The latest news on COVID-19 developments in Canada (all times Eastern):6:20 p.m. British Columbia now has 40 confirmed cases of fast-spreading variants .
Kit to detect coronavirus on doorknobs, laptops goes on sale in Japan
Japanese precision equipment maker Shimadzu Corp. started selling on Monday test kits that can detect coronavirus on inanimate surfaces, including doorknobs, faucets and computers, for the first time in the world.
The company said it expects to provide the new kit, which can identify the virus in about 100 minutes, to medical facilities and businesses that provide testing services including to nursing homes and food manufacturers.
An employee of Shimadzu Corp. introduces a new test kit used to detect the novel coronavirus on inanimate surfaces in Kyoto on Feb. 8, 2021. (Kyodo)
Unusual DNA folding increases the rates of mutations
DNA sequences that can fold into shapes other than the classic double helix tend to have higher mutation rates than other regions in the human genome. New research by a team of Penn State scientists shows that the elevated mutation rate in these sequences plays a major role in determining regional variation in mutation rates across the genome. Deciphering the patterns and causes of regional variation in mutation rates is important both for understanding evolution and for predicting sites of new mutations that could lead to disease.
“Most of the time we think about DNA as the classic double helix; this basic form is referred to as ‘B-DNA,’” said Wilfried Guiblet, co-first author of the paper, a graduate student at Penn State at the time of research and now a postdoctoral scholar at the National Cancer Institute. “But, as much as 13% of the human genome can fold into different conformations called ‘non-B DNA.’ We wa
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