Megan Molteni
@MeganMolteni
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science writer @statnews | formerly @WIRED | she/her | genetic privacy & Crispr tips to megan.molteni @statnews .com | DM for signal
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A quick update: Academics who went looking for genetic traces of H5N1 in store-bought milk from 10 US states found it in nearly 40% of samples. FDA's own investigation, which aims to be a "large representative national sample," has found evidence of H5N1 in 20% of milk products.
The discovery of
#H5N1
#birdflu
in a significant portion of commercially purchased milk suggests the outbreak in cows is much larger than we know, scientists who've been doing this work tell
@MeganMolteni
.
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Out today, my feature for
@WIRED
on the origin of the airborne-droplet dichotomy, how a seemingly small error made decades ago would have massive repercussions on public health policy, and how Covid-19 catalyzed a reckoning with that flawed history.
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The fact that
@WHO
went with a naming convention that they say allows for any future coronavirus spillovers to be easily slotted in (Covid-22, Covid 25, e.g) seems to convey the realization (not present at time of SARS) that these kinds of outbreaks are going to keep happening.
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It's taken Chinese researchers just a few weeks to isolate and sequence the genome of a new coronavirus making dozens of people sick in Wuhan. Over the weekend, they made that DNA data public.
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Thousands of scientists are suspending their work today to confront and eradicate anti-black racism in academia and STEM.
#ShutDownSTEM
#ShutDownAcademia
#strike4blacklives
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An international team of scientists just introduced the world to a new kind of neuron believed to exist only in the human brain.
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Trump doesn't have the power to lift shelter-in-place orders, curfews, closures. That's up to states, counties, cities. But his insistence that people get back to work sends dangerously conflicting messages during a crucial point in the
#Covid19
pandemic.
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A bit of personal news this morning. I'm proud to have won a AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award in the Magazine category for my
@WIRED
feature on the origins of the flawed 5-micron definition at the center of the Covid droplet-airborne debate.
Congratulations to the 2021 winners of the international AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards! Read about this year's winners here: .
#AAASKavli2021
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So, we need to talk about that neck gaiter study.
Specifically, what it showed: a cool, low-cost way to measure invisible speech droplets.
And what it didn't: neck gaiter = bad.
1/
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Moral psychology tells us that people want to be responsible, or at least not be seen by others as causing harm. An effective coronavirus public health response could tap into that. But only if people are given clear rules to follow. My latest for
@WIRED
:
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For the first time, scientists used a gene drive to completely collapse a population of the mosquito species that carries malaria. A Gates Foundation-backed project hopes to one day release them in the wild. My latest for
@WIRED
:
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This should be a really big story.
U of Florida employees say they were instructed to dump COVID-19 data and not "criticize the Governor of Florida or UF policies related to COVID-19 in media interactions.”
Oh yeah, and edit out race-related references from course materials.
UF researchers felt pressure to destroy COVID-19 data, faculty report says
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There's emerging evidence that, like other respiratory viruses, dry air makes it easier for the new coronavirus to spread, and harder for our immune systems to stomp out an infection. It also means we can do something about it. My latest for
@WIRED
:
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If you were wondering why a coronavirus vaccine isn't going to be ready until next summer (at the very earliest!) I put together a guide for
@WIRED
about the science and economics of vaccine-making.
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Thank you to the dozens of aerosol scientists, infectious disease doctors, and epidemiologists who spoke to me over the last 10 months to help me understand the thorny science, politics, and history at play. But especially
@linseymarr
,
@katierandall
, and Yuguo Li.
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Making antivenoms today is much the same as a 100 years ago. Milk a snake's fangs. Inject a horse. Collect blood. Hope for antibodies that work in humans.
Now, a new cobra genome is giving scientists the DNA code to make antivenoms in microbes instead.
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This afternoon, genealogy buffs logging onto GEDmatch to learn more about their family trees learned instead that the site is now owned by a forensic DNA company.
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If you're a reporter and you've not yet read
@jetjocko
on how language can shift culturally-entrenched ideas about gender, make sure you do. All the way to the end.
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Wheat has a ridiculously huge and complicated genome, which scientists have finally sequenced. The research paves the way for new varieties and gene-edited wheat that could combat food allergies and climate change alike.
