CABI Blogs: hand picked... and carefully sorted

Countdown to seven billion: does the world have enough water to produce food for us all?

As the world counts down to the landmark of seven billion people on the planet (a scary number predicted to happen - perhaps a little too conveniently? - on the scary day of Halloween, 31 October) we are seeing an increasing number of stories and statistics on whether the Earth's resources can cope with a population predicted to carry on increasing for the foreseeable future. The population increase has been a feature in agricultural conferences over the last weeks, and in press releases for CropWorld Global 2011, a conference set to open in London on 31 October, the day already mentioned as when our population may be officially declared to be seven billion.

Among the statistics presented by Dominic Dyer, UK Crop Protection Association chief executive, in a speech on 21 Ocotober to AgChem Asia Summit in Shanghai, China, was a figure that the amount of farmland available to feed each person on the planet has fallen from 0.5 hectares in 1950 to 0.2 hectares today. Clearly, in order to sustain a growing population on a finite amount of land (and land subject in many regions to problems of desertification, erosion and salinization) we need to maximise efficiency and reduce losses: in the strapline of CABI's Plantwise initiative, 'lose less and grow more'.

Universal influenza vaccine is now a possibility..

Across my desk today at CABI, came the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and tucked away at the back in a section called “Clinical Implications of Basic Research” was “Stalking influenza diversity with a universal antibody” by Charles R. Russell (St Jude Children’s Hospital, Memphis).

Here I learnt that an antibody has been isolated which recognizes all 16 hemagglutinin (HA) subtypes of influenza (H1 to H16),  and will protect mice and ferrets from dying from the infection.  Simplistically called F16 (!), it was isolated from human blood plasma cells (104,000 cells from 8 donors) by selecting for those cells that produced an antibody binding to 3 very diverse influenza strains:  H1N1 (swine-origin) , H5N1 and H7N7 (both are highly pathogenic avian-influenzas).  (Light dawns, yes, that’s what the H numbers mean…)

I am sure you remember the pandemic fears caused by bird-flu and swine-flu, and are familiar with the annual flu-jabs for seasonal influenza.  So the significance of an antibody that can bind all 3 will not be lost on you.

The HA protein of influenza has a head and stalk structure, with the head exposed and the stalk tethering it to the virus surface . It’s the  regular changes in the head of HA protein that keeps the virus ahead of our immune system and means that we have to update seasonal influenza vaccine most years.  F16 binds to the  more "constant" stalk, in parts highly conserved across subtypes,  and so it stands a really good chance of protecting us against seasonal influenza. If it can’t,  then it has at least identified portions of the HA stalk that could be used to create a universal vaccine or be targeted by anti-viral drugs.

If you are a subscriber to NEJM, you can read Russell’s article for a simple explanation of the significance of this discovery. If you are a really keen bunny, then I hope you read the original article by Corti et al in Science.

You may not have heard it here first, but 3^rd hand is better than never when it comes to good news.

Further reading:

Stalking influenza diversity with a universal antibody C. R. Russell

A Neutralizing Antibody Selected from Plasma Cells That Binds to Group 1 and Group 2 Influenza A Hemagglutinins Corti et al

Related blogs:

H1N1 influenza research- free papers

Flu - can we say goodbye to yearly vaccines soon?

Food for thought on UN World Food Week - Close to one billion people are chronically hungry

“In the searing heat of late spring, before anyone realized that what was happening here was just the beginning of something much bigger, a tiny girl stumbled through a field of rocks toward a group of international aid workers. She was barefoot and limping. Flies dotted her face, craving the moisture of her eyes, lips, and nostrils. A shabby grey dress smudged with dirt hung limply from her shoulders. Though she was no more than eight years old, she carried her baby sister on her back, a turquoise blanket binding them together. Without speaking, for that would have required too much energy, the girl weakly stretched out her arms, one hand supporting the other. Her dark, frightened eyes were desperate. Please, they beseeched, something to eat, anything at all. In a famine, the starving speaks with their eyes.”  This is an excerpt from the preface of a book, which I thought is a good way to start a blog about the UN World Food Week.

Following the heat wave – moths migration to the UK

Photo courtesy of Butterfly Conservation

A number of moth species from other countries in Europe and areas as far away as the Mediterranean region have migrated to the UK in the past week, most probably due to the heat wave we have experienced this Autumn, reported various news channels this morning (e.g. BBC News). Some moths travelled for three to four days and more than 20 have been recorded so far this autumn in Sussex, Dorset, Cornwall, Cumbria and the Isle of Man, including the extremely rare tropical species, Spoladea recurvalis, which has been recorded this year for the first time ever in Ireland. Are all immigrant moths welcome though?

How green is bioenergy?

 It is well known that there is an international effort to replace fossil energy with biomass in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and curb global warming. It was widely assumed that biomass combustion would be inherently 'carbon neutral' because it only releases carbon taken from the atmosphere during plant growth. However, there have been arguments with regard to the neutrality of bioenergy and the assumption that replacing fossil-sourced energy with bioenergy will in fact reduce GHG emissions. It turns out it is more complicated than once thought. For this reason the European Environment Agency (EEA) scientific committee has reviewed this assumption and has called for “a major revision of EU policies and directives related to bioenergy.”