Genes & Cells
How nanotubes trigger a cell’s gag reflex, the skulking 1918 flu and more in this week’s news
By Science News
Carbon nanotubes choke cells
Carbon nanotubes and asbestos fibers may seem small, but they can be a big, and deadly, deal to cells. Now researchers at Brown University in Providence, R.I. know why. Cells swallow the long fibers tip-first, the researchers report online September 18 in Nature Nanotechnology. Rounded tips on the fibers cause the cell’s machinery to gear up for swallowing a sphere. Once the cell has begun engulfing the tube it’s too late to stop, and the cell essentially chokes. Snipping off the rounded tips caused the tubes to lie flat on the cell surface, leading the researchers to speculate that modifying the ends of such fibers could make them safer. —Tina Hesman Saey
1918 flu lurked for months before pandemic
The 1918 “Spanish” flu may have had a spring preview in America. Researchers from the U.S. military, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases examined autopsy samples from 68 soldiers who died of pneumonia and influenza symptoms between May and October of 1918. Analyses of samples from the nine soldiers who died before the outbreak peaked in September and October showed that the virus was circulating as long as four months before the pandemic was recognized, the researchers report September 19 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Those months gave the virus time to become highly infectious in humans. —Tina Hesman Saey