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A year ago today, CA police arrested an ex-cop alleged to be the Golden State Killer, using his relatives' DNA and a public genealogy website. Over the past 12 months, the technique has emerged as the most powerful crime-fighting tool since DNA itself.
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Riding that mini-STEM wave like Δv = (gtanθ)t.
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Do vaccines stop the coronavirus from spreading? Almost certainly! Do they block 89.4% of transmission? Probably not.
Here's what the new data out of Israel and the UK does (and doesn't) tell us about how to safely navigate a semi-vaccinated society:
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Last spring I wrote about the race to mine the world's DNA stockpiles for answers to why Covid-19 has such a wide, and sometimes seemingly capricious range of symptoms. Today, some important results from the biggest of those efforts:
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"We’ve been telling people that the major complications of this new disease are pulmonary, but it appears there are a fair number of neurologic complications."
In my latest for
@WIRED
, I looked at everything scientists know so far about 🧠+🦠
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If you read this week about a Scottish woman with a genetic mutation that gives her superhuman pain tolerance and wound healing and thought, "Crispr me up some of that!" this story's for you:
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To avoid putting themselves in unsafe situations, women in New York City are spending up to $1,200 more than men each year on public transportation.
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New: USDA scientists find that the H5N1 avian influenza entered cattle from wild birds via a single spillover, likely in December 2023.
(From a preprint analysis of thousands of viral genomes, including 220 from US cattle)
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Today in 🤯🤯 science, a new report is providing "tantalizing evidence that, under extraordinary circumstances, Alzheimer’s disease is transmissible by a prion-like mechanism."
@DrewQJoseph
has the story:
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CDC says combined cases of syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia reached a record high in 2018.
To blame? Public health department budget cuts that never recovered from the recession. Important story today from
@olgakhazan
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One for the Crispr wish-list...
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People are donating more DNA than ever to biobanks in the hopes of accelerating medical research and improving health care. But these genetic caches are a goldmine to social scientists too. In my latest for
@WIRED
I look at their push to link genes w/ $$$
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A neural network called DeepHeart has learned how to spot people with diabetes from their Apple Watch heart rate data.
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Virtual reality can intercept pain signals before they get to the brain. Can it also help solve the opioid crisis?
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The world's growing collection of human DNA—the resource that powers advances in drug discovery and disease risk prediction—is overwhelmingly white. I spent some time with the ambitious Nigerian startup making headway to change that.
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2017 has been a big year for immunotherapies—the most promising new cancer treatments in a century. But at least for now, most patients won't benefit from them. A flood of financing and new trials are trying to change that. Are they selling hope, or hype?
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As CRISPR shows real promise in trials for sickle cell and other diseases, it's wild to remember the first paper suggesting its use for genome editing was just 10 years ago.
I spoke with Jennifer Doudna about CRISPR's whirlwind decade & what comes next:
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In a new study, researchers report the most compelling evidence yet of a strong link between Epstein-Barr virus and multiple sclerosis—the most common disabling neurologic disease among young people.
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For decades,
@GHatfull
has been sending students around the world to hunt phages. He never thought some of them would one day save a young woman's life.
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The more scientists look, the more they find people who have biological hallmarks of Alzheimer's — plaques and tangles in their brains — but remain cognitively normal.
A new study points to a possible mechanism:
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The
#CampFire
went from zero to 70,000 acres burned in fewer than 20 hours. With 2,000 structures burned, it's already the 4th most destructive wildfire in California history. Meanwhile, the
#WoolseyFire
marches on Malibu...
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New CDC data from the Omicron wave show that nearly 60% of people in the United States, including 3 in 4 children, have now been infected with SARS-CoV-2.
@DrewQJoseph
and
@cooney_liz
have more
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And thank you to
@sandraupson
for sticking with the story for so long, to
@vtitunik
and
@Mstreshinsky
for steering it through its evolution, and
@caitharr
and
@zakjason
for meticulously fact-checking it.
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This morning the President falsely claimed that kids are "almost immune" from Covid-19. In fact, there is increasing evidence that kids can get infected and spread the coronavirus just as easily as anyone else.
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In August, scientists published results of the largest-ever search for gay genes. This was after months of LGBTQ+ researchers at their own institution warning them the study would be misused. Three weeks later an app called "How Gay Are You? appeared.
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That's what Donald Prater, acting director of FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition told public health officials at a science symposium today. "This is just coming in this morning in fact," he said. The agency plans to release more details of its investigation soon.
