|
Li-Meng Yan
Li-Meng Yan or Yan Limeng () is a Chinese virologist, known for her publications and interviews alleging that SARS-CoV-2 was made in a Chinese government laboratory. Her publications have been widely dismissed as flawed by the scientific community. In April 2020, she fled to the United States. She co-authored several preprint research papers claiming that SARS-CoV-2 was "produced in a laboratory." According to scientific reviewers from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, Yan's paper offered "contradictory and inaccurate information that does not support their argument," while reviewers from '' Rapid Reviews: COVID-19'' criticised her preprints as not demonstrating "sufficient scientific evidence to support heirclaims." Education and early career Yan is a native of Qingdao, Shandong, China. She received her medical degree from Xiangya Medical College of Central South University in China. In 2014, she completed a PhD in ophthalmology from Southern Medical University ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Central South University
Central South University (CSU; ) is a national public university in Changsha, Hunan, China. The university is sponsored by the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, China Ministry of Education. It is a Chinese state Double First Class University Plan, Double First Class University. Hunan Medical University, Changsha Railway College, and Central South University of Technology merged to establish Central South University in April 2000. History CSU was established by approval of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, State Council on April 29, 2000 by merging three separate universities: Hunan Medical University (HMU), Changsha Railway University (CRU) and Central South University of Technology (CSUT). HMU, formerly under the administration of the Ministry of Health, dates back to 1914 when Xiangya Medical College was founded through the joint efforts of Hunan Yuqun Society and the Yale-China Association. CRU, one of the universities under the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
COVID-19
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease spread worldwide, leading to the COVID-19 pandemic. Symptoms of COVID‑19 are variable, but often include fever, cough, headache, fatigue, breathing difficulties, loss of smell, and loss of taste. Symptoms may begin one to fourteen days after exposure to the virus. At least a third of people who are infected do not develop noticeable symptoms. Of those people who develop symptoms noticeable enough to be classed as patients, most (81%) develop mild to moderate symptoms (up to mild pneumonia), while 14% develop severe symptoms (dyspnea, hypoxia, or more than 50% lung involvement on imaging), and 5% develop critical symptoms (respiratory failure, shock, or multiorgan dysfunction). Older people are at a higher risk of developing severe symptoms ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Furin
Furin is a protease, a proteolytic enzyme that in humans and other animals is encoded by the ''FURIN'' gene. Some proteins are inactive when they are first synthesized, and must have sections removed in order to become active. Furin cleaves these sections and activates the proteins. It was named furin because it was in the upstream region of an oncogene known as FES. The gene was known as FUR (FES Upstream Region) and therefore the protein was named furin. Furin is also known as PACE (Paired basic Amino acid Cleaving Enzyme). A member of family S8, furin is a subtilisin-like peptidase. Function The protein encoded by this gene is an enzyme that belongs to the subtilisin-like proprotein convertase family. The members of this family are proprotein convertases that process latent precursor proteins into their biologically active products. This encoded protein is a calcium-dependent serine endoprotease that can efficiently cleave precursor proteins at their paired basic amino acid pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Angiotensin-converting Enzyme 2
Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) is an enzyme that can be found either attached to the membrane of cells (mACE2) in the intestines, kidney, testis, gallbladder, and heart or in a soluble form (sACE2). Both membrane bound and soluble ACE2 are integral parts of the renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system (RAAS) that exists to keep the body's blood pressure in check. While mACE2 does not appear to factor into the harmful phase of RAAS (the increase of blood pressure), its existence is vital in order for the enzyme ADAM17 to cleave its extracellular domain to create soluble ACE2 (sACE2). Soluble ACE2 lowers blood pressure by catalyzing the hydrolysis of angiotensin II (a vasoconstrictor peptide) into angiotensin (1–7) (a vasodilator) which in turns binds to MasR receptors creating localized vasodilation and hence decreasing blood pressure. This decrease in blood pressure makes the entire process a promising drug target for treating cardiovascular diseases. mACE2 also ser ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ZC45 And ZXC21
ZC45 and ZXC21, sometimes known as the Zhoushan virus, are two bat-derived strains of ''severe acute respiratory syndrome–related coronavirus''. They were collected from least horseshoe bats (''Rhinolophus pusillus'') by personnel from military laboratories in the Third Military Medical University (Chongqing, China) and the Research Institute for Medicine of Nanjing Command (Nanjing, China) between July 2015 and February 2017 from sites in Zhoushan, Zhejiang, China, and published in 2018. These two virus strains belong to the clade of SARS-CoV-2, the virus strain that causes COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ..., sharing 88% nucleotide identity at the scale of the complete virus genome. References SARS-CoV-2 Bat virome Coronaviridae Animal virolo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computational Biology
Computational biology refers to the use of data analysis, mathematical modeling and computational simulations to understand biological systems and relationships. An intersection of computer science, biology, and big data, the field also has foundations in applied mathematics, chemistry, and genetics. It differs from biological computing, a subfield of computer engineering which uses bioengineering to build computers. History Bioinformatics, the analysis of informatics processes in biological systems, began in the early 1970s. At this time, research in artificial intelligence was using network models of the human brain in order to generate new algorithms. This use of biological data pushed biological researchers to use computers to evaluate and compare large data sets in their own field. By 1982, researchers shared information via punch cards. The amount of data grew exponentially by the end of the 1980s, requiring new computational methods for quickly interpreting ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Structural Biology
