An NIAID-sponsored clinical trial of an experimental vaccine to prevent Lassa fever has begun.

The Zika virus builds tiny tunnels, called tunneling nanotubes, to stealthily transport material needed to infect nearby cells, including in placental cells, according to a team of researchers from Penn State and Baylor College of Medicine. It’s one way the virus crosses the placental barrier, transmitting from mother to fetus during pregnancy without raising alarm in the immune system. The team also demonstrated, for the first time, that one specific Zika protein — non-structural protein 1 (NS1) — is responsible for the formation of the nanotubes.

Most animals exhibit external left-right (LR)-symmetric appearance and -asymmetric internal organs. A fundamental question in development is when and how the LR-asymmetry is established for the internal organs, keeping the external body plan bilaterally symmetric. Researchers from Kumamoto Univ., Univ. of Miami, and UCSF examined the initiation of LR symmetry breaking during embryonic development, by using chick embryos as a model system.