Lifeboat Foundation

Why the novel coronavirus is so hard to stop.

A drug used to treat a type of coronavirus that only affects cats could be the key to treating COVID-19, the human coronavirus spreading across the world.

A new virus called SARS-CoV-2 is a coronavirus that has caused an outbreak of a disease called COVID-19. But what does that have to do with Mars?

Residents in Wuhan, China are shouting encouragement and singing songs from their apartment windows to boost morale amidst the coronavirus quarantine.

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Stocks cratered again on Tuesday, hitting their sessions lows after a CDC official told the U.S. to brace for a possible breakout of coronavirus here.

One of the most remarkable characteristics of the vertebrate eye is its retina. Surprisingly, the sensitive portions of the photoreceptor cells are found on the hind side of the retina, meaning that light needs to travel through living neural tissue before it can be detected. While the origin of the high optical quality of the retina remain largely uninvestigated, it has long been proposed that a peculiar DNA organization would serve to improve vision in nocturnal mammals. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden now showed that the optical quality of the mouse retina increases in the first month after birth that imparts improved visual sensitivity under low light conditions. This improvement is caused by a compact organization of the genetic material in the cell nucleus of rod photoreceptor cells that responsible for dim light vision.

Our retina is an amazing feature of the eye of vertebrates. This light-sensitive layer of tissue is lining the back of the eye-ball and acts as a screen for images projected by the lens. The retina has a thickness of 130 to 500 micrometer and is composed of five layers of dense neural tissue. Since the sensitive portions of the photoreceptor cells are found on the hind side of the retina, light needs to travel through this dense neural tissue to reach the photoreceptors. Researchers suggested that a certain compact arrangement of DNA in the cell nucleus of the rod photoreceptors could improve night vision in nocturnal animals but it remained unclear if and how night vision would benefit from this organization of genetic material.

Scientists around the research group leader Moritz Kreysing at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics together with colleagues from the TU Dresden and the Biozentrum at the Ludwig Maximilians Universität in Munich wanted to find out, if and why cells of retinal neural cells are optically special and what the implications for the transparency of the retina are. Transparency in this context means that each rod cell scatters less light, which causes it to be more transparent.

Top U.S. public health officials said Tuesday that Americans should prepare for the spread of the coronavirus in communities across the country.

“It’s not so much a question of if this will happen any more, but rather more a question of exactly when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness,” Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the head of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said during a media briefing Tuesday.

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As outbreaks grow and spread in Asia, Europe and the Middle East, U.S. officials warn Americans to brace for their own.

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U.S. stocks are down 2.5 percent, a day after the biggest drop in two years, as the coronavirus rattles investors.

The CRISPR Handbook – Enabling Genome Editing and Transforming Life Science Research is GenScript’s comprehensive guide to the CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing revolution. This new resource includes:

An introductory history of genome editing. The current applications for CRISPR/Cas9 in genome editing. An updated overview of expanded CRISPR research applications, including immunoprecipitation, epigenetic modification, live imaging, and therapeutics. New CRISPR/Cas9 workflows and case studies to help you start using this technology in your research.

CRISPR Handbook – Enabling Genome Editing and Transforming Life Science Research. Free PDF download on the CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing revolution, including CRISPR KO & KI workflows, case studies, and references.