerCity Tennis may come as a surprise.

With origin stating to the 1950s, InnerCity Tennis or ICT has contributed importantly to the development of tens of thousands of children and youth. One person at the center of that work today is ICT junior development coach, Mason Bultje. Mason is a 2018 graduate of Gustavus where he majored in exercise physiology and played tennis, earning all-conference honors and singles and doubles his senior year.

In keeping with the values of Gustavus and reflecting his own experience in the summer Tennis and Life Camps there, Mason has his profile on the ICT website states has A passion for working with underprivileged youth and players of all abilities. Since first learning about mason and his work from a faculty colleague, Ive been looking forward to speaking with him and Im delighted now to welcome to the podcast. Mason, its great to have you.

Mason Bultje:

Yeah. Thanks for having me. Im really excited to be here. Appreciate it.

Greg Kaster:

Thanks. Yeah, youre quite welcome. So I want to mention that faculty colleague is Professor Jill Locke, a friend and a member of the political science department. I gather you helped her maybe as a trainer or something like that and she mentioned you to me because you and I hadnt met before. I was intrigued by what she was saying about your work in InnerCity Tennis. So grateful to her for that connection and also for even suggesting some of the questions that Ill probably be posing, not probably, will be posing today. So how are things going right now? Is InnerCity Tennis up and running even amid the COVID pandemic?

Mason Bultje:

Yeah. Our facility in South Minneapolis where we have people come in and play tennis, we call it our pay-to-play programs, whether its adults or youth, that has been running through most of this year, but when Governor Walz shut things down kind of around Thanksgiving time, that facility closed to the public. But Im heavily involved with tennis and learning program. So its part of our outreach programs where we work with underserved youth and were helping them with their distance learning at this time.

So a lot of the kids that we are working with, I think over 75% of them are on free and reduced lunch. So they dont have the resources to stick to their distance learning at home. So they come into one of our two sites and we have coaches that help them throughout the day make sure they attend their meetings that theyre turning in their work, turning in quality work as well as give them some physical activity where we play tennis as well, and its just been so fulfilling seeing kids being able to safely see their friends and stick to their schoolwork.

There have been times where students dont attend for a couple days and they come back with 15 assignments to do. And then next week, we chip away at it. We get them caught up. So its just very fulfilling work knowing that we are providing these kids with an opportunity to receive their education when they likely wouldnt be able to if they were at home because mom might be working and dad is working multiple jobs as well or limited internet access at home.

So theres certain barriers that our kids face that our program is there to really support them as much as we can. I think for me, the number one thing is getting these kids an education and keeping them safe. And if we can play tennis and have some fun on top of that, thats the icing on the cake. But the number one thing is fulfilling the needs for for these students outside the campus.

Greg Kaster:

Its great to hear this for a lot of reasons, but one of them for me is as you alluded to, we read a lot about how difficult, how the distance learning is difficult. Its difficult even for people who are privileged, but certainly for people who maybe one or both parents have to work and they maybe dont have the internet resources, et cetera. So its nice to hear some stories about organizations like yours that clearly werent werent founded with COVID or any pandemic in mind, obviously, but are doing that kind of good work. I think its important to get those stories recorded and remember them. Well come back to your work there later. So tell us a little bit about where you grew up first of all and how you came to Gustavus.

Mason Bultje:

Yeah. So I was born and raised in Mankato. So not too far away at all. I grew up just very close to Gustavus and Id come to campus for different things like pep band or I was very involved in music in high school so I did some choir concerts there as well as the Swanson Tennis Center going to play different high school matches or tournaments. So I was just around. Im very close with my family in Mankato, and so when I was thinking about going to college, there were a couple things I knew I wanted to stay pretty close to home and then tennis was a big part of who I was and still who I am to this day.

So I kind of was looking at how I could make those things match up and I realized at some point, that I wasnt good enough to play for the Gophers. So the next school on the list was Gustavus and I went and visited the summer before my senior year of high school and just instantly felt at home on campus. Actually Gustavus was the only school I applied to, which I wouldnt recommend, but it was pretty academically rigorous in high school. So I was pretty confident about getting in and then it was just a matter of making things work financially, and just figured it out. And by, I want to say, October my senior year of high school, I knew I was going to be a Gusty and never looked back since.

Greg Kaster:

Thats great. Well, were glad thats the case and I was going to ask you if you had applied to any other schools like Minnesota State or the University of Minnesota. Im not technically, I guess, a first-generation college student. My dad didnt go to college. My mom went to a two-year teachers college, but Im just curious, do you fall into that category of first generation college student or did your parents both attend college? Maybe they even went to Gustavus. I dont know. Sometimes theres a family connection.

Mason Bultje:

Yeah. Im actually kind of the further end of that spectrum there. My mom is really who pushed me, not necessarily even pushed me, but inspired me to pursue an education. She got her doctorate while being a single mother raising four kids, and Im the oldest. I dont want to say, I guess I picked up the slack, but I was very involved in helping out and I just saw the sacrifices that she made to pursue her education. She really taught me that education is something thats really worth investing in. Its something that people cannot take away from you.

Financially Gustavus, the sticker price was pretty scary, but she encouraged me like, Well figure it out. No one will ever take away your education from you. But she actually did work with first generation college students. So I also know the challenges that they face just from talking to her about her work. So its kind of an interesting perspective that I got from her growing up.

Greg Kaster:

Sure. Obviously, youre still drawn on your current work. Whats her field? What is she working or what does she work in?

Mason Bultje:

Yeah. She has her PhD in psychology.

Greg Kaster:

Oh, wow. Thats fantastic.

Mason Bultje:

Yeah.

Greg Kaster:

My dad who as I said didnt go to college grew up in Chicago and then went into World War II, the Army, became a hairdresser. His dad had been a barber. Anyway, my dad just valued education so much and just exactly like your mom was saying all of those things to me and to my brother, one of the sibling. Man, Im so grateful. As I know you are to your mom, because its amazing to me how many people still discount education, generally, but also a college education that its not worth it. Well, I can be an entrepreneur without it.

No, its worth it, and your mom is so right, it can never be taken away from you. It repays in so many ways not just in monetary ways, obviously. And youre an example of that. Well get into that. So thats a neat story. So how about the major? You end up majoring in exercise physiology. I mean, I didnt even hear of that until, I dont know, maybe when I was in graduate school. But what led you into that area?

Mason Bultje:

Yeah, I think this part of my story is pretty similar to a lot of students. I came in thinking I was pre-med. For my first year, I really did load up my schedule quite a bit. I didnt necessarily help myself out there, but taking the bios and chems, and everything my first year. And its kind of found like I like studying the human body and I like the application of knowing more about how muscles work and how the different systems of the body work.

