The South African spring hair fluorescently warm pink under ultraviolet light.Credit: J. Martin and E. Olson, Northland College; by ER Olson et al. Sci. Rep. 11, 4125 (2021)
Disco Haas
Researchers have found that the South African spring hair (Pedetes capensis) thrives warm pink under ultraviolet light. The animals join wombats and platypuses in a growing gang of glow-in-the-dark creatures. But the spring hair’s striking pattern and intense color – described in Scientific reports on February 18 (ER Olson et al. Sci. Rep. 11, 4125; 2021) – is unique among known biofluorescent mammals, and their function remains a mystery.
An intensive care unit in London. People with COVID-19 flooded London hospitals in early 2021 as a deadly viral variant spread across the UK.Credit: Victoria Jones / PA / Alamy
Viral variant causes more lethal form of COVID
People infected with a coronavirus variant called B.1.1.7 are at greater risk of dying from COVID-19 than those infected with other variations, regardless of their age, gender, and existing health problems.
Daniel Grint at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and his colleagues studied the health records of 184,786 people in England who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 between 16 November 2020 and 11 January 2021. Of these individuals, 867 died by 5 February 2021 (D. Grint et al. Pre-print at medRxiv https://doi.org/fzwq; 2021).
The researchers found that for every three people who died within a month after testing positive for a virus variant that was previously in circulation, approximately five died after testing positive for B.1.1.7. The risk of death increases with age and the presence of existing health problems, and men are at greater risk of dying than women.
B.1.1.7, first detected in the United Kingdom, is now the dominant variant and widespread throughout Europe. Without control measures and vaccines, the variant could be more deadly than the versions of the virus that had been spread earlier, the researchers say.
The least horseshoe butt (Rhinolophus pusillus). A virus closely related to SARS-CoV-2 has been isolated from one such bat.Credit: Shutterstock
A crowd of coronaviruses
Bats in the southern Chinese province of Yunnan have produced even more coronaviruses closely related to the pandemic virus.
Weifeng Shi at Shandong First Medical University & Shandong Academy of Medical Sciences in Taian, China, and his colleagues studied 302 samples of feces and urine and 109 mouthpieces taken between May 2019 and November 2020 from 342 live bats (H. Zhou et al. Pre-print at bioRxiv https://doi.org/gh73mk; 2021). The researchers trapped and released all the bats, which represent about two dozen species, in an area of about 1,100 acres – less than a tenth the size of San Francisco, California.
From the samples, the team sequenced 24 coronavirus genomes, including 4 new viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2. One of the viruses isolated from a Rhinolophus pusillus bat shared 94.5% of its genome with the pandemic virus, making it the closest known to SARS-CoV-2. The closest known relative is a coronavirus called RATG13, which shares 96% of its genome with SARS-CoV-2 and is isolated from a Rhinolophus affinis kolf in 2013 in Yunnan.
The results suggest that viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2 are still circulating in bats and are very common in some regions.