Usutu virus (USUV) is a zoonotic arbovirus causing systemic and neuroinvasive diseases in birds and flu-like or sporadic neuroinvasive disease in humans. USUV-associated encephalitis is morphologically well-characterized in birds, while the mechanisms of cell-damage in spontaneously infected birds remain poorly understood. For the closely related West Nile virus, apoptosis significantly contributes to the pathogenesis of othof...

Background and aims Restoration and novel creation of wetlands is crucial as they store and purify water, sequester carbon, and are biodiversity hotspots. However, wetland rehabilitation on agriculturally-used soils typically causes water quality issues, low biodiversity and high methane emissions. To tackle these challenges in a novel, cost-effective way, Azolla filiculoides , a water-fern capable of nitrogen fixation and pho...

Estuaries around the world are extensively modified to support dense human populations. They trap both fluvial and marine sediments, creating regions with high suspended sediment concentrations (SSCs), called estuarine turbidity maxima (ETM), which affect port navigability and ecological values. The impact of human-induced narrowing and deepening on sediment trapping and flushing is still subject to debate, particularly in str...

This article reports changes to virus taxonomy and taxon nomenclature that were approved and ratified by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) in April 2024. The entire ICTV membership was invited to vote on 203 taxonomic proposals that had been approved by the ICTV Executive Committee (EC) in July 2023 at the 55th EC meeting in Jena, Germany, or in the second EC vote in November 2023. All proposals were ra...

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a leading cause of cancer-related deaths and is associated with a poor prognosis. The majority of these cancers are detected at a late stage, contributing to the bad prognosis. This underscores the need for novel, enhanced early detection strategies to improve the outcomes. While population-based screening is not recommended due to the relatively low incidence of PDAC, surveillance is...

Basket height and stocking density are crucial and related factors for successful commercial sea urchin aquaculture, but these factors have not been definitively determined for production of Tripneustes gratilla . This study investigated the effects of varying basket heights (deep 30 cm vs. shallow 15 cm) and stocking densities (4, 6 and 8 kg.m −2 or 13, 19 and 24% coverage of available basket surface area) on aquacultural pro...

The occurrence of facultative endosymbionts has been studied in many commercially important crop pest aphids, but their occurrence and effects in non‐commercial aphid species in natural populations have received less attention. We screened 437 aphid samples belonging to 106 aphid species for the eight most common facultative aphid endosymbionts. We found one or more facultative endosymbionts in 53% (56 of 106) of the species i...

Estuaries are continuously adapting to anthropogenic pressure. Because of sea-level rise and reduced fluvial sediment supply, they are at risk of sediment starvation. Contrarily, some estuaries require frequent dredging after artificially deepening the channel to maintain port operations. To optimize current estuarine functions and make estuaries more resilient to future threats, improved understanding of estuarine development...

Rapid identification of the rise and spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants of concern remains critical for monitoring of the efficacy of diagnostics, therapeutics, vaccines, and control strategies. A wide range of SARS-CoV-2 next-generation sequencing (NGS) methods have been developed over the last years, but cross-sequence technology benchmarking studies have been scarce. In the curre...

Patients with peritoneal metastases (PM) of colorectal cancer have a very poor outcome. Intraperitoneal delivery of chemotherapy is the preferred route for PM treatment. The main limitation of the treatment options is the short residence time of the cytostatic, with subsequent short exposure of the cancer cells. To address this, a supramolecular hydrogel has been developed that allows both local and slow release of its encapsu...

This article summarises the activities of the Bacterial Viruses Subcommittee of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses for the period of March 2021−March 2022. We provide an overview of the new taxa proposed in 2021, approved by the Executive Committee, and ratified by vote in 2022. Significant changes to the taxonomy of bacterial viruses were introduced: the paraphyletic morphological families Podoviridae , Siphov...

The current distribution patterns of many Mediterranean species are often a consequence of large and impactful past geoclimatic events, such as the Messinian Salinity Crisis (MSC) and the Quaternary glacial cycles. Cicadas are flying insects with poor dispersal ability, which have experienced intense local differentiation in the Mediterranean, where the genus Tettigettalna has surfaced as a biogeographic model. The genus inclu...