Science News Headlines . This cow’s antibodies could be the newest weapon against COVID-19 . Scientists obtain 'lucky' image of Jupiter . Pain Researcher David Julius Wins 2020 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience . How Line-Dried Laundry Gets That Fresh SmellLaundry smell Read more details below. . This cow’s antibodies could be the newest weapon against COVID-19 The latest recruits in the fight against COVID-19 are munching hay in a South Dakota barn. A biotech company has coaxed genetically modified cows to pump out human antibodies that subdue SARS-CoV-2, the pathogen causing the deadly disease, and it plans to start clinical trials of them this summer. “This is promising,” says Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease physician at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security. “We want to have as many countermeasures as we can.” To manufacture antibodies for treating or preventing diseases, companies typically turn to sources such as cultured cells or tobacco plants. But almost 20 years ago, researchers began to develop the approach now pursued by SAb Biotherapeutics of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to produce antibodies on the hoof. The company genetically alters dairy cows so that certain immune cells carry the DNA that allows people to make antibodies. That upgrade enables the animals to manufacture large quantities of human antibodies against a pathogen protein injected into them, such as the “spike” surface protein of the new coronavirus. “Essentially, the cows are used as a giant bioreactor,” says viral immunologist William Klimstra of the University of Pittsburgh, who has been analyzing the bovinemade antibodies’ potency against SARS-CoV-2. Cows make good antibody factories, and not just because they have more blood than smaller animals engineered to synthesize human versions of the proteins. Their blood can also contain twice as many antibodies per milliliter as human blood, says Eddie Sullivan, SAb Biotherapeutics’s president and CEO. The animals may provide another advantage. Most companies trying to produce antibodies to combat COVID-19 have pinned their hopes on mass-producing identical copies of a single version, a so-called monoclonal antibody that homes in on and attaches tightly to a particular section of a virus. Instead of making just one antibody variety, the cows fashion polyclonal antibodies, a range of the molecules that recognize several parts of the virus. “That’s the natural way that our bodies fight disease,” Sullivan says. This diversity may make the cow’s proteins more powerful than monoclonal antibodies, he says, and they may remain effective even if a virus mutates. When the COVID-19 pandemic erupted, SAb Biotherapeutics had already completed a clinical trial with cow-generated antibodies against Middle East respiratory syndrome, which is caused by a coronavirus related to SARS-CoV-2. Developing that treatment “gave us the initial knowledge to focus on the right target,” Sullivan says. Within 7 weeks the cows were generating antibodies against SARS-CoV-2’s spike. Before the animals start to release these antibodies into their blood, the cows need a starter immunization—a DNA vaccine based on a portion of the virus’ genome that preps their immune system. Then comes the injection that contains a piece of SARS-CoV-2’s spike protein, which serves as the virus’ passkey to cells. Each month, one cow can yield enough antibodies to treat several hundred patients, Sullivan says. In test tube studies, Klimstra and colleagues recently pitted the antibodies against so-called convalescent plasma from the blood of COVID-19 survivors. Rich in polyclonal antibodies, the plasma is being tested in clinical trials as a treatment for the virus. The cow antibodies were four times better than convalescent plasma, preventing the virus from entering cells, the company announced last week. The biotech hopes to begin a clinical trial within the next couple of months, Sullivan says, and wants to test whether infusions of antibodies sifted from the cows’ blood prevent healthy people from getting infected by SARS-CoV-2 and prove beneficial for patients who are already sick. Not everyone thinks the cows are the best choice for making antibodies, however. Infectious disease physician Manish Sagar of Boston University Medical Center says he will remain skeptical “until I see further proof that production of antibodies in cows is a lot more feasible and economically viable” than other methods. So far, no antibodies generated by the animals have been approved for treating any disease. But infectious disease specialist Jeffrey Henderson of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis describes the cow-produced antibodies as “the logical next step” to the convalescent plasma he has been studying. “The whole approach,” he says, “is based on sound science and on past experience going back more than a century.” . Scientists obtain 'lucky' image of Jupiter Astronomers have produced a remarkable new image of Jupiter, tracing the glowing regions of warmth that lurk beneath the gas giant's cloud tops. The picture was captured in infared by the Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii, and is one of the sharpest observations of the planet ever made from the ground. To achieve the resolution, scientists used a technique called "lucky imaging" which scrubs out the blurring effect of looking through Earth's turbulent atmosphere. This method involves acquiring multiple exposures of the target and only keeping those segments of an image where that turbulence is at a minimum. When all the "lucky shots" are put together in a mosaic, a clarity emerges that's beyond just the single exposure. Infrared is a longer wavelength than the more familiar visible light detected by the likes of the Hubble telescope. It is used to see past the haze and thin clouds at the top of Jupiter's atmosphere, to give scientists the opportunity to probe deeper into the planet's internal workings. Researchers want to understand better what makes and sustains the gas giant's weather systems, and in particular the great storms that can rage for decades and even centuries. The study that produced this infrared image was led from the University of California at Berkeley. It was part of a joint programme of observations that involved Hubble and the Juno spacecraft that's currently orbiting the fifth planet from the Sun. Also shown here is Jupiter as seen in visible wavelengths of light by Hubble Telescope. (Jupiter Image copyright NASA/ESA/A.Simon) Fast facts about Jupiter * Jupiter is 11 times wider than Earth and 300 times more massive * It takes 12 Earth years to orbit the Sun; a 'day' is 10 