Republic of the Philippines

Region I
LYCEUM NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
Dagupan City, Pangasinan
Institute of Graduate Studies

Master in Education - Biology

In partial requirement for

Special Topics for Science Teachers

Submitted to:

DR. ESMIE T. AGPALO

Submitted by:

CLARK JHEMARD S. VEJERANO

July 4, 2020
 Swine Flu Strain with Human Pandemic Potential
Increasingly Found in Pigs in China

Published: June 29, 2020, 3:00 PM

(Nasal swabs from more than 30,000 pigs in China over 7 years found an increase
in an avian like influenza virus that has swapped genes from several strains.)

What the world doesn’t need now is a pandemic on top of a pandemic. So a new finding that pigs
in China are more and more frequently becoming infected with a strain of influenza that has the
potential to jump to humans has infectious disease researchers worldwide taking serious notice.
Robert Webster, an influenza investigator who recently retired from St. Jude Children’s Research
Hospital, says it’s a “guessing game” as to whether this strain will mutate to readily transmit
between humans, which it has not done yet. “We just do not know a pandemic is going to occur
until the damn thing occurs,” Webster says, noting that China has the largest pig population in the
world. “Will this one do it? God knows.”

When multiple strains of influenza viruses infect the same pig, they can easily swap genes, a
process known as “reassortment.” The new study, published today in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, focuses on an influenza virus dubbed G4. The virus is a unique
blend of three lineages: one similar to strains found in European and Asian birds, the H1N1 strain
that caused the 2009 pandemic, and a North American H1N1 that has genes from avian, human,
and pig influenza viruses

The G4 variant is especially concerning because its core is an avian influenza virus—to which
humans have no immunity—with bits of mammalian strains mixed in. “From the data presented, it
appears that this is a swine influenza virus that is poised to emerge in humans,” says Edward
Holmes, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Sydney who studies pathogens. “Clearly this
situation needs to be monitored very closely.”

As part of a project to identify potential pandemic influenza strains, a team led by Liu Jinhua from
the China Agricultural University (CAU) analyzed nearly 30,000 nasal swabs taken from pigs at
slaughterhouses in 10 Chinese provinces, and another 1000 swabs from pigs with respiratory
symptoms seen at their school’s veterinary teaching hospital. The swabs, collected between 2011
and 2018, yielded 179 swine influenza viruses, the vast majority of which were G4 or one of five
other G strains from the Eurasian avianlike lineage. “G4 virus has shown a sharp increase since
2016, and is the predominant genotype in circulation in pigs detected across at least 10
provinces,” they write.
Sun Honglei, the paper’s first author, says G4’s inclusion of genes from the 2009 H1N1 pandemic
“may promote the virus adaptation” that leads to human-to-human transmission. Therefore, “It’s
necessary to strengthen the surveillance” of pigs in China for influenza viruses, says Sun, also at
CAU.

Influenza viruses frequently jump from pigs to humans, but most do not then transmit between
humans. Two cases of G4 infections of humans have been documented and both were dead-end
infections that did not transmit to other people. “The likelihood that this particular variant is going to
cause a pandemic is low,” says Martha Nelson, an evolutionary biologist at the U.S. National
Institutes of Health’s Fogarty International Center who studies pig influenza viruses in the United
States and their spread to humans. But Nelson notes that no one knew about the pandemic H1N1
strain, which jumped from pigs to people, until the first human cases surfaced in 2009. “Influenza
can surprise us,” Nelson says. “And there’s a risk that we neglect influenza and other threats at
this time” of COVID-19.

The new study offers but a tiny glimpse into swine influenza strains in China, which has 500 million
pigs. While Nelson thinks the predominance of G4 in their analysis is an interesting finding, she
says it’s hard to know whether its spread is a growing problem, given the relatively small sample
size. “You’re really not getting a good snapshot of what is dominant in pigs in China,” she adds,
stressing the need for more sampling in the nation's pigs.

