Spread & Containment
Sustainability and the Synthetic Biology Revolution
Synthetic biology has become a powerful tool to advance science, making processes more efficient, enabling completely new approaches to biology, and helping scientists find the right answers, faster. These capabilities are having a ripple effect. They…
Share this:
Synthetic biology has become a powerful tool to advance science, making processes more efficient, enabling completely new approaches to biology, and helping scientists find the right answers, faster.
These capabilities are having a ripple effect. They help researchers pursue avenues that had not been economically feasible or, in some cases, scientifically possible. They also help us solve some of society’s most pressing problems from infectious disease to drug development to sustainable agriculture to data storage.
Antibody development
Traditionally, to develop therapeutic antibodies, researchers immunized a rabbit or mouse to trigger an immune response, collected hits, optimized them, and ultimately humanized the winners.
Another approach is harvesting antibodies from recovered patients. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve seen how patient antibodies can provide templates for further discovery and optimization. Synthetic biology allows us to rapidly synthesize the genes associated with these antibodies and create thousands of variations to develop the most precise therapeutic molecules.
Still, infectious diseases are relatively simple to address—the body’s immune system produces the original antibodies, doing much of the heavy lifting. But what about heart disease or other conditions in which there is no specific immune response and no templates to guide us?
At Twist Bioscience, we have been developing synthetic human antibody libraries, which we can produce in almost unlimited numbers. Once a laboratory identifies a protein or other potential therapeutic target, we can start with billions of fully human mutants and rapidly determine which ones will bind to that target.
One of the most important synthetic biology refinements has been automating this process: making the library, expressing the antibodies, panning them for hits, then sequencing and reformatting those hits and characterizing them through high-throughput affinity and functional testing. Based on the initial template, we can produce billions of mutants, redo the panning, and identify optimized antibodies, with a computational biology approach to confirm that these sequences exist and will, therefore, be accepted in humans.
A new vision for biopharma
This is a lot of process, but the bottom line is productivity. When we can identify therapeutic antibodies faster and more efficiently, we can take more “shots on goal,” reducing production costs and times for biologic drugs.
These advances come at an opportune time for biopharma. The more we learn about genetics and how individuals respond to specific treatments, the more it becomes apparent that a shift to therapy tailored to the individual’s specific case, known as precision medicine, could result in prognoses better than those available with currently available, widely prescribed drugs.
Today, drugs are typically prescribed based on phenotype. The best-selling drugs are those that have the highest chance of improving the lives of many individuals suffering from a common ailment, such as a type of cancer. But no two cancer cases are created equal. Instead of using the conventional approach, that is, the same drug for all patients, clinicians may employ precision medicine, which is based on next-generation sequencing (NGS) and other molecular technologies. Genomic information, for example, may be used to derive more meaning from diagnostic readings, and to find the best matches between drugs and individual patients.
The key challenge is that precision medicine requires many new therapies to benefit each patient subpopulation. Instead of having one drug that is prescribed to everyone with a reasonable chance of success, clinicians will choose from hundreds of potential drugs, each with a high probability of working if the patient’s genetics are a match. In theory, this would be a significant healthcare advancement; in practice, we must find more efficient ways to develop this new generation of personalized therapies—we need to be smarter.
Circling back to traditional antibody development approaches, we see that panning an antibody library might produce a small number of hits indicating effective antibody-target binding. However, with synthetic biology tools, researchers may find that their choices are multiplying. Instead of producing tens of clones per experiment, researchers may produce thousands, giving themselves not only additional choices, but also more flexibility.
As a result, scientists working with the same budget will have better opportunities to find the right therapeutic antibodies for smaller patient populations. This could shift the economics of drug discovery, producing more reasonably priced therapies that help more people.
There are two things that must happen. First, we need to improve our ability to identify the subpopulation of patients who will truly benefit from one drug over another, which will also help us conduct more efficient trials. Second, we must rapidly find new drugs to ensure that as many people in the population as possible will have access to effective precision medicine, and we must do so cost effectively.
That’s why efficiencies from synthetic biology and other emerging approaches are so important. As we reduce costs and speed up pipelines, we can find these precise antibodies for smaller target populations. We will still have to take a million shots on goal to find each precision drug, but development costs will be reduced, helping biopharma companies attend to these smaller populations.