I just remember theres a moment in the library where I was sitting there like, Okay, I probably could get through this. I probably could get to medical school someday, but I dont like this. This isnt very fun. So I literally went on the website and just looked at other majors and classes that I kind of What field am I sort of in, but its different than this. Im sick of talking about plants right now.

So I actually had a lot of a lot of pre-reqs for physical therapy. And actually part of my story thats interesting is that my first year at Gustavus, I had wrist problems. I was playing tennis and right away in February on touring week, my wrist was really hurting and I didnt know what was going on and I had to jump through a bunch of different hoops at one point. They diagnosed me with this rare disease and I thought my wrist was going to shatter.

So through that process, I end up in the doctors office with my mom. Shes like, Yeah, you might have to do physical therapy. I could see you being good at that. Wait a minute. I already have a lot of the classes for it. Its about the human body. Youre really helping people. So I looked into it a little bit more and I really liked the sound of going the pre-PT route and I thought that Its actually the health fitness major at the time. They switched it to exercise physiology, while I was in the program.

The classes stayed essentially the same. They just changed the title of the major, which I approve of. I think exercise physiology sounds a lot better than health fitness. So then I pivoted to that route and actually was able to jump a year ahead in my major. So I finished up pretty much all of my exercise physiology classes by my junior year.

Greg Kaster:

Wow.

Mason Bultje:

My senior year was very lax and allowed me to shadow for PT, which I can get into a little bit more [crosstalk 00:12:25].

Greg Kaster:

Yeah, Id like to hear more about that. Thats awesome. So regular listeners know how much I love these stories because its often the case. Maybe its probably most often the case that students really dont know. Or lets put it this way, they may think they know what theyre going to do, what they want to be. And boy, if I only had a dollar or maybe $10 for every student who wants to be a doctor at least through the end of the first semester until the low grades start coming in. Its so interesting, the way you found that major and also the personal connection. I didnt know about the wrist injuries. I assume you overcame those because you continued to play tennis.

Mason Bultje:

Yeah. Eventually, I actually had two surgeries in three years though. So the first one didnt quite get it. So it taught me some lessons about perseverance through that. But Im all fixed now. Im good to go, but it was a bumpy start to my tennis career, no doubt.

Greg Kaster:

Yeah. And you had mentioned youd come to Gustavus having played in high school, so you already had a love of the game. What are some of the memories you have of Gustavus? I know we want to talk about the Tennis and Life camp there and then we maybe set that aside for just a second, but that aside, what are some of the memories, good, bad and ugly and you were a student of student of color there as well, if you want to talk about that. But what are some of the memories you have of the place? Im asking partly because youre two years out, so its not going to be that hard to recollect.

Mason Bultje:

Yeah. Its still fresh. I still think about what Im missing out as a full grown adult now every day. I think a lot of my memories really are wrapped around the tennis team and the camaraderie that I had with my teammates, whether thats on the court or off the court just thinking about going to practice and then going to the trainers and going to the caf. Everyones sitting around the table together and then 30 minutes later after everyone showers up and meet up in the library again.

Youre closing it down, going back to your dorm and doing it all over again. Just the time management skills that I learned from being an athlete at Gustavus. Id also say, I mean theres a lot of camaraderie obviously between the tennis team, but just athletes in general, theres just a really supportive community being an athlete. All the different sports, I feel like we all connected and support each other very well. So thats thats very central to a lot of the memories that I have.

Just being neighbors with your best friends for four years is a very unique experience. I know that living on campus a lot of people complain about it, and theyre warranted. But I do think that you can also look at it in a positive way, and that youll never have more access to being around your classmates and your friends in the way that you are when youre just down the hall and new.

Greg Kaster:

Yeah. I completely agree. And just to underscore what you said about athletes at Gustavus, Ive said this before both on the podcast and off, but over the years, Ive taught like like other profs taught, many athletes in all different areas women and men, and in general, yes, what you mentioned learning time management and having the self-discipline thats necessary to succeed in your particular sport also translates nicely into your academic work, right? At least in my experience. So I can relate. And I also can relate to what you just said about being on campus.

I mean, I guess as an undergraduate, I went to Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, where by the way I have a memory of playing tennis not as a team member, but I think maybe as what was then called physical education, PE requirement. I wasnt very good at it. But what I remember is when I lived off campus, it was really kind of on campus. It was a house called the foreign language house and it wasnt far off campus at all. I suppose like most most off-campus housing.

But man, the friendships there, the camaraderie. We still have reunions. Theres one coming up in January as a matter of fact which I hope to attend, finally. Anyway, so I can completely relate to what youre saying and just certainly want to underscore what you said about athletics and the way it connects to self-discipline and success beyond the particular sport one is involved in.

So as a student of color, what was that like? I mean, the place is overwhelmingly white like most college campuses. I mean, thats just a fact. Was that something that you felt you were aware of or not?

Mason Bultje:

Yeah. Very much so. I think for me college was sort of a great awakening if you will for me with my own identity, with my standing in the world socially. I think in high school Mankato was very, very white as well. Although you have a pretty good immigrant population from East Africa. But as far as like who was in my social circle and who was in the classes that I was in, AP classes and everything, its very white. So that was very normal to me.

So on the hill at Gustavus, I felt great. I didnt feel black so to say. Obviously, I am and I knew that, but it didnt feel as much of an anomaly as when I went down the hill. Being completely honest, I had a pretty tough time in St. Peter. I think that for me, it actually was really interesting that I didnt realize how bad it was in the world as a black man until I went to Gustavus, until I experienced the absence of that feeling while I was on the hill.

It just felt normal I guess just to always feel black, just to always feel kind of the eyes on you. Always feel like people are suspicious of you. Once I went to Gustavus, I finally felt that feeling be removed, but then at the same time when Id go to Family Fresh, Id feel it 10 times more than I would-

Greg Kaster:

In the grocery store, yeah.

Mason Bultje:

Yeah.

Greg Kaster:

Thats all fascinating to me. Quite fascinating and important. Boy, youre reminding me long ago, maybe even before you were born, the grocery store, I think it was called Ericksons. Anyway the grocery store in town on Halloween, my wife Kate who then taught in history, and I went down to do our shopping and there was a cashier in blackface. A white woman dressed up as a mammy for her Halloween costume. We were stunned. We shouldnt have been.

The woman clearly took great pride in her costume. My wife, Kate who doesnt hold back in the face of something like that, she spoke to the manager. And long story short, I mean, oh goodness, the woman was so upset. She had to get rid of the costume. Sort of to her, it was nothing at all, but to then African-American students seeing that and some white people as well, it was like, What in the hell? So thats just so interesting to me. It felt different in Mankato because Mankato is just more diverse. Growing up in Mankato, you didnt have those kinds of experiences you had here?

Mason Bultje:

I would not say that. I would say when I grew up in Mankato, it was just normal because I didnt know anything different.

