CDC: Up to 80 Million H1N1 Flu Cases, More than 16,000 Deaths in 2009

U.S. public health officials estimate from 39 million to 80 million cumulative cases of H1N1 influenza through mid-December 2009, including as many as 362,000 H1N1-related hospitalizations and 16,460 H1N1-related deaths, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Ga. Those flu-infected individuals who are younger than 65 years of age were more severely affected, and approximately 90% of hospitalizations and 88% of deaths occurred within this younger cohort. Meanwhile, laboratory-confirmed data on hospitalizations and deaths underestimate the "true number," CDC notes, pointing to "incomplete testing, inaccurate test results, or [diagnoses] that attribute hospitalizations and deaths to other causes."


Early Hygiene Could Boost Inflammatory Disease Risks Later in Life

Ultra-clean, ultra-hygienic environments early in life may contribute to higher levels of inflammation individuals experience as adults, which in turn increases their risks for a wide range of diseases, according to Thomas McDade of the Northwestern University Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences in Evanston, Illinois and his collaborators at several universities. "Inflammatory networks may need the same type of microbial exposures early in life that have been part of the human environment for all of our evolutionary history to function optimally in adulthood," he says. Their study looked specifically at C-reactive protein (CRP) levels in Filipinos, who were followed from infancy through 22 years of age. Although the Filipinos suffered from many more infectious diseases as infants and toddlers, their CRP levels remained 80% lower compared to their American counterparts, according to McDade and his collaborators. Details appear online in the December 9 Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.


Several Developments in Synthetic Biology

Recent developments at the crossroads of microbiology and synthetic biology include:

● When randomly swimming Bacillus subtilis cells collide against slanted spokes within micro gears, the bacteria can turn those gears-thus, providing insights for design of dynamically adaptive materials into micro gadgets, according to Igor Aronson at Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Ill., and his collaborators at Northwestern and Princeton Universities; details appear in the December 15, 2009, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

● Knowing the rules for which factors control coherent behaviors in populations of genetically engineered bacteria enables researchers to induce populations of Escherichia coli cells to fluoresce in synchrony or produce waves of luminescence, according to Jeff Hasty of the University of California San Diego (UCSD), in La Jolla, Calif., and his collaborators, whose report appears in the 20 January 2010 Nature.

● Although not exactly synthetic biology, a colony of B. subtilis can be followed to see how cells within it decide what to do under severe stress, with a minority of them waiting until after the majority responds to a survival threat, according to Eshel Ben-Jacob of Tel Aviv University in Israel and collaborators there and UCSD; their report appears in the December 15, 2009, PNAS.

● U.S. Government officials in November 2009 published draft recommendations for commercial producers of DNA molecules to follow when determining whether those molecules encode for all or parts of pathogens considered "select agents" or toxins.  

DOE Publishes First Volume of a Genomic Encyclopedia on Microbes

The Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) published the initial volume of its Genomic Encyclopedia of Bacteria and Archaea (GEBA), which contains an analysis of the first 56 genomes from two of the three domains of the tree of life. "The information from this first set of organisms has provided a rich source of novel enzymes and detailed biochemical pathways that can help scientists optimize processes of critical importance to areas of the DOE mission, such as biofuels production, bioremediation, and how carbon is captured and cycled in the environment," says DOE JGI Director Eddy Rubin. Adds Jonathan Eisen from the University of California, Davis, who is also the DOE JGI Phylogenomics Program Head, "What distinguishes GEBA is that it is less about the individual genomes and more about building a more balanced catalog of the diversity of genomes present on the planet which, in turn, should facilitate searches for novel functions and our understanding of the complex processes of the biosphere." Details appear in the December 24 Nature.