In addition, we can more effectively pursue biomanufacturing, using cells to create desired compounds. These processes often focus on medicines, but the industrial applications are quite broad. Good examples include vanilla and rose oil, which are currently extracted from nature, but which can be manufactured by reengineering the metabolism of microorganisms instead. The important thing is we can use biological engineering, instead of the chemical manipulation of oil and coal feedstocks, to sustainably produce a wide variety of chemicals at scale.
The problem with plastics
From an environmental standpoint, one of the greatest disappointments over the past 20 years has been our inability to truly recycle plastics. We pay lip service to recycling and sustainability, and we praise ourselves for dumping plastic waste into ubiquitous blue containers. But we know there’s a gap between our rhetoric and the reality of waste management.
Plastics are given a number rating, 1 to 7, for their recyclability. Most people don’t pay much attention to these numbers, but they are quite important. Any plastic below a four is basically not recyclable. We may put them into the recycling bin, but they still end up in the landfill.
And even the plastics that are more readily recyclable can go through the process only once or twice. Ultimately, it’s cheaper for companies to make new plastics from scratch, using processes that require significant amounts of oil.
A couple of years ago, researchers from the United States and the United Kingdom developed a plastic-eating enzyme, called PETase, which can dissolve most plastics.1 While PETase won’t be suitable on industrial scales, it does point to a future where we can reduce plastic waste to its component parts and achieve actual recycling.
Synthetic biology offers ways to accelerate this process. As with antibodies, customizable clonal genes can help laboratories rapidly and inexpensively test thousands of enzyme variants to find the ones that most effectively break down plastics.
Made of oil
Besides paying scant attention to plastics recycling, most of us give little thought to the food supply chain, and how heavily it depends on chemical fertilizers derived from oil. It’s not farfetched to say that we are, to some degree, made of oil.
Again, we don’t have to rely on traditional oil-based approaches. Engineered bacteria can supply the nitrogen that plants need to thrive. Some research has suggested that we could create symbiotic plant/bacteria relationships, arranging for plants to request nitrogen and for bacteria to supply it.2
We can also make crop plants that are more nutritionally robust, preventing blindness and neurological disabilities in millions of children around the world. In a similar stroke, crops can be made more pest resistant, in effect reducing crop loss, land use, and soil erosion, as well as reducing reliance on environmentally problematic pesticides.
Even here, synthetic biology may hold the key to sustainability, providing the necessary tools to reduce agriculture’s reliance on chemicals, enhance soil quality, and improve global nutrition, while providing great economic benefit for farmers.
Data storage and computing
Storing data in DNA is not purely a synthetic biology application, but it captures the imagination and presents a tremendous opportunity to enhance sustainability.
Microsoft and other computing companies are based in the northwest because data storage uses a lot of energy, and Washington State has abundant, inexpensive hydroelectric power. On the other hand, DNA, the world’s most ancient data storage mechanism, can store data without using a great deal of energy. Instead of copying tape-based data archives once every 5–10 years, data repositories can store data indefinitely in test tubes of DNA.
That’s one application. Another is computing, which could end up being even more important. Although we are only at the earliest stages of this journey, we can already anticipate useful applications. Consider the simple act of copying data. Replicating a single hard drive is easy and takes only a few minutes. However, making a million copies is a much more intensive process.
But biology offers potential solutions. The enzyme polymerase can make a million DNA copies in an hour. Down the road, we will be able to use genetic material for even more complex computing tasks.
I’m excited about synthetic biology’s future because I believe it will increase efficiencies in many industries. In turn, we will reduce costs and increase our ability to develop solutions. We can do more with less and do it faster.
References
1. Austin HP, Allen MD, Donohoe BS, et al. Characterization and engineering of a plastic-degrading aromatic polyesterase. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 2018; 115(19): E4350–E4357. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1718804115.
2. Geddes BA, Paramasivan P, Joffrin A, et al. Engineering transkingdom signalling in plants to control gene expression in rhizosphere bacteria. Nat. Commun. 2019; 10: 3430. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-10882-x.
Emily Leproust, PhD is co-founder and CEO at Twist Bioscience.
To help us preview the future, we asked opinion leaders, all from outstanding technology companies, to discuss a range of new initiatives. The full list of articles is below.
