DRC Ebola Cases Approach 500 as Infections Continue ( CIDRAP) Over the weekend and through today the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DCR) reported 13 new Ebola cases in several outbreak areas, as neighboring South Sudan prepared to vaccinate healthcare and front line workers in bordering regions. Go to article

 

CDC Adds 24 AFM Cases, Exceeding 2016 Record (Avian Flu Diary) The number of new cases under investigation continues to slow - likely signaling that the peak of this year's outbreak has passed -  but the CDC confirmed 28 additional confirmed cases of acute flaccid paralysis last week, raising this year's total to 158; breaking 2016's previous record of 149. Go to article

   

 

Ebola Vaccine is Having "Major Impact" but Worries about Congo Outbreak Grow (Science) As an Ebola outbreak in a conflict-plagued region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) continues to spread after 4 months, there's a glimmer of hope: An experimental Ebola vaccine appears to be helping the communities it reaches. Go to article

International Health Regulations, Ebola, and Emerging Infectious Diseases in Latin America and the Caribbean (AJPH) The World Health Organization's determination of the Ebola virus disease outbreak as a public health event of international concern prompted non-affected countries to implement measures to prevent, detect, and manage the introduction of the virus in their territories. Go to article

 

 

CEPI Partners with Imperial College to Develop Transformative Rapid-Response Technology to Create Vaccines Against Emerging Infectious Diseases (CEPI) The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and Imperial College London have announced a partnering agreement, worth up to USD8·4 million, to develop a self-amplifying RNA (saRNA) vaccine platform that enables tailored-just-in-time-vaccine production against multiple viral pathogens. Go to article

Years Before CRISPR Babies, this Man Was the First to Edit Human Embryos (MIT Technology Review) In 2015, Huang, a stem-cell researcher at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, first reported using the gene-editing tool CRISPR on human embryos. Go to article

Amid Ethics Outcry, Should Journals Publish the 'CRISPR Babies' Paper? (STAT) Like researchers everywhere, He Jiankui - the scientist in China who claims to have used CRISPR to edit embryos to create babies protected from HIV - is eager to publish scientific papers. Go to article

We Have Ways to Stop Rogue Scientists. They Don't Always Work. (FiveThirtyEight) How do you stop a mad scientist? Go to article

Binning Microbial Genomes Using Deep Learning (bioRxiv) I dentification and reconstruction of microbial species from metagenomics wide genome sequencing data is an important and challenging task. Go to article

   

The Automatic-design Tools that are Changing Synthetic Biology (Nature) Your smartphone and laptop are made of electronic circuits. Genetic circuits, modeled on the electronic ones, are human-designed combinations of genetic components that interact to produce one or more proteins or RNA molecules, for example, in response to a given stimulus, such as a toxin. Go to article