Greg Kaster:

Okay. Got you.

Mason Bultje:

It was happening, but that was just the norm. Then when I went to Gustavus and I felt that stopped for a little bit. Thats when I realized like, Wow, this is what it was always like for me growing up. I dont have to just deal with this. I mean, just the things that just were normally my friends in high school, I wouldnt say that theyre racist or anything. Theyre kind of dumb high school kids, but they would make like Emmett Till jokes and that would just be normal.

I didnt think anything of it because thats just the way it was. And then when I went to Gustavus and people were not making Emmett Till jokes, thats when I realized that, okay, it doesnt have to be this way. And then taking that a step further now living in Minneapolis, I really feel much more free and secure in my identity as a black man.

Greg Kaster:

Again, its all fascinating because Ive spoken to some black alums, Gustavus alums, for whom Well, different in your case, maybe coming from lets say black towns in Mississippi and then coming to Gustavus where its much more of a shock, and they had some you know negative experiences and some negative memories around race at Gustavus. But in your case, you went through sort of what some African-Americans went through lets say during World War II who were abroad and werent experiencing racism for the first time, and then come back to a country having fought against racism, the Nazis, but come back to a country where racism is still flourishing.

So I just think its so interesting how Gustavus in your case became the place where you felt Not that there wasnt racism, but you felt its absence more than before, and that was kind of an awakening. I find that quite interesting. So were you up in Minneapolis when Mr. Floyd was Youre already living here when George Floyd was murdered this past summer?

Mason Bultje:

Yeah. So I was up here and just to add thats walking distance from InnerCity Tennis, from our facility. So that really hit close to home and got me more fired up. I think that for myself, before George Floyd, Id kind of go through phases of being really empowered and vocal and really pushing those around me to learn more about you know social justice issues and become more outspoken. But then it kind of dwindle at times and I think that with George Floyd that fire grew so big and and I realized that I cant ask allies to commit to working towards solving these issues consistently if Im not doing it.

So Ive really tried to commit myself to making that be a part of my identity, a part of who I am, and bringing diversity equity and inclusion initiatives into everything that I do. That was really a turning point for me especially having it. Like I said, it hit so close to home. I was able to organize an event for InnerCity Tennis. Its kind of like a supply drive on getting people together in the community just to kind of talk about these issues and then they were people are encouraged to walk over to the memorial, just walk over a foot bridge over 35W down a couple blocks and then youre right there.

Greg Kaster:

Youre right. I forgot how close to your facility is to the side. Kate and I were able to go. So many others were able to go to the memorial site, which was just quite profound, quite moving and very interesting. I was so struck by the mix of those A sense of celebration in some ways. Lots of life. I mean, barber shop, and cooking, and music, but also deep profound grief and sadness. So I want to come back to your You were telling me before we started recording, your work with the US Tennis Association around diversity, but lets circle back, again, to Gustavus.

I know for you as for so many people, that Tennis and Life Camps there, the summer Tennis and Life Camps that I mentioned in the intro were so I mean, its an overused word, but it still applies transformative, so important. I wasnt at all closely associated with them. I was aware of them of course teaching at Gustavus. We should note that they were founded and started in 1977 by Steve Wilkinson, a renowned collegiate tennis coach. I think the winningest tennis coach in collegiate history, at least thus far, and his wife Barbara. Did you get to know Steve before he passed away or not?

Mason Bultje:

Yeah. So I was actually the last first year class to come in, while Steve was still alive. So he passed away January of my first year. So I have one memory of him coaching me in a match in the fall and thats something that I definitely cherish.

Greg Kaster:

Thats great. Well, tell us a little bit about your experience in there. What you did in those camps, how they impacted you. You also taught there, right? Did you attend them and teach there both?

Mason Bultje:

So I actually never attended. I grew up in Mankato, but the drive was just too much for me. It is an expensive camp, and so for me, its either I could do a whole summer of tennis in Mankato or I could go to TLC for three days. So I chose more tennis. But when I went to Gustavus, I had a pretty good idea that there was a decent chance I would get involved with Tennis and Life Camps in the summer.

Greg Kaster:

Yeah. Tell us a little bit about that, about what you were doing.

Mason Bultje:

Yeah. I have a pretty decent story I guess about the beginning. I mentioned having wrist problems that happened in the spring of my first year, and I had already committed to doing TLC that summer, but then ended up needing to have surgery in May. They put a screw in my wrist. So I was going to be in the cast for most of the summer and I was really worried about my job security at that point, like not only do I not get to play tennis, do I have to be in the cast, but can I even work?

I talked to Neal Hagberg whos the director, and he said, Well make it work. The majority of my first summer, I taught tennis left-handed. Its not like Im ambidextrous or proficient with my left hand by any means, but I figured it out, and I think that really is the start of I dont know. Thats just so integral to what I do now, and with outreach, so many situations are not ideal, but you just figure it out. So I think thats one of the first lessons that I learned going in the TLC.

Go here to see the original:
S.8, E.1: Service and Tennis - Learning for Life @ Gustavus host Greg Kaster interviews Gustavus alum Mason Bultje '18 about his equity work and...

Physiology

Essent Biologics Announces Derek Mathers as Head of Business Development – BioSpace

CENTENNIAL, Colo., Feb. 16, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --Essent Biologics, a nonprofit biotechnology company providinglow passaged primary cells, origin tissue, scaffolds and data to advance regenerative medicine research, today announced the appointment of Derek Mathers as Head of Business Development.

Prior to his role with Essent, Derek served as Director, Strategic Accounts for Advanced Solutions Life Sciences (ASLS), driving revenue through global 3D bioprinting partnerships with leading life science companies. Before ASLS, Derek led global sales at Worrell, where he consulted with leading healthcare companies to design, test and manufacture complex medical devices. While at Worrell, Derek also taught night classes as an adjunct professor of 3D Printing at the University of Minnesota (UMN).

"We are thrilled to welcome Derek to our team," said Corey Stone, Executive Director, Essent Biologics. "His knowledge and expertise will help drive Essent's growth, as we continue to set a new standard in the field of regenerative medicine."

Derek earned his Bachelor of Science in Entrepreneurial Management and Digital Marketing from UMN's Carlson School of Management and holds certificates in Tissue Engineering from Rice University, Cardiac Physiology and Anatomy from UMN, and Design for Additive Manufacturing from GE Additive.

"Essent has a unique opportunity to provide human-derived biomaterials for the next generation of regenerative therapies," said Derek Mathers, Head of Business Development. "I am humbled and grateful to join this talented team and look forward to contributing to our mission."