In the paper, Sun and colleagues—including George Gao, head of the Chinese Center for Disease
Control and Prevention—describe lab dish studies that show how G4s have become adept at
infecting and copying themselves in human airway epithelial cells. The viruses also readily
infected and transmitted between ferrets, a popular animal model used to study human influenza.
The researchers found antibodies to the G4 strain in 4.4% of 230 people studied in a household
survey—and the rate more than doubled in swine workers.
In addition to stepping up surveillance, Sun says it makes sense to develop a vaccine against G4
for both pigs and humans. Webster says at the very least, the seed stock to make a human
vaccine—variants of a strain that grow rapidly in the eggs used to make a flu vaccine—should be
produced now. “Making the seed stock is not a big deal, and we should have it ready,” Webster
says.

China rarely uses influenza vaccines in swine. Nelson says U.S. farms commonly do, but the
vaccine has little effect because it’s often outdated and doesn’t match circulating strains.
Ideally, Nelson says, we would produce a human G4 vaccine and have it in the stockpile, but
that’s an involved process that requires substantial funding. “We need to be vigilant about other
infectious disease threats even as COVID is going on because viruses have no interest in whether
we’re already having another pandemic,” Nelson says.

SCIENCE 10 (THIRD QUARTER)

Topic: Inheritance and Variation
Most Essential Learning Competency: Explain how mutation may cause changes in the
structure and function of a protein.

REFERENCE:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/swine-flu-strain-human-pandemic-potential-increasingly-
found-pigs-china
 Why Coronavirus Hits Men Harder: Sex Hormones Offer Clues

Published: June 3, 2020, 8:00 AM

(Men tend to get sicker from the coronavirus than women.)

In January, one of the first publications on those sickened by the novel coronavirus in Wuhan,
China, reported that three out of every four hospitalized patients were male. Data from around the
world have since confirmed that men face a greater risk of severe illness and death from COVID-
19 than women and that children are largely spared. Now, scientists investigating how the virus
does its deadly work have zeroed in on a possible reason: Androgens—male hormones such
as testosterone—appear to boost the virus’ ability to get inside cells.

A constellation of emerging data supports this idea, including COVID-19 outcomes in men with
prostate cancer and lab studies of how androgens regulate key genes. And preliminary
observations from Spain suggest that a disproportionate number of men with male pattern
baldness—which is linked to a powerful androgen—end up in hospitals with COVID-19.
Researchers are rushing to test already approved drugs that block androgens’ effects, deploying
them early in infection in hopes of slowing the virus and buying time for the immune system to
beat it back.

“Everybody is chasing a link between androgens and the outcome of COVID-19,” says Howard
Soule, executive vice president at the Prostate Cancer Foundation, who on 13 May ran a Zoom
call presenting the newest research that drew 600 scientists and physicians.

Epidemiological data from around the world have confirmed the early reports of male vulnerability.
In Lombardy in Italy, for example, men comprised 82% of 1591 patients admitted to intensive
care units (ICUs) from 20 February to 18 March, according to a JAMA paper. And male mortality
exceeded that of women in every adult age group in another JAMA study of 5700 New York City
patients hospitalized with COVID-19.

Now, researchers are on the trail of a mechanism for this male bias—an effort led by prostate
cancer researchers, who have a deep acquaintance with androgens.
Christina Jamieson of the University of California (UC), San Diego, who has developed organoids
to study prostate cancer, recalls that she was in a Zoom meeting honing ideas on how to link her
research to COVID-19 when her sister, also a UC San Diego scientist, sent her a one-word text. It
read: “TMPRSS2.”

It was 16 April, and within minutes Jamieson had found the publication that prompted the
text: a Cell paper by Markus Hoffmann of the Leibniz Institute for Primate Research and
colleagues.
The paper sent a lightning bolt through the prostate research community, because it showed that
infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, relies in part on TMPRSS2, a
membrane-bound enzyme. The enzyme cleaves the “spike” protein on the coronavirus’ surface,
allowing the virus to fuse with the host cell’s membrane and get inside the cell.

Jamieson and other prostate cancer researchers were familiar with the enzyme, because in about
half of all prostate cancers, a TMPRSS2 mutation revs up an oncogene that kicks cell growth into
overdrive. In the prostate, TMPRSS2 is produced when male hormones bind to the androgen
receptor. “Doing research, it’s like you’re trying to throw an anchor into the vast ocean of
possibilities,” Jamieson says. The discovery that TMPRSS2 helps the virus enter cells “felt like the
anchor hit ground.”