Leroy Hood: Reflections on a Legendary Career
Uncharted Territory: Top Challenges Facing Gene Therapy Development
Envisioning Future Trends in Regenerative Medicine
Engineering Biology—Accelerating Transition
Bioprocessing in a Post-COVID-19 World
Sustainability and the Synthetic Biology Revolution
Sowing the Seeds of Agricultural Biotechnology
Neuroscience Widens Its Investigations of Disease Mechanisms
The post Sustainability and the Synthetic Biology Revolution appeared first on GEN - Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News.
yuan pandemic covid-19 testing genetic antibodies therapy dna oil
Government
Fauci Deputy Warned Him Against Vaccine Mandates: Email
Fauci Deputy Warned Him Against Vaccine Mandates: Email
Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Mandating COVID-19…
Share this:
Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Mandating COVID-19 vaccination was a mistake due to ethical and other concerns, a top government doctor warned Dr. Anthony Fauci after Dr. Fauci promoted mass vaccination.
“Coercing or forcing people to take a vaccine can have negative consequences from a biological, sociological, psychological, economical, and ethical standpoint and is not worth the cost even if the vaccine is 100% safe,” Dr. Matthew Memoli, director of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases clinical studies unit at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), told Dr. Fauci in an email.
“A more prudent approach that considers these issues would be to focus our efforts on those at high risk of severe disease and death, such as the elderly and obese, and do not push vaccination on the young and healthy any further.”
Employing that strategy would help prevent loss of public trust and political capital, Dr. Memoli said.
The email was sent on July 30, 2021, after Dr. Fauci, director of the NIAID, claimed that communities would be safer if more people received one of the COVID-19 vaccines and that mass vaccination would lead to the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’re on a really good track now to really crush this outbreak, and the more people we get vaccinated, the more assuredness that we’re going to have that we’re going to be able to do that,” Dr. Fauci said on CNN the month prior.
Dr. Memoli, who has studied influenza vaccination for years, disagreed, telling Dr. Fauci that research in the field has indicated yearly shots sometimes drive the evolution of influenza.
Vaccinating people who have not been infected with COVID-19, he said, could potentially impact the evolution of the virus that causes COVID-19 in unexpected ways.
“At best what we are doing with mandated mass vaccination does nothing and the variants emerge evading immunity anyway as they would have without the vaccine,” Dr. Memoli wrote. “At worst it drives evolution of the virus in a way that is different from nature and possibly detrimental, prolonging the pandemic or causing more morbidity and mortality than it should.”
The vaccination strategy was flawed because it relied on a single antigen, introducing immunity that only lasted for a certain period of time, Dr. Memoli said. When the immunity weakened, the virus was given an opportunity to evolve.
Some other experts, including virologist Geert Vanden Bossche, have offered similar views. Others in the scientific community, such as U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientists, say vaccination prevents virus evolution, though the agency has acknowledged it doesn’t have records supporting its position.
Other Messages
Dr. Memoli sent the email to Dr. Fauci and two other top NIAID officials, Drs. Hugh Auchincloss and Clifford Lane. The message was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, though the publication did not publish the message. The Epoch Times obtained the email and 199 other pages of Dr. Memoli’s emails through a Freedom of Information Act request. There were no indications that Dr. Fauci ever responded to Dr. Memoli.
Later in 2021, the NIAID’s parent agency, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), and all other federal government agencies began requiring COVID-19 vaccination, under direction from President Joe Biden.
In other messages, Dr. Memoli said the mandates were unethical and that he was hopeful legal cases brought against the mandates would ultimately let people “make their own healthcare decisions.”
“I am certainly doing everything in my power to influence that,” he wrote on Nov. 2, 2021, to an unknown recipient. Dr. Memoli also disclosed that both he and his wife had applied for exemptions from the mandates imposed by the NIH and his wife’s employer. While her request had been granted, his had not as of yet, Dr. Memoli said. It’s not clear if it ever was.
According to Dr. Memoli, officials had not gone over the bioethics of the mandates. He wrote to the NIH’s Department of Bioethics, pointing out that the protection from the vaccines waned over time, that the shots can cause serious health issues such as myocarditis, or heart inflammation, and that vaccinated people were just as likely to spread COVID-19 as unvaccinated people.
He cited multiple studies in his emails, including one that found a resurgence of COVID-19 cases in a California health care system despite a high rate of vaccination and another that showed transmission rates were similar among the vaccinated and unvaccinated.
Dr. Memoli said he was “particularly interested in the bioethics of a mandate when the vaccine doesn’t have the ability to stop spread of the disease, which is the purpose of the mandate.”