About Essent BiologicsEssent Biologics is setting a new standard in human-derived biomaterials and 3D biology data for research. The nonprofit biotechnology company provides low passaged primary cells, origin tissue and scaffolds, as well as comprehensive donor and product data to advance regenerative medicine research from benchtop to bedside. Essent Biologics supplies products in small or large volumes and serves as a manufacturing partner by creating master cell banks and an inventory of custom products within a tailored specification. To ensure reliable product quality, safety and efficacy, all Essent Biologics products are developed using robust design control processes and produced under current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP). For more information, please visit essentbiologics.org.

Media ContactCourtney JurbalaEssent Biologics720.873.4709cjurbala@essentbiologics.org

View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/essent-biologics-announces-derek-mathers-as-head-of-business-development-301229183.html

SOURCE Essent Biologics

Read the rest here:
Essent Biologics Announces Derek Mathers as Head of Business Development - BioSpace

Physiology

The mysterious existence of a leafless kauri stump, kept alive by its forest neighbours – The Conversation AU

Plants use their leaves to make food from the suns energy and carbon dioxide. With very few exceptions of parasitic plants, no tree is known to grow without green foliage or to be more precise, no tree can start life without leaves or some sort of green tissue containing chlorophyll.

But some may end up as zombie trees long after they lose all leaves and large parts of their trunk, either to disease or the chainsaw.

Such undead tree stumps have been observed for almost 200 years, but the evolutionary and physiological processes leading to their existence remain a mystery. One reason is because they are rare. Another is because whatever happens on their journey from feeding themselves to being fed happens out of sight likely below ground.

American forest ecologist Suzanne Simard has shown that trees send each other signals through a network of fungi buried among their roots. This underground communication includes warning signals about environmental change and the transfer of nutrients to neighbouring trees before they die.

We suggest this supply can continue beyond the apparent death of an individual tree. By measuring water flow in the stem of a living kauri (Agathis australis) stump and its neighbouring trees, we show underground connections are indeed likely responsible for the survival of the stump.

A living tree stump is clearly a biological oddity, and our key question is why such root grafts form.

It is unlikely a tree that has lost its foliage (through windthrow, disease, or when it is felled) subsequently knocks on its neighbours door (or, more accurately, roots) to ask for carbohydrates. Instead, we must assume that these root connections had been in place earlier, while the stump was still a normal tree.

If that is the case, we can assume root grafting to be the rule rather than the exception, at least in species in which living stumps have been observed. But what are the evolutionary advantages? And why are the connections maintained when a leafless stump is no longer actively contributing resources?

The short answer to these questions is we dont know. Root grafting, a phenomenon well known to foresters and gardeners, has barely been studied on a physiological basis. Much remains speculation.

Read more: Climate change: having the right combination of tree personalities could make forests more resilient

A few evolutionary advantages for root grafting have been suggested, including increased resistance to windthrow, kin selection (I will help you out if you are related to me), and increased access to water and nutrients coupled with the ability to shift those resources among trees.

The former two are more easily explained because all graft members benefit. But the latter is more difficult to understand.

If forests feature interconnected root networks where water, carbon and nutrients are exchanged, this would be equivalent to power, water and gas grids supplying a city.

But what mechanisms control who gives and who takes? There is evidence that shaded trees are supported by non-shaded trees and the fact that stumps (pensioners) are still supplied with resources gives rise to the much bigger idea that forests act and survive as a whole much like a single bee or ant has no chance to survive without being part of its colony.

Our discovery of the tight hydraulic coupling through root grafts suggests exactly that: a communal physiology among connected trees. This is a game changer for our general understanding of forest functioning. It shifts our perspective towards forest ecosystems as superorganisms.

Read more: Entire hillsides of trees turned brown this summer. Is it the start of ecosystem collapse?

But with all the advantages this may bring for the superorganism forest, root connections obviously imply a lack of social distancing. As with COVID-19, this makes it easy for pathogens to spread, especially in cases where the pathogen penetrates the vascular tissue, a trees main transport route for water and carbohydrates.

Well into the 21st century, some great mysteries remain about how forests function. Research is particularly timely and relevant, given the rise in climate-induced forest dieback events due to more frequent and severe droughts, increased vulnerability to pathogens and exposure to pests that come with warmer temperatures.

Here is the original post:
The mysterious existence of a leafless kauri stump, kept alive by its forest neighbours - The Conversation AU

Physiology

Agile Adaptation – Ohio Wesleyan University

Ohio Wesleyan Students, Professor Pivot When Pandemic Interrupts International Research Plans

By Cole Hatcher

Their plan was to travel to southern France to study how a local lizard is responding to climate change.

Though the pandemic prevented Ohio Wesleyan Universitys Sierra Spears 22, Princeton Vaughn 22, and assistant professor of zoology Eric Gangloff from visiting the Pyrenees mountains this summer, the quick-thinking trio followed the lizards example and adapted.

In the months since their trip was canceled, the OWU scientists have successfully completed multiple related research projects that could be conducted without international travel, presented their findings at the 2021 Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology meeting, and begun drafting two papers to submit to scientific journals.

Both Princeton and Sierra have been enormously resilient and flexible this past year, qualities that will undoubtedly serve them well in their future careers, Gangloff, Ph.D., said of his students. They have both demonstrated great curiosity in exploring these ideas and creativity in how we can conduct these experiments.

I have learned a great deal from working with both of them, and I consider both of these projects to be true collaborations, Gangloff said. I am lucky to be working with such talented researchers.

For Sierra Spears, a pre-professional zoology major and chemistry minor from Bowling Green, Ohio, the research pivot meant analyzing data shared by collaborators in France rather than collecting the information first-hand. In addition to Gangloff, Spears also worked with OWU student Ciara Pettit 23 of South Euclid, Ohio, on the project.

Spears presentation for the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology is titled Plasticity in Thermoregulatory Behavior and Performance in Response to Hyperoxia in a High-Elevation Specialist Lizard, Iberolacerta bonnali.

The lizards involved are classified as near-threatened, she said, because, unlike lowland species that can move to properly thermoregulate, high-elevation lizards have nowhere to go as climate warms.

Sierra's work is directly related to climate change, Gangloff added. Under climate change scenarios, we dont know if the lizards will have anywhere to go if their habitat becomes unsuitable.

There is a chance they could move down in elevation if they can deal with the warmer temperatures, but her project shows that they do not do well when transported to lower elevation, at least in the short term, Gangloff said. So her work is addressing fundamental questions about how physiology can respond to novel conditions, but also questions about conservation for a species of concern.

Spears said future research in the area will look deeper into possible physiological explanations like red blood cell count, reactive oxygen species, or hemoglobin concentrations.

Spears and Gangloff are in the near-final stages of analyzing data and preparing an article they have been invited to submit to a special issue of the journal Diversity on the evolutionary ecology of lizards.

For Princeton Vaughn, a zoology major from Bowie, Maryland, the pandemic pivot meant traveling to Cincinnati, Ohio, in collaboration with Gangloff and OWU student Wyatt McQueen 22 of Heath, Ohio.

