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The Zika virus (ZIKV) is an arbovirus from the Flaviviridae family and is primarily transmitted via infected mosquitoes.  However, ZIKV has also been isolated in semen and so the virus can be transmitted sexually through infected partners. The recent on-going outbreak of ZIKV, which originated in Bahia in Brazil in 2015, has spread rapidly across the Americas and has resulted in more than 1.5 million cases worldwide. The recent epidemic in the Americas has dominated the headlines due to the high incidence of babies born with microcephaly to ZIKV-infected mothers. Indeed this outbreak has been characterised by an increased prevalence of neurological syndromes such as microcephaly and Guillain-Barre syndrome. In February 2016 the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the current epidemic to be a global public health emergency, due to the accelerated rate at which ZIKV is spreading, bringing its associated neurological conditions. Once a relatively obscure virus, the recent devastating outbreaks have thrust ZIKV into the scientific spotlight. Recent research, led...

The African cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus) is the world’s fastest land mammal. It has numerous physiological adaptations that allow it to reach speeds over 100 km/hr including elongated legs, slim aerodynamic skull, enlarged adrenal glands, liver and heart, and semi-retractable claws that grip the earth. Modern cheetahs range across eastern and southern Africa, with a small population in Iran. But their numbers are declining and there are now less than 10,000 in the wild. This is a drop of 90 percent in the past 100 years. This decline in numbers is mostly due to loss of habitat, illegal trade by hunters, conflict with farmers and road accidents. They are considered highly endangered by wildlife authorities and governments. An international team of researchers led by Stephen O’Brien, of the Theodosius Dobzhansky Centre for Genome Bioinformatics at St.Petersburg State University, and including members of the Beijing Genomics Institute and the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF) have recently sequenced the genome from a male Namibian cheetah and...

Zoologist Ben Evans, of McMaster University in Hamilton, and a team of researchers have discovered six new species of African clawed frog (Xenopus).  All six new species are relatively small (approximately 5 cm) and were found in West and sub-Saharan Africa. African clawed frogs are highly aquatic, living in slow moving or stagnant water. Characteristically they have streamlined and flattened bodies, a vocal organ specialised for underwater sound production, lateral line organs, claws on the first three toes (inner) and fully webbed toes. African clawed frogs are widely used as a model organism for biological research including developmental biology, cell biology, toxicology, neuroscience and for modelling human disease and birth defects. They also provide a unique system for analyses of genome evolution and whole genome duplication in vertebrates, as most clawed frog species are polyploid ie they have multiple sets of DNA due to genome duplication. The discovery of these six new species, increases the number of known clawed frog species to...

Large sea otter populations once ranged from Northern Japan all the way around the Northern Pacific Rim to Baja California. However, in 1741 when the fur trade began, their numbers started to rapidly decline. The pelts of sea otters were so in demand that sea otter populations were driven to near extinction by the end of the 19thcentury. In 1911 sea otters were protected by the International Fur Seal Treaty but for some populations this was already too late. In the Kuril Islands, Kamchatka Peninsula, Aleutian Islands, South-Central Alaska and California the small remaining populations began to grow. Some populations have returned to their historical population sizes but others, such as the population in California, have grown more slowly. Annabel Beichman, a PhD student at UCLA, together with Monterey Bay Aquarium are leading the effort to aid the recovery of the sea otters. They plan the first ever sequencing of the sea otter genome. The extreme decline, to a very small size,...