The current COVID-19 pandemic is a massive source of global disruption, having led so far to two hundred and fifty million COVID-19 cases and almost five million deaths worldwide. It was recognized in the beginning that only an effective vaccine could lead to a way out of the pandemic, and therefore the race for the COVID-19 vaccine started immediately, boosted by the availability of the viral sequence data. Two novel vaccine platforms, based on mRNA technology, were developed in 2020 by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Therapeutics (comirnaty® and spikevax®, respectively), and were the first ones presenting efficacies higher than 90%. Both consisted of N1-methyl-pseudouridine-modified mRNA encoding the SARS-COVID-19 Spike protein and were delivered with a lipid nanoparticle (LNP) formulation. Because the delivery problem of ribonucleic acids had been known for decades, the success of LNPs was quickly hailed by many as the unsung hero of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines. However, the clinical trial efficacy results of the Curevac mRNA vaccine (CVnCoV) suggested that the delivery system was not the only key to the success. CVnCoV consisted of an unmodified mRNA (encoding the same spike protein as Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech’s mRNA vaccines) and was formulated with the same LNP as Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine (Acuitas ALC-0315). However, its efficacy was only 48%. This striking difference in efficacy could be attributed to the presence of a critical RNA modification (N1-methyl-pseudouridine) in the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna’s mRNA vaccines (but not in CVnCoV). Here we highlight the features of N1-methyl-pseudouridine and its contributions to mRNA vaccines.
Biological invasions are among the most challenging ecological and conservation riddles of our times. Fortunately, citizen science projects became a valuable tool to detect non-indigenous species (NIS), document their spread, prevent dispersion, and eradicate localized populations. We evaluated the most undisputed definitions of citizen science and proposed that a combination of two of them is a better reflection of what citizen science has become. Thus, citizen science is any environmental and/or biological data collection and analysis, including data quality control, undertaken by members of the general public, as individuals or as organized groups of citizens, with the guidance and/or assistance of scientists toward solving environmental and/or community questions. With this review, we also assessed how citizen science has been advancing biological invasions research and its focus, by analyzing 126 peer-reviewed articles that used citizen science methods or data concerning NIS. Most of the articles studied terrestrial species (68%) and terrestrial plants were the most studied group (22.7%). Surprisingly, most first detection reports were of non-indigenous marine fish probably due to the constraints in accessing aquatic ecosystems which delays the detection of new NIS. Citizen science projects running over broad geographical areas are very cost-effective for the early detection of NIS, regardless of the studied environment. We also discuss the applicability and need to adapt the methods and approaches toward the studied ecosystem and species, but also the profile of the participating citizens, their motivations, level of engagement, or social status. We recommend authors to better acknowledge the work done by contributing citizens, and the putative limitations of data generated by citizen science projects. The outreach planning of citizen science projects is also evaluated, including the use of dedicated web platforms vs. pre-existent and disseminated web platforms, while discussing how such outreach actions can be maximized. Lastly, we present a framework that contextualizes the contributions of citizen science, scientific research, and regional and national stakeholders toward the integrated management of biological invasions.
During the last 102 years, a series of complementary hypotheses have been proposed to explain the recruitment of marine and temperate pelagic fish larvae originated from pelagic eggs in coastal environments. In this review, we propose a new and complementary hypothesis describing the biophysical processes intervening in the recruitment of temperate fish larvae into estuaries. This new hypothesis, the Sense Acuity And Behavioral (SAAB) hypothesis, recognizes that recruitment is unlikely if the larvae drift passively with the water currents, and that successful recruitment requires the sense acuity of temperate fish larvae and their behavioral response to the estuarine cues present in coastal areas. We propose that temperate fish larvae use a hierarchy of sensory cues (odor, sound, visual and geomagnetic cues) to detect estuarine nursery areas and to aid during navigation towards these areas. The sensorial acuity increases along ontogeny, which coincides with increased swimming capabilities. The swimming strategies of post-flexion larvae differ from offshore areas to the tidal zone. In offshore areas, innate behavior might lead larvae towards the coast guided by a sun compass or by the earth's geomagnetic field. In areas under limited influenced of estuarine plumes (either in energetic nearshore areas or offshore), post-flexion larvae display a searching swimming behavior for estuarine disconnected patches (infotaxis strategy). After finding an estuarine plume, larvae may swim straightforward along the increasing cue concentration gradient to ingress into the estuary. Here, larvae exhibit a rheotaxis behavior and avoid displacement by longshore currents by keeping bearing during navigation. When larvae reach the vicinities of an estuary, merging diel rhythms with feeding and predator avoidance strategies with tidally induced movements is essential to increase their chances of 3 estuarine ingress. A fish larva recruitment model developed for the Ria Formosa lagoon supports the general framework of the SAAB hypothesis. In this model, the ingress of an hypothetic Sparidae temperate larvae into this nursery area increases from 1.5% to 32.1% when directional swimming guided by estuarine cues is included as a forcing parameter.
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