Vaughns presentation for the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology is titled Location, Location, Location: Testing the Performance Implications of Morphological Shifts in Introduced Urban Lizards.

The Ohio Wesleyan researchers chose Cincinnati, Vaughn said, because a child smuggled 10 common wall lizards from their home in Italy to Ohio in the 1950s.

Today, their population has exploded into hundreds of thousands, he said. Using both museum specimens and live reptiles, the goal is to see if and how the invasive (lizard) population has evolved over its time in the novel habitat of Cincinnati and if those changes might be related to sprint performance.

Princetons project is important, Gangloff said, because it allows us to understand how organisms may respond to highly altered habitats how living in this new, urban environment may have led to adaptive shifts in their body shape (leg length, body width, etc.), especially in relation to their ability to run under different conditions. So his work is exploring fundamental issues relating form-to-function in vertebrates but also exploring how organisms may cope with highly anthropogenic landscapes, like a city.

Vaughn said he expects future research to explore how both clinging ability and climbing performance interact with morphology.

For now, he is continuing to analyze data and draft (as lead author) an article that he and Gangloff hope to submit this semester to the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. In addition, Vaughn is working with OWU faculty member Laura Tuhela-Reuning, Ph.D., to use the universitys scanning transmission electron microscope to examine lizard claws and their climbing/grasping ability.

Gangloffs own Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology presentation is titled Adaptation and Plasticity in the Multivariate Thermal Phenotype of Common Wall Lizards.

This is a widespread species found across much of southern Europe, generally at low elevations, said Gangloff, who joined the Ohio Wesleyan faculty in 2019. However, in recent years as temperatures have warmed, this species has been observed moving up in elevation to track these preferred thermal environments.

As they move higher, he said, the lizards face issues such as less oxygen, and his collaborative project explores how the reptiles respond to the change in elevation. The goal is to determine what environments, currently not inhabited by the lizards, may be suitable for them during continued climate change.

Gangloff collected his data while working as a post-doctoral researcher with the Station dEcologie Thorique et Exprimentale du CNRS in Moulis, France. He worked in collaboration with Brooke Bodensteiner and Martha Muoz, both of Yale University, and with Fabien Aubret and Laura Kouyoumdjian, both of CNRS.

Gangloff said he is hopeful that he and a group of Ohio Wesleyan students will be able to travel to France this summer to continue researching lizards and their adaptations to climate change.

But if the determined scientists face more travel delays, expect more agile adaptation.

We may complete a project here in Ohio instead, Gangloff said.

In addition to presenting their work at the 2021 Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology meeting, Spears and Vaughn also presented earlier versions of their findings at Ohio Wesleyans Summer Science Research Symposium in September.

Learn more about Ohio Wesleyans zoology department at owu.edu/zoology and more about the Universitys annual Summer Science Research Program and Symposium at owu.edu/ssrp.

Read more here:
Agile Adaptation - Ohio Wesleyan University

Physiology

Evaluation of Stress and Associated Biochemical Changes in Patients wi | DMSO – Dove Medical Press

Kanchan Tyagi,1 Nidhi Bharal Agarwal,2 Prem Kapur,3 Sunil Kohli,3 Rajinder K Jalali4

1Department of Pharmaceutical Medicine, School of Pharmaceutical Education and Research, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi, 110062, India; 2Centre for Translational and Clinical Research, School of Chemical & Life Sciences, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi, 110062, India; 3Hamdard Institute of Medical Sciences and, Research, HAH Centenary Hospital, New Delhi, 110062, India; 4Physician and Healthcare Consultant. Formerly, Sun Pharmaceuticals Industries Limited, Gurgaon, 122015, India

Correspondence: Nidhi Bharal AgarwalCentre for Translational and Clinical Research, School of Chemical & Life Sciences, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi, 110062, IndiaTel +91 9818334770Email nidhi.bharal@gmail.com

Purpose: Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), a metabolic disorder, remains associated with a physiological impairment affecting large populations worldwide. Onset of T2DM is multifactorial where obesity and abnormal basal metabolic rate are considered most critical. Of people diagnosed with T2DM, about 80% are also obese. It is also reported that obese individuals have an increased odds of developing depression, whereas T2DM is estimated to increase the incidence by two-fold. The preponderance of research data demonstrates that T2DM alters the serum level of cortisol and adiponectin which are known to be associated with neuronal physiology. The study explored, how a metabolic disorder like T2DM is linked with the altered plasma level of cortisol and adiponectin, the risk factors for stress and depression.Patients and Methods: A cross-sectional population study was conducted in T2DM patients using a bimodal approach. First approach used questionnaires, (1) Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) and (2) Stress Coping Inventory Questionnaire (SCQ) to assess signs and symptoms of depression and stress, respectively, in T2DM patients. In the second approach, robust biochemical analysis was conducted for serum adiponectin and cortisol levels.Results: An association of T2DM in stress and depression was evaluated in 158 subjects (105 T2DM obese patients and 53 healthy controls). A lower PHQ-9 score and adiponectin levels were seen in T2DM obese patients compared to healthy controls (p< 0.05). Further, results also depicted a lower adiponectin levels in T2DM obese patients with depression compared to T2DM obese patients without depression (p< 0.05). The study did not find a significant difference in cortisol serum levels among the T2DM and control groups. However, a higher level of serum cortisol was reported in T2DM obese patients with depression over those T2DM obese patients who lacked depression (p< 0.05).Conclusion: The findings suggest that T2DM obese patients might have a higher risk of developing stress and depression. Further, biochemical parameters, adiponectin and cortisol, might be the potential biomarkers for T2DM and may help in early diagnosis of these comorbid conditions.

Keywords: type 2 diabetes mellitus, depression, stress, PHQ-9, SCQ, adiponectin, cortisol

This work is published and licensed by Dove Medical Press Limited. The full terms of this license are available at https://www.dovepress.com/terms.php and incorporate the Creative Commons Attribution - Non Commercial (unported, v3.0) License.By accessing the work you hereby accept the Terms. Non-commercial uses of the work are permitted without any further permission from Dove Medical Press Limited, provided the work is properly attributed. For permission for commercial use of this work, please see paragraphs 4.2 and 5 of our Terms.

Read the original:
Evaluation of Stress and Associated Biochemical Changes in Patients wi | DMSO - Dove Medical Press

Immunology

Duke Immunology

The immune system defends us against infection and provides surveillance against tissue damage and cancer. Studies of the immune system are therefore essential to understanding and treating a myriad of diseases. Exciting discoveries in immunology promise, and are delivering, better vaccines to protect against infection, new approaches to suppress allergy, inflammation, autoimmunity and transplant rejection, and new tools to attack cancer.

