Behind the Paper
The real stories behind the latest research papers, from conception to publication, the highs and the lows
Expanding deserts drove mammals and hominids out of Eurasia into Africa
The emergence of deserts in Arabia had a decisive impact on the evolution and migratory movements of mammals including our human ancestors. This is one of our conclusions after studying a 10-million-year climate history of Arabia, respectively Mesopotamia.
Know thy enemy: Resolving the SARS-CoV-2 gene set and understanding COVID-19 variants using evolution
Can comparative genomics resolve the protein-coding gene set of SARS-CoV-2? Yes! We compared 44 Sarbecovirus genomes to determine which SARS-CoV-2 candidate genes encode functional proteins and which mutations are likely functional, so future efforts can focus on real genes and important mutations.
Measuring the effect of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs) on mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic using global mobility data
Evaluating the efficacy of government interventions used to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 has been challenging. Mobility data from phones can be used as a low-cost and standardised mechanism to observe the change in the aggregate movement of populations in response to interventions stimuli.
Tumor-promoting immune cells retrained to fight most aggressive type of brain cancer
Glioblastomas (GBM) are frequently resistant to immunotherapy. We showed that targeting regulatory T cells (Tregs) with an agonistic anti-GITR antibody reprograms tumor-infiltrating Tregs to effector cells, overcoming response to PD1 blockade in preclinical models of GBM.