Researchers haven’t established that androgens control TMPRSS2 in the lung—ground zero for
SARS-CoV-2 infection—as they do in the prostate; studies in lung tissue and cells from mice and
humans come to conflicting conclusions. But after the Cell paper was published, Andrea Alimonti,
head of molecular oncology at Università della Svizzera italiana, strengthened the androgen link
by looking at data on more than 42,000 men with prostate cancer in Veneto in Italy. He and
colleagues found that patients on androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT)—drugs that slash levels of
testosterone—were only one-quarter as likely to contract COVID-19 as men with prostate
cancer not on ADT, they reported in the Annals of Oncology (see table, below). Men on ADT were
also less likely to be hospitalized and to die, although numbers were small.

SCIENCE 10 (THIRD QUARTER)

Topic: Coordinated Functions of the Reproductive, Endocrine, and Nervous Systems
Most Essential Learning Competency: Explain the role of hormones involved in the female and
male reproductive systems.

REFERENCE:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/why-coronavirus-hits-men-harder-sex-hormones-offer-clues
 How Venus Flytraps Evolved their Taste for Meat
Published: May 14, 2020, 3:20 PM

(The Venus flytrap rewired existing genes to allow it to eat meat)

How does a plant develop a taste for flesh? In the play Little Shop of Horrors, all it takes is a drop
of human blood. But in real life, it takes much more. Now, a study of three closely related
carnivorous plants suggests dextrous genetic shuffling helped them evolve the ability to catch and
digest protein-rich meals.

Carnivorous plants have developed many devious ways to snare prey. Pitcher plants, for
example, use “pitfall traps” that contain enzymes for digesting stray insects. Others—including the
closely related Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula), the aquatic waterwheel plant (Aldrovanda
vesiculosa), and the sundew (Drosera spatulata)—use moving traps. The sundew rolls up its
sticky landing pad when mosquitoes get caught. And the Venus flytrap uses modified leaves, or
pads, that snap shut when an insect lands—but only after the pads sense multiple touches on their
trigger hairs.

To find out how these traps evolved, researchers led by computational evolutionary biologist Jörg
Schultz and plant biologist Rainer Hedrich, both of the University of Würzburg, sequenced the
genomes of the sundew, the aquatic waterwheel, and the Venus flytrap, which are all closely
related. They then compared their genomes with those of nine other plants, including a
carnivorous pitcher plant and noncarnivorous beetroot and papaya plants.

They found that the key to the evolution of meat eating in this part of the plant kingdom was
the duplication of the entire genome in a common ancestor that lived about 60 million years
ago, the team reports today in Current Biology. That duplication freed up copies of genes once
used in roots, leaves, and sensory systems to detect and digest prey. For example, carnivorous
plants repurposed copies of genes that help roots absorb nutrients, to absorb the nutrients in
digested prey. “That root genes are being expressed in the leaves of carnivores is absolutely
fascinating,” says Kenneth Cameron, a botanist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Hedrich and his colleagues conclude that carnivory evolved once in the ancestor of the three
species and, independently, in the pitcher plant. Adding these two new origins to others already
documented, the researchers conclude that meat eating has evolved at least six times.

“The strength [of this study] is the comparative analysis,” says Maria Logacheva, a plant scientist
at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, who was not involved with the work. “It nicely
shows how the novel traits emerge.”

However, Victor Albert, a plant evolutionary biologist at the University at Buffalo, says Hedrich’s
team does not have enough data to support the two new origins, especially because some genes
essential to predation existed in an earlier ancestor common to pitcher plants and the three newly
sequenced plants. His team is sequencing two additional sundew species to help clarify what
happened.

But Luis Herrera-Estrella, a plant genomicist at Texas Tech University, is pleased to know about
the new genes that are now linked to carnivory. He and others can study how genes were rewired
to make meat eating possible. Indeed, Hedrich says, it seems most plants already have many of
the necessary genes. “The path to carnivory seems to be open for all plants.”

SCIENCE 10 (THIRD QUARTER)

Topic: Biodiversity and Evolution
Most Essential Learning Competency: Explain how species diversity increases the probability of
adaptation and survival of organisms in changing environments.

REFERENCE:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/how-venus-flytraps-evolved-their-taste-meat