Structural biology is a field that is many centuries old which, and as defined by the Journal of Structural Biology, deals with structural analysis of living material (formed, composed of, and/or maintained and refined by living cells) at every level of organization. Early structural biologists throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries were primarily only able to study structures to the limit of the naked eye's visual acuity and through magnifying glasses and light microscopes. In the 20th century, a variety of experimental techniques were developed to examine the 3D structures of biological molecules. The most prominent techniques are X-ray crystallography, nuclear magnetic resonance, and electron microscopy. Through the discovery of X-rays and its applications to protein crystals, structural biology was revolutionized, as now scientists could obtain the three-dimensional structures of biological molecules in atomic detail. Likewise, NMR spectroscopy allowed information about p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Molecular Biology
Molecular biology is the branch of biology that seeks to understand the molecular basis of biological activity in and between cells, including biomolecular synthesis, modification, mechanisms, and interactions. The study of chemical and physical structure of biological macromolecules is known as molecular biology. Molecular biology was first described as an approach focused on the underpinnings of biological phenomena - uncovering the structures of biological molecules as well as their interactions, and how these interactions explain observations of classical biology. In 1945 the term molecular biology was used by physicist William Astbury. In 1953 Francis Crick, James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, and colleagues, working at Medical Research Council unit, Cavendish laboratory, Cambridge (now the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology), made a double helix model of DNA which changed the entire research scenario. They proposed the DNA structure based on previous research done by Ro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Open-access Repository
An open repository or open-access repository is a digital platform that holds research output and provides free, immediate and permanent access to research results for anyone to use, download and distribute. To facilitate open access such repositories must be interoperable according to the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). Search engines harvest the content of open access repositories, constructing a database of worldwide, free of charge available research. Open-access repositories, such as an institutional repository or disciplinary repository, provide free access to research for users outside the institutional community and are one of the recommended ways to achieve the open access vision described in the Budapest Open Access Initiative definition of open access. This is sometimes referred to as the self-archiving or "green" route to open access. Benefits The benefits of open-access repositories are: * Opening up outputs of the institution to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zenodo
Zenodo is a general-purpose open repository developed under the European OpenAIRE program and operated by CERN. It allows researchers to deposit research papers, data sets, research software, reports, and any other research related digital artefacts. For each submission, a persistent digital object identifier (DOI) is minted, which makes the stored items easily citeable. Characteristics Zenodo was launched on May 8th 2013 as the successor of the ''OpenAIRE Orphan Records Repository'' to let researchers in any subject area comply with any open science deposit requirement absent an institutional repository. It was relaunched as Zenodo in 2015 to provide a place for researchers to deposit datasets; it allows the uploading of files up to 50 GB. It provides a DOI to datasets and other submitted data that lacks one to make the work easier to cite and supports various data and license types. One supported source is GitHub repositories. Zenodo is supported by CERN "as a margina ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peer Review
Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work (peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review methods are used to maintain quality standards, improve performance, and provide credibility. In academia, scholarly peer review is often used to determine an academic paper's suitability for publication. Peer review can be categorized by the type of activity and by the field or profession in which the activity occurs, e.g., medical peer review. It can also be used as a teaching tool to help students improve writing assignments. Henry Oldenburg (1619–1677) was a German-born British philosopher who is seen as the 'father' of modern scientific peer review. Professional Professional peer review focuses on the performance of professionals, with a view to improving quality, upholding standards, or providing certification. In academia, peer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Universal Flu Vaccine
A universal flu vaccine is a flu vaccine that is effective against all influenza strains regardless of the virus sub type, antigenic drift or antigenic shift.Sherwood Linda M, Prescott's Microbiology (10th ed.) McGraw-Hill Education , 2017 Hence it should not require modification from year to year. As of 2021 no universal flu vaccine had been approved for general use, several were in development, and one was in clinical trial. Medical uses New vaccines against currently circulating influenza variants are required every year due to the diversity of flu viruses and variable efficacy of vaccines to prevent them. A universal vaccine would eliminate the need to create a vaccine for each year's variants. The efficacy of a vaccine refers to the protection against a broad variety of influenza strains. Events such as antigenic shift have created pandemic strains such as the H1N1 outbreak in 2009. The research required every year to isolate a potential popular viral strain and create a v ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
.jpg "Click for more on -> Computational Biology")
