The South African spring hair fluoresces bright pink under ultraviolet light.Credit: J. Martin and E. Olson, Northland College; from ER Olson et al. Sci. Rep. 11, 4125 (2021)
Disco hare
Researchers have found that the South African jumping stock (Pedetes capensis) fluoresces bright pink under ultraviolet light. The animals join wombats and platypuses in a growing gang of glow-in-the-dark creatures. But the striking pattern and intense color of the spring hair – described in Scientific reports on February 18 (ER Olson et al Sci. Rep 114125; 2021) – are 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 spreading across the UK.Credit: Victoria Jones / PA / Alamy
Viral variant causes more deadly form of COVID
People infected with a variant of coronavirus called B.1.1.7 are at higher risk of dying from COVID-19 than people infected with other circulating variants, regardless of age, gender and pre-existing health conditions.
Daniel Grint of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and colleagues studied the medical records of 184,786 people in England who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 between November 16, 2020 and January 11, 2021. Of these individuals, 867 had died by February 5, 2021 (D. Grint et alPreprint on medRxiv https://doi.org/fzwq; 2021).
The researchers found that, for every three people who died within a month of testing positive for a previously circulating viral variant, about five died after a positive test for B.1.1.7. The risk of death increases with age and the presence of pre-existing health problems, and men are at higher risk of dying than women.
B.1.1.7 was first discovered in the UK and is now the dominant variety there and is spreading widely across Europe. Without controls and vaccines, the variant could be more deadly than previously circulating versions of the virus, the researchers say.
At least a horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus pusillusA virus closely related to SARS-CoV-2 has been isolated from such a bat.Credit: Shutterstock
A wealth of bat coronaviruses
Bats in southern China’s Yunnan province have yielded further 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 feces and urine samples and 109 mouth swabs from 342 live bats between May 2019 and November 2020 (H. Zhou et al. Preprint on bioRxiv https://doi.org/gh73mk; 2021). The researchers captured and released all the bats, representing nearly two dozen species, in an area of about 1,100 acres – less than one-tenth the size of San Francisco, California.
From the samples, the team sequenced 24 coronavirus genomes, 4 of which were new viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2. One of the viruses isolated from one Rhinolophus pusillus bat shared 94.5% of its genome with the pandemic virus, making it the second best known relative to SARS-CoV-2. The most famous relative is a coronavirus called RATG13, which shares 96% of its genome with SARS-CoV-2 and was isolated from a Rhinolophus affinis bat in Yunnan in 2013.
The results suggest that viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2 continue to circulate in bats and are common in some regions.