coronavirus
-
The Sequence of Coronavirus Makes Surprisingly Lovely Music
All my life I’ve been involved in music and molecular biology. At the crossroads between science and art, I see great scope for insight. My latest research, published in the journal BMC Bioinformatics, reveals how music can be used to reveal functional properties of the coronavirus genome. This project followed earlier work I had done…
-
How Do Vaccines Kill Viruses?
This is a very important question, especially now, as scientists all around the world are working hard to develop a vaccine to protect us against the coronavirus. Actually, scientists are trying to find vaccines for many different diseases. To understand how vaccines are made, we first need to understand how viruses make us sick, and…
-
No, the World Health Organisation Did Not ‘Backflip’ on Lockdowns
This week, U.S. President Trump became the latest and loudest voice to advance a narrative that’s picked up steam among bad-faith contrarians eager to downplay the covid-19 pandemic. The (inaccurate) story is that the World Health Organisation has now suddenly changed its mind about lockdowns being useful. This is wrong on two fronts, since the…
-
Johnson & Johnson Pauses Coronavirus Vaccine Trials After ‘Unexplained Illness’ in Volunteer
On late Monday night, the pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson put a temporary pause on all of its clinical trials of experimental vaccines for the coronavirus that causes covid-19, following the report of an “unexplained illness” in one of the study participants. It’s not yet clear whether the person’s illness is connected to the vaccine,…