Learn More

Go here to see the original:
Duke Immunology

Immunology

From astronomy to immunology, it’s time to restore confidence in evidence-based science – Salon

The widespread availability of an FDA-approved vaccine for COVID-19 will not ensure its consumption by the public. This is reflective of a broad cultural problem there is a deep undercurrent of mistrust, especially of elites, running through American society today but it also echoes a cultural problem in the world of science, specifically.

Americans of all stripes have come to regard scientists as part of the elite, in part because they have sequestered themselves in an ivory tower, saturated with ambition for academic honors and consumed with sterile intellectual gymnastics. Much of current scientific culture focuses on nuances whose sole purpose is to garner their researchers higher academic status by impressing colleagues, rather than serving the public's interest or carrying any practical relevance for our daily life.

This state of affairs is particularly apparent in my field: the world of physics. For instance, in theoretical physics, a phalanx of untestable notionsabout the multiverse, hypothesized extra dimensions, the idea that we live in a simulation, and the argument that there is no need for experimental evidence to justify the string theory strategy in unifying quantum mechanics and gravityoccupy centerstage. At the same time, there is a taboo on an open discussion of certain common-sense questions, such as whether there are other intelligent civilizations in outer space and whether our civilization is the smartest kid on the galactic block.

"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently", wrote the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in his book "The Dawn of Day," published in 1881. And indeed, the psychological pressure on physicists to conform with fashionable trends promotes a herd mentality in which young scientists today feel obligated to work on far-fetched ideas promoted by senior colleagues just in order to secure jobs, thereby perpetuating the problem. These young scientists learn from the examples set by their elders, who often react to original thought with violent pushback and bullying. I know, because I have been the subject of such assaults.

When the first interstellar object, 'Oumuamua, was glimpsed passing through our solar system in October of 2017, scientists quickly agreed that it was weird on half-a-dozen counts: it had a flattened shape with extreme proportions never seen before among comets or asteroids, an unusual initial velocity, and a shiny appearance; it lacked a cometary tail, but nevertheless it exhibited a push away from the Sun not explainable by gravity. However, despite these anomalies, the mainstream scientific community immediately declared business as usual and decreed the object to have been an unusual asteroid or cometalbeit one that was unlike any asteroid or comet seen before. The response brought to mind a kid who has encountered many cats at home and, upon visiting the zoo and seeing an elephant, simply assumes it to be an unusual cat. Such naivete is charming in a child; it is less tolerable in a scientist.

We ought to hold ourselves to a higher standard, I felt so several months after 'Oumuamua was first sighted, I suggested that its weirdness may imply that it was a product of an alien technology, possibly a thin sail pushed by sunlight. (Our own civilization has dreamed of such a perfect spacefaring technology for decades, and I had recently helped to design a prototype of one for the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative, an effortsupported by earthbound innovators and dreamers such as Yuri Milnerto reach our closest neighboring star within our lifetimes.)

In fact, another object showing evidence for push by sunlight with no cometary tail was discovered in September 2020 by Pan STARRS. It was initially given an astronomical label, 2020 SO, before it was identified as a stray rocket booster from a 1966 mission to the Moon that is still bound to the Sun. 'Oumuamua moved much fasteron an escaping trajectory from the Sun, implying that it must have originated from interstellar space.

When I spend time on vacation near a beach, I enjoy studying natural seashells but every so often I encounter a plastic bottle which is artificially made. Whatever its purpose, if artificial in origin, 'Oumuamua would represent "a message in a bottle": the first evidence that we are not alone.

I first articulated this hypothesis in a commentary that I published in Scientific American; I subsequently quantified it in a scientific paper with my postdoc, Shmuel Bialy. Although far from the most speculative thing I have ever published indeed, in comparison to some of my research on dark matter, the paper was rather tame it generated quite a fuss. It was accepted for publication within a few days of its submission to The Astrophysical Journal Letters. It became the only paper I know of to have been quoted verbatim on both CNN and Fox News, and to have inspired a new brand of wine ("Cuve 'Oumuamua" by Bonny Doon). And judging by my inbox, it has stirred a great deal of interest in people far beyond the rarefied halls of academia.

But my idea also generated an impulsive pushback within the scientific mainstream. Some scientists expressed a strong opinion on Twitter based on prejudice without studying the evidence. It would have been better if they had followed the advice of basketball coaches: "keep your eyes on the ball and not the audience". After all, by siding with the mainstream during Galileo Galillei's days, we wouldhave given justification to placing him in house arrest rather than looking through his telescope. This would clearly be in contradiction to our current support of evidence-based science.Reality does not go away if you ignore it.

At the same time that conservative scientists argue for "business as usual" regarding 'Oumuamua, other reputable scientists admit that the object is weird and suggest "never seen before" explanations for it each of which requires an imaginative leap much greater than the one necessitated by the lightsail hypothesis. For example, a recent suggestion was that 'Oumuamua may be a hydrogen iceberg, but this explanation faces the problem that such an object is likely to evaporate during its long interstellar journey. Another recent proposal, that it is an elongated fragment from the gravitational disruption of a bigger object by a star, faces the shortcoming that such disruptions are rare and that 'Oumuamua's shape was inferred to be pancake-like based on its light curve. Another suggestion, that 'Oumuamua is pushed by sunlight because it is a porous dust bunny which is a hundred times less dense than air, raises severe doubts about its ability to survive through a tumultuous interstellar trip for millions of years.

The mainstream orthodoxy contradicts itself by claiming that 'Oumuamua is not unusual and at the same time endorsing these notions that it could be explained by "never-seen-before" natural mechanisms. One cannot escape the impression that these exotic explanations are promoted simply to avoid a discussion on the possibility that 'Oumuamua might be of artificial origin.

Why is the study of alternative explanations for the anomalies of 'Oumuamua any different from the search for radical explanations for possible anomalies (involving cores instead of cusps in the centers of galaxies or unusually cold hydrogen during the cosmic dark ages) tied to the unknown nature of the dark matter? Given that between a quarter and half of all stars we examined host an Earth-like planet with a surface temperature that can support liquid water and the chemistry of life-as-we-know-it, the proposition that we are not alone is rather conservative, and should have been endorsed by the mainstream by now. Yet our scientistsand our elected leaderswould prefer not to look under this particular rock. In 1993, Congress halted federal funding to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), even though only a tiny fraction of all possible technological signatures of extraterrestrial civilizations had been searched for at that point. Territories that remain unexplored today include industrial pollution of planetary atmospheres, artificial lights, solar cells or mega-structures in space.

It seems obvious to me that space archaeology a burgeoning field of research concerned with the search for extraterrestrial technological relics should be funded as generously as the search for, say, the faddish Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), which were thought to be the constituents of dark matter. The physicists Guiseppe Cocconi and Philips Morrison wrote of SETI in 1959: "The probability for success is difficult to estimate, but if we never search, the chance of success is zero."To that I would add: when you are not ready to find exceptional things, you will never discover them.