The message led to Dr. Memoli speaking during an NIH event in December 2021, several weeks after he went public with his concerns about mandating vaccines.
“Vaccine mandates should be rare and considered only with a strong justification,” Dr. Memoli said in the debate. He suggested that the justification was not there for COVID-19 vaccines, given their fleeting effectiveness.
Julie Ledgerwood, another NIAID official who also spoke at the event, said that the vaccines were highly effective and that the side effects that had been detected were not significant. She did acknowledge that vaccinated people needed boosters after a period of time.
The NIH, and many other government agencies, removed their mandates in 2023 with the end of the COVID-19 public health emergency.
A request for comment from Dr. Fauci was not returned. Dr. Memoli told The Epoch Times in an email he was “happy to answer any questions you have” but that he needed clearance from the NIAID’s media office. That office then refused to give clearance.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of health policy at Stanford University, said that Dr. Memoli showed bravery when he warned Dr. Fauci against mandates.
“Those mandates have done more to demolish public trust in public health than any single action by public health officials in my professional career, including diminishing public trust in all vaccines.” Dr. Bhattacharya, a frequent critic of the U.S. response to COVID-19, told The Epoch Times via email. “It was risky for Dr. Memoli to speak publicly since he works at the NIH, and the culture of the NIH punishes those who cross powerful scientific bureaucrats like Dr. Fauci or his former boss, Dr. Francis Collins.”
Government
Trump “Clearly Hasn’t Learned From His COVID-Era Mistakes”, RFK Jr. Says
Trump "Clearly Hasn’t Learned From His COVID-Era Mistakes", RFK Jr. Says
Authored by Jeff Louderback via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
President…
Share this:
Authored by Jeff Louderback via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
President Joe Biden claimed that COVID vaccines are now helping cancer patients during his State of the Union address on March 7, but it was a response on Truth Social from former President Donald Trump that drew the ire of independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
During the address, President Biden said: “The pandemic no longer controls our lives. The vaccines that saved us from COVID are now being used to help beat cancer, turning setback into comeback. That’s what America does.”
President Trump wrote: “The Pandemic no longer controls our lives. The VACCINES that saved us from COVID are now being used to help beat cancer—turning setback into comeback. YOU’RE WELCOME JOE. NINE-MONTH APPROVAL TIME VS. 12 YEARS THAT IT WOULD HAVE TAKEN YOU.”
An outspoken critic of President Trump’s COVID response, and the Operation Warp Speed program that escalated the availability of COVID vaccines, Mr. Kennedy said on X, formerly known as Twitter, that “Donald Trump clearly hasn’t learned from his COVID-era mistakes.”
“He fails to recognize how ineffective his warp speed vaccine is as the ninth shot is being recommended to seniors. Even more troubling is the documented harm being caused by the shot to so many innocent children and adults who are suffering myocarditis, pericarditis, and brain inflammation,” Mr. Kennedy remarked.
“This has been confirmed by a CDC-funded study of 99 million people. Instead of bragging about its speedy approval, we should be honestly and transparently debating the abundant evidence that this vaccine may have caused more harm than good.
“I look forward to debating both Trump and Biden on Sept. 16 in San Marcos, Texas.”
Mr. Kennedy announced in April 2023 that he would challenge President Biden for the 2024 Democratic Party presidential nomination before declaring his run as an independent last October, claiming that the Democrat National Committee was “rigging the primary.”
Since the early stages of his campaign, Mr. Kennedy has generated more support than pundits expected from conservatives, moderates, and independents resulting in speculation that he could take votes away from President Trump.
Many Republicans continue to seek a reckoning over the government-imposed pandemic lockdowns and vaccine mandates.
President Trump’s defense of Operation Warp Speed, the program he rolled out in May 2020 to spur the development and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines amid the pandemic, remains a sticking point for some of his supporters.
Operation Warp Speed featured a partnership between the government, the military, and the private sector, with the government paying for millions of vaccine doses to be produced.
President Trump released a statement in March 2021 saying: “I hope everyone remembers when they’re getting the COVID-19 Vaccine, that if I wasn’t President, you wouldn’t be getting that beautiful ‘shot’ for 5 years, at best, and probably wouldn’t be getting it at all. I hope everyone remembers!”
President Trump said about the COVID-19 vaccine in an interview on Fox News in March 2021: “It works incredibly well. Ninety-five percent, maybe even more than that. I would recommend it, and I would recommend it to a lot of people that don’t want to get it and a lot of those people voted for me, frankly.