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Scientists have long had clues that measles is more dangerous than a fever and rash. New research shows exactly how dangerous.
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Last week was my last at
@WIRED
. My generous colleagues managed a very fine sendoff, despite the limitations of remote work. It's bittersweet to be leaving them, especially the ace
@WIREDScience
crew. We got to make some awesome things together over the years.
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It's weird to celebrate a Nobel Prize that at once feels so long overdue and at the same time, honors a discovery made not even a decade ago! But things move fast in CrisprWorld. Here are just a few developments that I've managed to cover during my time at WIRED:
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Like most Americans, I failed to realize how quickly the coronavirus would spread around the world. That naive optimism almost got me stranded abroad. It also gave me a window into what might have happened if the US had taken the threat more seriously.
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I’ve seen some crazy cancer-killing schemes before, but nothing like magnet-steered, machine-sperm hybrids laced with chemo drugs.
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As more people upload their DNA data to public ancestry websites, the era of genetic privacy comes to a close.
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And a special thanks to
@jetjocko
and
@GregoryJBarber
for the countless conversations that helped me clarify the story's ideas and structure. The seeds for it were planted while co-reporting on the initial scientific debate over Covid transmission routes
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According to new case study, the first US coronavirus patient was sick for a week with mild cough and fever. The pneumonia didn't set in until day 9.
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Everyone knows the Earth has an overpopulation problem.
Except.
Maybe it doesn't.
I spoke with
@JohnIbbitson
&
@darrellbricker
, authors of EMPTY PLANET, about the surprising alternate future of the human species.
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Viruses from a Texas sewer and a clandestine NAVY biomedical research facility saved Tom Patterson from a superbug. My interview with him and
@chngin_the_wrld
about resurrecting a forgotten Soviet therapy to combat antibiotic resistance:
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We still don't know how many samples FDA has tested and from how broad a geographic range.
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Evolving proteins to do things nature never intended might have stayed an obscure field in chemistry. But then Crispr came along.
My latest for
@WIRED
is a profile of David Liu, the most consequential Crispr guy you've never heard of.
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In 2012, this legal battle looked like it would define who owned the whole Crispr universe. Today, scientists know it's easier (and less expensive) to invent around Crispr patents than fight them in court.
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Locking down a city of 11 million is exactly as hard as it sounds. The fact that the Chinese government is trying suggests there's much more human-to-human spread than the information that's been released so far.
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Billionaires like Bezos, Bloomberg, and Gates betting on microbes to disrupt the ecologically disastrous fertilizer industry.
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This week in CRISPR milestones, the first CRISPR'd animal—a heat-tolerant beef cattle made by Recombinetics—gets the greenlight to enter the US food supply. FDA says it could hit the market as early as 2024.
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Pregnant people have been largely left out of COVID-19 research, including initial vaccine trials. Two new studies are helping to fill the data gap, with some surprising twists.
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Biology publishing culture is hitting a tipping point my latest deep dive for
@WIRED
#preprint
#openaccess
#biorxiv
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There's a lot of hype in the Crispr space, but this advance, unimaginable just five years ago, has scientists pretty fired up.
A new method, called “prime editing,” could, in principle, correct around 89 percent of the mutations that cause inherited human disease.
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In my first story for
@statnews
, I took a look at the growing slate of CRISPR clinical trials aimed at sickle cell disease. And in particular, at some of the protein engineering behind Beam Therapeutic's direct editing approach.
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Scoop from me: An American biotech firm was moving forward with plans to start a herd of genetically dehorned dairy cows in Brazil. Then bacterial DNA showed up in its genome.
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This continues to be one of the hardest things for people to grasp. Testing numbers are just the tip of the iceberg.
"Take whatever your testing numbers are and multiply them maybe by 10, and that’s probably your number of people that are infected.”
The frightening numbers out of New York and what they mean.
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A CCR5 knockout mutation (like what Chinese scientists attempted last year in twin girls) protects against HIV. But new research shows it also shortens life expectancy. 😳
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Back from vacation and writing about the latest Crispr news. Today it's the first publication demonstrating the use of Crispr gene-editing in humans.
paper here:
and story here:
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Yesterday, 23andMe launched a study to locate gene variants that might predispose people to more severe outcomes of
#COVID19
. It's just one of dozens of new DNA projects aimed at understanding why the disease hits some people harder than others.