Yet my colleagues at the forefront of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence seem to have forgotten this fundamental scientific principle. In contrast to its cool reception in the scientific community, SETI hits a nerve in the general public. There lies a paradox: the public pays taxes that support science and is more eager to know the answer to the question: "are we alone?" than: "are WIMPs the dark matter?", not to speak about supporting speculative notions of "extra dimensions" or the "multiverse", which have no reality check to their credit.

Ironically, indeed, the reason that physicists enjoy freedom is that their blue-sky mainstream used had practical impact. The stable funding of physics stemmed from Vannevar Bush's vision of "The Endless Frontier" after the demonstrated relevance of the Manhattan Project to society. Why would the mainstream scientific community shy away from the public's interests and focus on esoteric questions that have little relevance to the layperson? Are scientists supposed to hide behind the opaque technical walls of a self-sustained bubble and ignore the public that funds their research?

Previous generations of physicists understood that when evidence is incomplete, we have to live with scientific uncertainty and consider multiple interpretations of the available data. I fear that physicists today, like their oft-disparaged counterparts in the SETI community, have forgotten this important principle. Nowhere in science is this failure clearer, in my opinion, than in the scientific community's response to the half-dozen anomalies displayed by the first interstellar object that we have discovered.

A scientist must go where the evidence isbut too often, our scientists do not. I do have hope for the future, however. My optimism stems from raising my young daughters, who have no inhibitions in exploring the truth; this is why they learned so much over the short term of their childhood. Perhaps scientists should behave more like kids. Mistakes are an inevitable part of our learning experience as students of mother nature, humbled by the fact that its splendor often exceeds our imagination.

I am practicing what I preach by preparing to confront my own mistakes. Starting in 2023 the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) on the Vera C. Rubin Observatory will survey the sky for new objects. If we find another weird object like 'Oumuamua on its way towards us, we could send a spacecraft to take a close-up photo of it and identify its nature. Let my hypothesis about 'Oumuamua be judged according to the evidence from this research, rather than by the popularity contest that guides so much of modern science.

Science is a never-ending work in progress. We show integrity by entertaining multiple possible interpretations of evidence to the public. The new generation of innovators should not be held hostage by the mistakes of the past. After standing in line at the bank, I never hear the cashier saying that I am not allowed to cash my check because the customer ahead of me had an overdraft. We should examine each case based on its own merit.

Scientists could regain the public's trust by being straightforward about the inevitable roller-coaster of trial and error associated with innovation whether it be the search for a vaccine for COVID-19 or the search for technological signatures of other civilizations. Rather than pretending to know the outcome in advance, we should admit what we do not know and study all possible interpretations, so that the public will believe our robust conclusions when new evidence brings clarity.

On December 18, 2020, The Guardian published a report about a tantalizing radio signal that was detected within the Breakthrough Listen project by the Parkes telescope in Australia from the nearest star to the Sun, Proxima Centauri. This dwarf star hosts an Earth-size planet, Proxima b, in its habitable zone where liquid water could allow the chemistry of life on the planet's surface. There is no scientific paper accompanying the report and therefore it's too early to draw any inferences. Astronomers must verify that the signal cannot originate from radio interference on Earth or some natural emission mechanism. Terrestrial interference should be different for telescopes at different locations on Earth. If the radio source repeats and resides on Proxima b, then it should show an 11 days modulation associated with the planet's orbital (and spin) period. As soon as I saw the news report, I wrote to the publisher of my forthcoming book: "We might have friends out there. Better than a five star review is getting reassurance for the book's content from an actual star in the sky".

View post:
From astronomy to immunology, it's time to restore confidence in evidence-based science - Salon

Immunology

Second COVID Shot Packs the Big Punch – MedPage Today

Like scores of other physicians and healthcare workers, T.J. Maltese, DO, a neurologist in private practice on Long Island in New York state, had no problem with his first dose of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine -- but he was knocked out by the second.

Maltese got his second shot at 4:30 p.m. on a Friday. Within 2 hours his arm was sore. He developed flu-like symptoms overnight, and had chills and body aches on Saturday. His low-grade fever (peaking at 101.4F) lingered all day. If he had to work, he could have pushed through, he said, but he rode out his symptoms on his couch with the help of the occasional Tylenol.

By 9 p.m. Saturday, Maltese started to feel better. He got a good night's sleep and was back to normal on Sunday.

"I know plenty of people with minimal symptoms after the second dose, so it's not definite you'll feel side effects," he wrote in a Facebook post. "But be prepared for the possibility."

The healthcare worker scuttlebutt is that the second dose of any COVID-19 vaccine packs a punch -- unless you've already had COVID, then the first dose can hit just as hard.

These perceptions are substantiated by immunology and by data from the vaccines' phase III trials, and some hospitals have even altered their healthcare worker scheduling in anticipation of second-dose side effects.

Priming the Immune System

Immunologists and infectious disease experts interviewed by MedPage Today said it's not unexpected that second-dose reactions are more intense than the first.

"The first time the immune system comes into contact with something, it's getting primed," said Purvi Parikh, MD, an immunologist at NYU Langone Health in New York City. "That goes for everything, from vaccines to allergies. It's rare on the first time to have a strong reaction. After that, the immune system recognizes it, so you have a much stronger reaction."

"We saw it in the trials, so it's really not surprising," Parikh added. "Now we're seeing it in real time as the vaccines are being rolled out."

In both Pfizer's and Moderna's phase III trial data, systemic adverse events were reported more frequently after dose 2 than dose 1. For the latter, rates were 54.9% versus 42.2% for placebo after the first dose and 79.4% versus 36.5% for placebo after the second dose. Fever, headache, fatigue, myalgia, arthralgia, and chills were far more common after the second dose compared with the first dose and with all placebo doses.

Stanley Weiss, MD, an infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, said since his institution served as a site for the Moderna trial, the primary investigator was able to give faculty and administrators an early update on what to expect following vaccination.

"They said there was a very high rate of fatigue after the second dose, so we encouraged administrators ... to figure that many healthcare workers getting the vaccine might not be well enough to work the day after the second dose," Weiss told MedPage Today.

Weiss added that administrators were also careful not to vaccinate staff from within the same unit -- an ICU team, for instance -- on the same day.

Fewer Problems for Older Patients?

Both Weiss and Parikh said they had a far stronger response to the second dose of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, respectively. Weiss had fatigue and a severe headache for 2 days. Parikh's chills, fatigue, and headache resolved within 24 to 36 hours.

Zubin Damania, MD, a.k.a. ZDoggMD, said the second dose of his Moderna vaccine knocked him out: "I couldn't sleep, I had a fever, rigors, body aches, a headache -- full-on man-flu," he joked on a recent episode of his show.