“But again, we have our freedoms and we have to live by that and I agree with that also. But it’s a great vaccine, it’s a safe vaccine, and it’s something that works.”
On many occasions, President Trump has said that he is not in favor of vaccine mandates.
An environmental attorney, Mr. Kennedy founded Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit that aims to end childhood health epidemics by promoting vaccine safeguards, among other initiatives.
Last year, Mr. Kennedy told podcaster Joe Rogan that ivermectin was suppressed by the FDA so that the COVID-19 vaccines could be granted emergency use authorization.
He has criticized Big Pharma, vaccine safety, and government mandates for years.
Since launching his presidential campaign, Mr. Kennedy has made his stances on the COVID-19 vaccines, and vaccines in general, a frequent talking point.
“I would argue that the science is very clear right now that they [vaccines] caused a lot more problems than they averted,” Mr. Kennedy said on Piers Morgan Uncensored last April.
“And if you look at the countries that did not vaccinate, they had the lowest death rates, they had the lowest COVID and infection rates.”
Additional data show a “direct correlation” between excess deaths and high vaccination rates in developed countries, he said.
President Trump and Mr. Kennedy have similar views on topics like protecting the U.S.-Mexico border and ending the Russia-Ukraine war.
COVID-19 is the topic where Mr. Kennedy and President Trump seem to differ the most.
Former President Donald Trump intended to “drain the swamp” when he took office in 2017, but he was “intimidated by bureaucrats” at federal agencies and did not accomplish that objective, Mr. Kennedy said on Feb. 5.
Speaking at a voter rally in Tucson, where he collected signatures to get on the Arizona ballot, the independent presidential candidate said President Trump was “earnest” when he vowed to “drain the swamp,” but it was “business as usual” during his term.
John Bolton, who President Trump appointed as a national security adviser, is “the template for a swamp creature,” Mr. Kennedy said.
Scott Gottlieb, who President Trump named to run the FDA, “was Pfizer’s business partner” and eventually returned to Pfizer, Mr. Kennedy said.
Mr. Kennedy said that President Trump had more lobbyists running federal agencies than any president in U.S. history.
“You can’t reform them when you’ve got the swamp creatures running them, and I’m not going to do that. I’m going to do something different,” Mr. Kennedy said.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, President Trump “did not ask the questions that he should have,” he believes.
President Trump “knew that lockdowns were wrong” and then “agreed to lockdowns,” Mr. Kennedy said.
He also “knew that hydroxychloroquine worked, he said it,” Mr. Kennedy explained, adding that he was eventually “rolled over” by Dr. Anthony Fauci and his advisers.
MaryJo Perry, a longtime advocate for vaccine choice and a Trump supporter, thinks votes will be at a premium come Election Day, particularly because the independent and third-party field is becoming more competitive.
Ms. Perry, president of Mississippi Parents for Vaccine Rights, believes advocates for medical freedom could determine who is ultimately president.
She believes that Mr. Kennedy is “pulling votes from Trump” because of the former president’s stance on the vaccines.
“People care about medical freedom. It’s an important issue here in Mississippi, and across the country,” Ms. Perry told The Epoch Times.
“Trump should admit he was wrong about Operation Warp Speed and that COVID vaccines have been dangerous. That would make a difference among people he has offended.”
President Trump won’t lose enough votes to Mr. Kennedy about Operation Warp Speed and COVID vaccines to have a significant impact on the election, Ohio Republican strategist Wes Farno told The Epoch Times.
President Trump won in Ohio by eight percentage points in both 2016 and 2020. The Ohio Republican Party endorsed President Trump for the nomination in 2024.
“The positives of a Trump presidency far outweigh the negatives,” Mr. Farno said. “People are more concerned about their wallet and the economy.
“They are asking themselves if they were better off during President Trump’s term compared to since President Biden took office. The answer to that question is obvious because many Americans are struggling to afford groceries, gas, mortgages, and rent payments.
“America needs President Trump.”
Multiple national polls back Mr. Farno’s view.
As of March 6, the RealClearPolitics average of polls indicates that President Trump has 41.8 percent support in a five-way race that includes President Biden (38.4 percent), Mr. Kennedy (12.7 percent), independent Cornel West (2.6 percent), and Green Party nominee Jill Stein (1.7 percent).
