Although Bird Flu panics have come and gone since the late 90s, we have always had diligent scientists on the side of humanity, safe guarding us from these outbreaks. But since all has been quiet on the western front for a few years now, it appears as if several of these eggheads have grown bored enough to cook up a super contagious mutation of the virus.

They are now debating if they should release the recipe for such a vile concoction, which they guest-imate could kill half of humanity, to the world. Because that seems like a great idea.

A genetic study showed that the new, dangerous strain had only five mutations compared to the original one, and all of them were earlier seen in the natural environment – just not all at once. Fouchier’s strain is as contagious as the human seasonal flu, which kills tens of thousands of people each year, but is likely to cause many more fatalities if released.

“I can’t think of another pathogenic organism that is as scary as this one,” Paul Keim, a microbial geneticist who has worked on anthrax for many years, told Science Insider. “I don’t think anthrax is scary at all compared to this.”

Some argue that the release of the data would allow for humanity to better prepare for a pandemic of this kind of deadly strain.

[RT]

The origins are understood. The players are all of terrestrial stock. Yet if you don’t look at a picture of a young lady riding a stick pony around a professional rodeo course while be scored by grim faced judges and cheered by nervous parents and say to yourself, “that is weird,” you should probably stop reading the site.

The Davis County Sheriff’s Mounted Posse Junior Queen Contest of Farmington, UT was the victim of a rare equine herpes outbreak which has affected many Western states and cancelled all horse related activities in Utah. For those curious, equine herpes is spread through nasal secretions when horses nuzzle together.

So these young women to the track with their own gallop astride stick horses. Giddy-up.

[KSL.com]

Students in the Introduction To Biotechnology (IT220) class at Purdue were instructed for one of their projects to collect soil samples as part of the National Genomics Research Initiative. Most of the students were content to collect samples from around the Purdue campus, but Emilia Czyszczon traveled 3 hours to a remote Indiana cave and then took a boat on an underground river to a spot deep within the cave. The soil sample that Emilia ended up taking turned out to be glacial mud untouched since the ice age and contained a bacteriophage virus that was unknown to science. Scientists think that this virus might be beneficial to humans and could be used to fight diseases like tuberculosis.

Further analysis proved to be even more remarkable. Lurking in the dank sample of cave mud she collected was a virus previously unknown to science — a bacteriophage that attacks bacteria from the same family as those that cause tuberculosis.

In other words, despite the usual connotation associated with the discovery of a virus, this virus is not harmful to humans. Rather, just the opposite: it is a virus that attacks bacterial strains that could be harmful to humans. The discovery has prompted the adventurous young Czyszczon to look ahead in her career; she has already received grant money to probe into the DNA of the virus to help find alternative cures for debilitating diseases like tuberculosis.

[Chicago Tribune via MNN]

Can’t recognize the signs of the Ebola virus? Want a quick and easy way to know if your friend is a carrier? Say hello to the new Ebola and Marbug virus detector.

“By enabling ultra-portable and fast detection, our technology can directly impact the course of our reaction against bio-terrorism threats and dramatically improve our capability to confine viral outbreaks,” said Assistant Professor Hatice Altug of the Boston University College of Engineering, who co-led the research team with Assistant Professor John Connor of the Boston University School of Medicine.

Maybe this doesn’t fit until your daily life now but just wait until they develop one for vampirism.

[Science Daily]

According to the upcoming National Geographic documentary The Truth Behind Zombies, we may be a few mutations or lab experiments away from a full scale zombie apocalypse. If the rabies virus, which can cause violently mad behaviour, was combined with the ability of the flu virus to spread quickly through the air, it might be the right combination for our very own disaster.

“All rabies has to do is go airborne, and you have the rage virus” like in 28 Days Later, Max Mogk, head of the Zombie Research Society, says in the documentary.

Guess what’s lurking in your genome? Bits of Ebola and other viruses! Happy Friday!

Viruses do not make good fossils. But advances in genomic technology have allowed scientists to peer into the genetic material of viruses and their hosts to search for clues about their shared evolutionary history.

Genetic code from retroviruses has been found to compose some 8 percent of the human genome, having been copied in during replication and left to be inherited by us and our progeny. But non-retroviral RNA viruses do not use their host’s DNA to replicate—and some do not even enter the host cell’s nucleus. Nevertheless, new research has turned up surprising evidence that some of these viruses are enmeshed in the genomes of vertebrates—including humans and other mammals.

The rapid evolution of the virus to be blame for the genome biting. But if they start manifesting into physical beings, I am going to be very upset.

[Scientific American]