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Scientists trained a deep learning
#AI
on these 6,000 human stem cells. Now it can predict their layout, down to the microtubule.
Behold the largest public collection of human cells ever visualized in 3-D
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Brazil is in the grips of its worst yellow fever outbreak in decades. False information about the vaccine that could contain it is circulating on WhatsApp, the country’s most popular social network.
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Scientists and startups are chasing blood tests that can detect cancer before any symptoms appear. The tech isn't doctor's office-ready yet. But it's getting closer.
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Minneapolis's East African communities have been blazing a trail, standing up to Amazon over labor and civil rights. Proud of
@WIRED
for putting this story on the cover of our latest issue.
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Wondering what you need to know about
#nCoV2019
this morning? Here's the latest:
Health officials in the US are now investigating 12 potential cases in CA, TX, and TN.
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Universal vaccines and forecasting models might one day make flu season a thing of the past. For now though, it's very much a thing of the present. Get your shots y'all. via
@WIRED
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Last week, I wrote about measles becoming endemic again in the US:
Today, the CDC put out new measles numbers: 971 cases. And a statement: "If these outbreaks continue through summer and fall, the United States may lose its measles elimination status."
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Packing swallowable electronics full of programmable microbes opens up whole new possibilities for monitoring gut health.
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A lot of my friends are at a place in their lives where cycle/body temp tracking apps are looking more attractive (stable relationships/tired of hormones). But none of them realized their data could be useful to anyone else. So here's a little PSA.
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So all those headlines about ditching your neck gaiters, because science, are just flat-out wrong. Looking at you,
@washingtonpost
. The good news, is now that there's a blueprint for making one of these cheap mask-evaluation devices, lots more labs can get in the game. 5/
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The fact the neck gaiter didn't work well on this one man's face is not the same as testing that neck gaiter on hundreds or thousands of different people's faces. That would be science. This is a demonstration. 4/
@susanematthews
says this best:
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The west coast is burning—more than 1.7 million acres ablaze from Arizona to Alaska. But it's people in the middle of the country who bear the bulk of the health burden of wildfires. Why? It's the smoke.
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I've got to back up
@maggiekb1
here. Last night in Minneapolis, friends and neighbors I spoke with provided first-hand accounts of armed white men, wearing black, traveling in small groups around our streets and alleys, miles away from any legitimate protest activities.
When we say there are outsiders causing destruction, we are not saying that everything would be hunky dory around here if it weren't for those darned outside agitators. We're saying there is a coordinated destruction effort independent from protests for George Floyd.
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China's latest
#2019nCoV
numbers are up:
Total confirmed cases 11,791
Total deaths 259
Total cured 243
Total suspected cases 17,988
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In the hours and days after South Africa alerted the world to Omicron, more than a dozen countries identified cases of their own. By comparison, it took the US much longer, but not because the variant wasn't already here.
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CDC reporting no new measles cases in the US last week, for 1st time since the outbreak began nearly a year ago. The next few weeks will determine whether or not the country holds on to its elimination status.
My story (from May) on what that would mean:
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Google's off-the-shelf image classifier learned how to do something no human pathologist can.
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As one researcher put it to me: "A Rubicon has been crossed."
Here's everything we know about the US's first experiment putting Crispr'd cells into people to fight cancer.
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Should gene sequencing be a part of your next physical? Doctors prepare for the future of genetic medicine.
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New CRISPR methods capable of deleting up to 10,000 DNA letters give scientists powerful new tools for research and point toward potential therapies.
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There has been a flurry of scientific activity in the last few weeks to try to understand where new variants are coming from and how they'll impact vaccines, treatment, and herd immunity from previous infections.
A quick thread, and story here:
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For
@WIRED
's year-in-review, I took a look at the breakthrough crime-fighting technique of 2018: genetic genealogy. This year, DNA from distant relatives led to more than than 20 arrests, starting with the Golden State Killer.
Get ready for lots more.
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Now, as Americans are flooding the streets in the name of human rights we need more testing. Massive, free testing capaigns. This is insane.
White House Coronavirus Testing Czar To Stand Down.
With no replacement.
The Federal government could not muster up the energy to get Americans the testing they needed.
So it feels like we are just throwing in the towel.
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Scientists followed thousands of tusks to expose the transnational networks poaching 40,000 elephants every year.
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