News Roundup: How We Dodge the Common Cold, and More

This week we’ve got a series of short takes for our news update. Let’s dig in!

Lab-Grown Noses Reveal Defenses Against the Common Cold

OK, they weren’t full noses. (That doesn’t stop me from imagining a row of tiny noses in a Petri dish, though.) But scientists at the Yale School of Medicine used advanced techniques to grow nasal-like tissue in the lab, and then exposed it to a rhinovirus to watch what happened. When the cells in the nasal lining encountered this intruder, they began to produce proteins designed to prevent the virus from hijacking cells and replicating. It’s a surprisingly effective method for blocking an infection — and one that does not involve cells from the immune system.

With that knowledge, the team altered their nasal model, blocking the defense mechanism before trotting out the rhinovirus. This time, viral infection was far more pronounced. Scientists believe that the degree of the response in each of us may dictate whether we get a mild cold or a much more serious one.

“Our study advances the paradigm that the body’s responses to a virus, rather than the properties inherent to the virus itself, are hugely important in determining whether or not a virus will cause illness and how severe the illness will be,” said Ellen Foxman, a co-author of the study, in a statement.

Scientists Unveil Cellular Recording Device

File this one under “super-cool science.” Here’s the deal: scientists learn a lot from RNA, but these molecules break down quickly so they only offer a snapshot of what’s going on in a cell at the moment. For a better view of biology, scientists would really like to look at RNA in the same cell over time, monitoring changes in response to various events.

Researchers at the Broad Institute have found a way to commandeer so-called vault particles to track RNA over time. Vault particles are common in cells but aside from the fact that they can hold molecular content, not much is known about their function. In this innovative work, the team engineered vault particles to store RNA molecules and keep them stable for as long as a week. At the end of that time, the vaults contain RNA that essentially records the cell’s activity for the full week. The scientists refer to this method as “TimeVault” and hope it will enable an entirely new way to understand biology.

Two Unfortunate Public Health Milestones in the U.S.

A year after the large measles outbreak that began in Texas, measles cases are still happening around the country with concerning frequency. The infection that was once eradicated in the U.S. thanks to diligent vaccine use is now back with a vengeance. As it becomes more common, some scientists are pushing for the kind of wastewater surveillance that has been used to track the earliest signs of Covid-19 and other infectious diseases.

This week also saw the official U.S. departure from the World Health Organization, a development that will leave Americans and the rest of the world in worse shape. The funding we provided to WHO allowed that organization to respond to public health threats more efficiently and come up with strategic recommendations faster — actions that we all benefited from and that will be less likely in the future.

Before I sign off, just a word of winter luck for Salisbury’s Take readers. We’ve got a humdinger of a snowstorm marching across the country right now. I hope as many readers as possible are safely out of the storm track, and that the rest of you are able to stay inside with a good book and a cup of hot cocoa to wait it out.