Environmental DNA could unlock biodiversity conservation in the Himalayas eco-business.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from eco-business.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Capacity building is crucial for the technology’s regional expansion, which could help shed light on biodiversity in underexplored areas of the Himalayas
The race to sequence genomes as COVID surges Daily News (via HT Media Ltd.)
In early April, Prof. Neelika Malavige shut down her laboratory in Sri Lanka for 10 days to celebrate Sinhala and Tamil New Year. Malavige, an immunologist at the Sri Jayewardenepura University in Colombo, runs the only lab in the nation that sequences SARS-CoV-2 genomes. But case counts had dipped, hotspots had started to receive vaccines, and her team badly needed the break.
Prof. Neelika Malavige
When the researchers returned to work, however, what they found was dizzying. Of the 78 samples that they sequenced from people with COVID-19 in late April, 66 contained the highly transmissible UK B.1.1.7 variant. Since April 17, the number of new COVID-19 cases in Sri Lanka which hit 2,672 on May 9 has been breaking records almost every day. Hospitals are filling up and Malavige is bracing for a looming wave of deaths. “The situation in Sri Lanka is looking very grim,” she says.