there’s been a lot of buzz about zika viruslately. last week, we talked about how scientistscreated a 3d model of zika virus, which could help them understand how it infects humancells. and on monday, the us centers for diseasecontrol and prevention held a press conference where they emphasized the need for more researchinto treatments and vaccines for the virus. now, a paper published this week in the journalscience shows how zika virus infects developing brain cells. it’s the strongest direct evidence so farthat zika could cause microcephaly, a condition where babies are born with abnormally smallheads and brains that don’t fully develop.
in march, researchers at johns hopkins universityand florida state university showed that the virus may target and infect neural stem cells,or nscs -- the cells that divide to create neurons and other brain cells. and this week, researchers at the d’or institutefor research and education in brazil independently found the same results. they also learned that zika affects neuralcell growth and survival. to mimic embryonic brain development, theresearchers grew some nscs in the lab in two different forms. in one experiment, the scientists infectedsome of the neural stem cells with zika virus
and grew them as neurospheres -- flat circularclusters that contain nscs and other brain cells. after 6 days, the uninfected nscs grew intohundreds of healthy, round neurospheres. but the infected neurospheres were all strangelylopsided with jagged edges. the cells started separating from each other, and most of themdied. another experiment involved cerebral organoids,which are these apple-seed-sized, mini-brains that kinda look and act like the brain ofa first-trimester fetus. they infected 6 of these organoids with zikaand left 6 uninfected. when they measured the organoids after 11days, the infected ones were only about 60% as big as the uninfected ones.
these results help explain how, over manymonths, the zika infection could cause a lot of damage to developing brain cells, and potentiallylead to a malformed brain condition like microcephaly. to help make sure that it’s only zika virusthat’s causing this sort of damage, the scientists ran a third set of experiments:they compared neural stem cells infected with zika to cells infected with dengue virus 2. see, dengue and zika are genetically similar-- they’re both in the flavivirus genus. so comparing them could provide evidence thatit’s zika, specifically, that affects brain cells, and that it’s not a flavivirus thing. and it did provide that evidence.
the dengue-infected neurospheres survivedand grew almost as well as uninfected ones -- and much better than the cells infectedwith zika virus. plus, the brain organoids infected with dengue still grew almost normally. so now we know how zika virus targets andattacks developing brain cells. but there’s still a lot more research tobe done to fully understand what zika does to humans, and how to stop it. all this zika research is being done by trainedresearchers in laboratories. and you’d think quantum physics -- the studyof the tiniest particles and the strange ways they interact -- would be done by highly qualifiedscientists as well.
but this week, researchers at aarhus universityin denmark and the university of turku in finland announced that they’d developeda way for non-experts to help solve quantum physics problems. and in the process, these non-experts arehelping develop quantum computers, which use tiny particles and the principles of quantumphysics to store and process information. having lots of people work on scientific researchlike this can be useful, because humans are a lot better than computers at certain typesof problems -- like ones that involve looking at images, or spatial puzzle solving. that’s why some scientists use gamification-- where they turn their research problems
into playable computer games -- to crowdsourcesolutions. the researchers here designed a game calledquantum moves, which has human players work on some of the quantum computing problemsthat have come up as they try to build a quantum computer. part of their quantum computer’s designinvolves moving atoms around quickly and accurately using a focused laser beam. the less time it takes to move the atom, thebetter the computer works. but it’s hard to program computers to calculatethe shortest possible time it would take for an atom-moving operation to go perfectly,because it depends on a lot of different factors. that’s where citizen scientists come in.
one of the challenges, for example, is calledbringhomewater, where players move the laser beam to collect water -- which representsthe atoms the quantum computer would be moving. the goal is to move the water to a highlightedarea as fast as possible, without “spilling it†-- which would mean losing the atom. over hundreds of thousands of plays from thousandsof different players, they’ve been able to find faster, better solutions to movingatoms than the best computer-based algorithms scientists have been using until now. and gamers can do all this without a physicsbackground or sophisticated math -- just some creativity, persistence, and experimentation.
if you want to try the game out for yourself,there’s a link to the game in the description! thanks for watching this episode of scishow,which was brought to you by our president of space--who has challenged to pronouncehis last name correctly--morgan lizop… i’m going to guess. morgan is currently ridinghis bike across the us from west to east raising money for the youtube content he loves, likeus here at scishow and crash course. you can follow his journey at thebigtryhard.com. thankyou and good luck morgan!
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