A Pew Research Center study conducted among 10,133 U.S. adults from Feb. 7 to Feb. 11 showed that Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents (42 percent) are more likely than Republicans and GOP-leaning independents (15 percent) to say they have received an updated COVID vaccine.
The poll also reported that just 28 percent of adults say they have received the updated COVID inoculation.
The peer-reviewed multinational study of more than 99 million vaccinated people that Mr. Kennedy referenced in his X post on March 7 was published in the Vaccine journal on Feb. 12.
It aimed to evaluate the risk of 13 adverse events of special interest (AESI) following COVID-19 vaccination. The AESIs spanned three categories—neurological, hematologic (blood), and cardiovascular.
The study reviewed data collected from more than 99 million vaccinated people from eight nations—Argentina, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, New Zealand, and Scotland—looking at risks up to 42 days after getting the shots.
Three vaccines—Pfizer and Moderna’s mRNA vaccines as well as AstraZeneca’s viral vector jab—were examined in the study.
Researchers found higher-than-expected cases that they deemed met the threshold to be potential safety signals for multiple AESIs, including for Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS), cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST), myocarditis, and pericarditis.
A safety signal refers to information that could suggest a potential risk or harm that may be associated with a medical product.
The study identified higher incidences of neurological, cardiovascular, and blood disorder complications than what the researchers expected.
President Trump’s role in Operation Warp Speed, and his continued praise of the COVID vaccine, remains a concern for some voters, including those who still support him.
Krista Cobb is a 40-year-old mother in western Ohio. She voted for President Trump in 2020 and said she would cast her vote for him this November, but she was stunned when she saw his response to President Biden about the COVID-19 vaccine during the State of the Union address.
“I love President Trump and support his policies, but at this point, he has to know they [advisers and health officials] lied about the shot,” Ms. Cobb told The Epoch Times.
“If he continues to promote it, especially after all of the hearings they’ve had about it in Congress, the side effects, and cover-ups on Capitol Hill, at what point does he become the same as the people who have lied?” Ms. Cobb added.
“I think he should distance himself from talk about Operation Warp Speed and even admit that he was wrong—that the vaccines have not had the impact he was told they would have. If he did that, people would respect him even more.”
Spread & Containment
The next pandemic? It’s already here for Earth’s wildlife
Bird flu is decimating species already threatened by climate change and habitat loss.
Share this:
I am a conservation biologist who studies emerging infectious diseases. When people ask me what I think the next pandemic will be I often say that we are in the midst of one – it’s just afflicting a great many species more than ours.
I am referring to the highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza H5N1 (HPAI H5N1), otherwise known as bird flu, which has killed millions of birds and unknown numbers of mammals, particularly during the past three years.
This is the strain that emerged in domestic geese in China in 1997 and quickly jumped to humans in south-east Asia with a mortality rate of around 40-50%. My research group encountered the virus when it killed a mammal, an endangered Owston’s palm civet, in a captive breeding programme in Cuc Phuong National Park Vietnam in 2005.
How these animals caught bird flu was never confirmed. Their diet is mainly earthworms, so they had not been infected by eating diseased poultry like many captive tigers in the region.
This discovery prompted us to collate all confirmed reports of fatal infection with bird flu to assess just how broad a threat to wildlife this virus might pose.
This is how a newly discovered virus in Chinese poultry came to threaten so much of the world’s biodiversity.
The first signs
Until December 2005, most confirmed infections had been found in a few zoos and rescue centres in Thailand and Cambodia. Our analysis in 2006 showed that nearly half (48%) of all the different groups of birds (known to taxonomists as “orders”) contained a species in which a fatal infection of bird flu had been reported. These 13 orders comprised 84% of all bird species.
We reasoned 20 years ago that the strains of H5N1 circulating were probably highly pathogenic to all bird orders. We also showed that the list of confirmed infected species included those that were globally threatened and that important habitats, such as Vietnam’s Mekong delta, lay close to reported poultry outbreaks.
Mammals known to be susceptible to bird flu during the early 2000s included primates, rodents, pigs and rabbits. Large carnivores such as Bengal tigers and clouded leopards were reported to have been killed, as well as domestic cats.
Our 2006 paper showed the ease with which this virus crossed species barriers and suggested it might one day produce a pandemic-scale threat to global biodiversity.
Unfortunately, our warnings were correct.
A roving sickness
Two decades on, bird flu is killing species from the high Arctic to mainland Antarctica.