hours long * In composition it resembles a star; it's mostly hydrogen and helium * Under pressure, the hydrogen assumes a state similar to a metal * This 'metallic hydrogen' could be the source of the magnetic field * Most of the visible cloudtops contain ammonia and hydrogen sulphide * Jupiter's low-latitude 'bands' play host to very strong east-west winds * The Great Red Spot is a giant storm vortex wider than Planet Earth . Pain Researcher David Julius Wins 2020 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience UC San Francisco biochemist David Julius has been awarded the 2020 Kavli Prize in Neuroscience for his foundational work describing the molecular machines that allow us to feel heat, cold, inflammation and related physical sensations. His research has opened up new avenues for the development of safe, targeted painkillers that researchers hope will avoid the addictive properties and other side effects of opioids. Julius, professor and chair of the Department of Physiology at UCSF, shares the prize, a cash award of one million dollars, with Ardem Patapoutian, PhD, a professor at Scripps Research and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. In three decades of research at UCSF, Julius has focused on a class of ion channel proteins called TRP (pronounced “trip”) receptors, and his work has stimulated intense interest in TRP channels as potential targets for new painkillers. He has tried to understand how neurotransmitters, drugs, and natural products regulate the nervous system. The work that led to the Kavli Prize began by asking how the chemical compound responsible for the spicy “heat” of chili peppers – called capsaicin – causes a burning sensation when eaten or touched. This research laid the foundation for the detailed characterization of the specific protein responsible, named TRPV1 – a specialized ion channel located at sensory nerve endings, which transmit electrical signals to the brain, where the sensation of heat or pain is ultimately generated. Julius has shown that “hot” chili peppers are aptly named, since TRPV1 is triggered not only by capsaicin, but also by actual heat greater than 43 degrees C. This ion channel also contributes to the hypersensitivity to heat felt in injured tissue, such as sunburned skin, in which the brain perceives mild stimuli as burning hot. Julius has also applied these approaches to identify the molecular source of the icy sensation triggered by menthol from mint. Just as heat acts on TRPV1 similarly to capsaicin, Julius’s lab found that a related channel called TRPM8 can be activated either by menthol or by cold temperatures. A third TRP channel, TRPA1, responds to the pungent compounds that give the Japanese horseradish called wasabi its punch, and is also involved in inflammatory pain. Julius and Cheng have used cryo-EM to determine the structure of this “wasabi receptor,” Julius and colleagues continue to use a variety of other natural compounds, including spider and scorpion toxins, to better understand the family of pain receptors these chemicals target, and have embarked on studies of more exotic sensory systems, such as the electrical sensation systems of sharks and skates. . How Line-Dried Laundry Gets That Fresh Smell People have written poems about it. It has been imitated by candles and air fresheners. At least one person has even fought in court for the right to produce it naturally. It’s the smell of line-dried laundry. Some atmospheric chemists like that scent, too. In a paper published this year in Environmental Chemistry, ilvia Pugliese and her colleagues pinpoint the source of their specific fragrance. In between their more official thesis work, Ms. Pugliese and two labmates, with their adviser Matthew Stanley Johnson, commandeered two little-used areas of the university’s chemistry building — a dark, empty office and a small, fifth-floor balcony — and obtained materials, including ultrapurified water and a set of cotton towels from Ikea. Each towel got washed three times in the water, and then hung out: inside the office, on the balcony under a plastic shade or on the balcony in the sun. When they came across the drying racks, “a lot of colleagues laughed,” Ms. Pugliese said. “But we had a lot of support.” When a towel finished drying, the researchers sealed it in a bag for 15 hours. As the towel sat in the bag, they sampled the chemical compounds it released into the air around it. The researchers performed similar sampling on an empty bag, an unwashed towel and the air around the drying sites. By comparing the experimental towels’ chemical profiles to those controls and to each other, the researchers were able to tease out which compounds popped up only when they hung wet towels in the sun. Line-drying uniquely produced a number of aldehydes and ketones: organic molecules our noses might recognize from plants and perfumes. For example, after sunbathing, the towels emitted pentanal, found in cardamom, octanal which produces citrus-y aromas, and nonanal which smells roselike. Why is that? It may have to do with exposure to ozone, an atmospheric chemical that can transform some common chemicals into those aldehydes and ketones. A more fundamental contribution, she thinks, may come from the sun itself. When exposed to ultraviolet light, certain molecules “get excited” and form highly reactive compounds called radicals. Those radicals then recombine with other nearby molecules, processes that often lead to the creation of aldehydes as well as ketones. It’s possible that the water on a wet towel gathers a lot of these excitable molecules together, and then works “like a magnifying glass, concentrating the sunlight and speeding up these reactions. Similar processes are likely occurring on any number of natural outdoor surfaces, including bare soil and individual blades of grass — perhaps part of the reason that sun after a rainstorm makes the world smell fresh. Although the scent seems to last longer on clothes, potentially because aldehydes bond with cotton. Ricardo López, a chemist at the University of Zaragoza in Spain who was not involved in the research, thinks the aldehydes and ketones may not tell the whole story. “When testing for key flavor compounds, sometimes compounds in low concentrations are as important as those in high concentrations,” he said. Additional forms of testing might be helpful to get the full bouquet. Ms. Pugliese has, for now, moved onto headier things — her doctoral research involves artificial photosynthesis but she hopes to dig into similar topics in the future. “I thought it was a really nice way to do science,” she said. Adapted from various sources, including Science , University of California San Francisco , and New York Times .