His guest for that show was vaccine expert Paul Offit, MD, who also had fever and fatigue for about 48 hours after the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine.

"That reaction is less common in people over 65, and I'm over 65, so I'm thinking I'm not going to suffer that, but I did," Offit said.

Indeed, older patients are thought to have less of a reaction due to typical weakening of the immune system as people age, Parikh said: "The idea is that their immune system is not as robust as a young person's."

Dose 1 Rougher for Those with Previous COVID

Parikh said the same immunological concept behind a stronger response to the second dose also applies to first-dose effects for those who've had COVID-19 before.

"It's the same reason why some people who've had COVID and recovered get these effects with the first shot sometimes. The immune system has seen it before," she said.

Victoria Arthur, MD, of Lexington Pediatrics in Massachusetts, suspects she had COVID in March 2020, but wasn't able to confirm her diagnosis. Still, while all of the other physicians and healthcare staff in her office felt fine after the first dose of the Moderna vaccine, she did not.

"How I felt was how everyone else was describing their second vaccine," Arthur told MedPage Today.

Within three hours of her first dose, she had a headache, neck pain, and cognitive fog. She woke up at 3 a.m. with bad nausea and stomach cramps, and spent the entire next day in bed. By Monday, though, her only lingering symptom was a sore arm.

Her reaction to her second dose was similar, she said. Nonetheless, she was glad for it.

"I'm always grateful when I have a reaction, that means the body is doing its thing," she said. "I'm very fortunate to have been given the vaccine, so any side effect is worth it."

Being appreciative of having been vaccinated, despite the side effects, was a common sentiment among these healthcare professionals.

Weiss said second-dose side effects shouldn't deter anyone from getting vaccinated: "The benefits greatly overwhelm the risk of side effects. It's not a reason to delay."

"I'll take 30 hours of some mild misery," Maltese said, "over days to weeks of much worse -- and more unpredictable -- misery."

Kristina Fiore leads MedPages enterprise & investigative reporting team. Shes been a medical journalist for more than a decade and her work has been recognized by Barlett & Steele, AHCJ, SABEW, and others. Send story tips to k.fiore@medpagetoday.com. Follow

Go here to see the original:
Second COVID Shot Packs the Big Punch - MedPage Today

Immunology

What we know about Covid reinfection, immunity and vaccines – The Guardian

How long does natural protection from a first infection last?

There is no clearcut answer to this, but several studies suggest protection generated by a previous infection lasts for at least a few months.

According to one preprint study from Public Health England (PHE) released in January, which looked at hospital staff, the median interval between the first infection and reinfection was more than 160 days about five months. Meanwhile, a study from Qatar suggests protection by natural immunity of about 95% efficacy lasts about seven months.

Again, that is unclear. Different people will react differently to reinfection, depending on how their immune responses reacted to the first infection, probably, says Julian Tang, a clinical virologist and honorary associate professor in the respiratory sciences department at the University of Leicester.

For some, a second infection is less severe than the first. According to a study from Qatar, less than 0.2% of people tested positive for Covid at least 45 days after their first positive test, with only about a fifth of these showing strong or good evidence for reinfection. Of these 54 people, just one was hospitalised, and even then only with a mild infection.

A second study from Qatar yet to be peer-reviewed supports this, with two-thirds of reinfections only picked up through random or routine testing. Again it suggest reinfection is rare, with just 129 people out of 43,044 followed showing evidence of reinfection over a median of 16.3 weeks.

The PHE study also suggested that reinfection tended to be less severe, with about a third of those who caught Covid for a second time showing symptoms, compared with 78% for first infection.

But there have been a number of cases around the world of reinfection leading to worse disease.

A recent study from researchers in Brazil, about to be published in the Journal of Infection, found that of 33 people thought to have caught Covid for a second time, 12% were hospitalised one of whom died - although none required such care for their first infection.

If you didnt have a good immune response, you could get infected again by exactly the same virus, says Deborah Dunn-Walters, a professor of immunology at the University of Surrey and the chair of the British Society for Immunologys Covid-19 and immunology taskforce.

If that immune response was good, the chances of being reinfected by the same variant will be lower, but reinfection might still occur by other variants.

However, the situation is not black and white as this depends on the mutations a new variant contains, and how they affect the ability of the virus to infect the cell and its interactions with the bodys antibodies and T-cell responses generated by the immune system as a result of the previous infection.

The possibility for a new variant to fuel reinfections has been highlighted by researchers in Brazil: despite about three-quarters of the population of Manaus thought from antibody tests to have been infected with Covid by October, there was a sharp uptick in hospital admissions for Covid in January this year. One explanation, they say, is the emergence of new variants of the coronavirus that may evade immunity gained from earlier infection.

Indeed, research published this week by researchers in Oxford, yet to be peer-reviewed, revealed that people who had recovered from Covid showed T-cell activity towards new variants, including the South African variant. But in general their antibodies were less able to neutralise the Kent and South African variant than the original coronavirus variant, suggesting a potentially lower level of defence.

It appears so, but there are several factors at play. Whether you catch it or not is a combination of whether you have got immunity and whether you have seen [the virus], says Dunn-Walters.

Some people may be at greater risk because of social factors such as occupation, which means they have greater chance of coming into contact with the virus again for example, healthcare workers would be expected to be at greater risk of both infection and reinfection because of this.

But there are also biological factors that might leave some people more at risk of catching Covid for a second time. Each human is unique, as are their immune responses, which govern both the risk of reinfection and the severity of these reinfections, so it is very difficult to generalise research findings and clinical trial results to individuals in any population, says Tang.

Vaccination plays a key role in protecting individuals from a first infection. But it is also important for those who have already had Covid. While natural immunity can be gained from a previous infection, jabs give much more certainty over the level of protection produced and boost protection gained from a previous infection.

Vaccines may also offer greater protection against different variants. According to the preprint by Oxford researchers, people who received two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech jab had a strong T-cell and antibody response against the original coronavirus and the Kent and South African variants, suggesting the vaccine probably offered protection against infection for all of these variants. That contrasts with the findings for those who had only previously had a natural infection.

Natural infection doesnt guarantee you immunity as well as perhaps the vaccination might, says Dunn-Walters.

While studies have suggested that some other Covid vaccines may be less effective against the South African variant than against the original or Kent variants of the coronavirus, experts say these jabs still offer good levels of protection against serious disease. Whats more, vaccines are being tweaked to better target new variants, a move that will also bolster protection.

This article was amended on 13 February 2021. The original incorrectly stated that a study about to be published in the Journal of Infection found that of 33 people thought to have caught Covid for a second time, one died, and 12 were hospitalised. It was actually 12.1% (four people) of the 33 who needed treatment in hospital.

Visit link:
What we know about Covid reinfection, immunity and vaccines - The Guardian