In the past couple of years, bird flu has spread rapidly across Europe and infiltrated North and South America, killing millions of poultry and a variety of bird and mammal species. A recent paper found that 26 countries have reported at least 48 mammal species that have died from the virus since 2020, when the latest increase in reported infections started.
Not even the ocean is safe. Since 2020, 13 species of aquatic mammal have succumbed, including American sea lions, porpoises and dolphins, often dying in their thousands in South America. A wide range of scavenging and predatory mammals that live on land are now also confirmed to be susceptible, including mountain lions, lynx, brown, black and polar bears.
The UK alone has lost over 75% of its great skuas and seen a 25% decline in northern gannets. Recent declines in sandwich terns (35%) and common terns (42%) were also largely driven by the virus.
Scientists haven’t managed to completely sequence the virus in all affected species. Research and continuous surveillance could tell us how adaptable it ultimately becomes, and whether it can jump to even more species. We know it can already infect humans – one or more genetic mutations may make it more infectious.
At the crossroads
Between January 1 2003 and December 21 2023, 882 cases of human infection with the H5N1 virus were reported from 23 countries, of which 461 (52%) were fatal.
Of these fatal cases, more than half were in Vietnam, China, Cambodia and Laos. Poultry-to-human infections were first recorded in Cambodia in December 2003. Intermittent cases were reported until 2014, followed by a gap until 2023, yielding 41 deaths from 64 cases. The subtype of H5N1 virus responsible has been detected in poultry in Cambodia since 2014. In the early 2000s, the H5N1 virus circulating had a high human mortality rate, so it is worrying that we are now starting to see people dying after contact with poultry again.
It’s not just H5 subtypes of bird flu that concern humans. The H10N1 virus was originally isolated from wild birds in South Korea, but has also been reported in samples from China and Mongolia.
Recent research found that these particular virus subtypes may be able to jump to humans after they were found to be pathogenic in laboratory mice and ferrets. The first person who was confirmed to be infected with H10N5 died in China on January 27 2024, but this patient was also suffering from seasonal flu (H3N2). They had been exposed to live poultry which also tested positive for H10N5.
Species already threatened with extinction are among those which have died due to bird flu in the past three years. The first deaths from the virus in mainland Antarctica have just been confirmed in skuas, highlighting a looming threat to penguin colonies whose eggs and chicks skuas prey on. Humboldt penguins have already been killed by the virus in Chile.
How can we stem this tsunami of H5N1 and other avian influenzas? Completely overhaul poultry production on a global scale. Make farms self-sufficient in rearing eggs and chicks instead of exporting them internationally. The trend towards megafarms containing over a million birds must be stopped in its tracks.
To prevent the worst outcomes for this virus, we must revisit its primary source: the incubator of intensive poultry farms.
Diana Bell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
genetic pandemic mortality spread deaths south korea south america europe uk china
‘I couldn’t stand the pain’: the Turkish holiday resort that’s become an emergency dental centre for Britons who can’t get treated at home
The next pandemic? It’s already here for Earth’s wildlife
Trump “Clearly Hasn’t Learned From His COVID-Era Mistakes”, RFK Jr. Says
Vaccine-skeptical mothers say bad health care experiences made them distrust the medical system
Fauci Deputy Warned Him Against Vaccine Mandates: Email
Survey Shows Declining Concerns Among Americans About COVID-19
Chinese migration to US is nothing new – but the reasons for recent surge at Southern border are
As the pandemic turns four, here’s what we need to do for a healthier future
A major cruise line is testing a monthly subscription service
-
Uncategorized3 weeks agoAll Of The Elements Are In Place For An Economic Crisis Of Staggering Proportions
-
Uncategorized3 weeks agoCalifornia Counties Could Be Forced To Pay $300 Million To Cover COVID-Era Program
-
International4 days agoEyePoint poaches medical chief from Apellis; Sandoz CFO, longtime BioNTech exec to retire
-
Uncategorized2 weeks agoApparel Retailer Express Moving Toward Bankruptcy
-
Uncategorized4 weeks agoIndustrial Production Decreased 0.1% in January
-
International3 days agoWalmart launches clever answer to Target’s new membership program
-
Uncategorized3 weeks agoRFK Jr: The Wuhan Cover-Up & The Rise Of The Biowarfare-Industrial Complex
-
Uncategorized3 weeks agoGOP Efforts To Shore Up Election Security In Swing States Face Challenges