Category Archives: Molecular Genetics

Multiple companies around the world arepreparing vaccines forimmunisationagainst COVID-19. While researchers are some timeoff from completion, a lot more progress has been made than wasexpected.

Speaking at the Ministry of Healths virtual media conference today,Professor of Molecular Genetics and Virology at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Centre, Dr Christine Carrington, shed extra light ona fewmain companies which have made significant strides in vaccine development.

Theres a lot in the pipeline, things are progressing at an unprecedented rate but there is still uncertainty and a lot of work to be done. Even if phase three trials identify a safe and effective vaccine that goes into production this year, it is likely to be 12 to 18 months before it would be ready for wide administration, she said.

Dr Carrington says thatin the event ofre-infectionwithout a vaccine, the human body pays specific attention to how it was initially able tofight off the virus so that it can employ similar measures again.

Afteran infection with a given virus, the immune system remembers what it learnt about how to protect the body against that specificvirus so if it encounters that same virus again, it can go into action much more quickly and prevent the infection from taking hold or at least prevent it from causing illnessor from spreading to other people, she explained.

This is what doctors refer to as immunity. Depending on the virus, it can last forever or for a period of months or years.

Vaccines relation to this process is that they contain a component which resembles the virus but will not cause actual infection. This way, if an immune system encountersthe virus, it will already have a reaction prepared due to its familiarity similar to infection and re-infection.

The Professor explained that theres a lot to consider in the decision to employ any specific vaccine; she says its a lengthy process that has to be carefully attended to.

Carrington believes this process is exactly why its important for multiple vaccines to be developed togive populations a better chance at accessing them in a timely fashion.

There is a concerted effort to put certain processes in place to allow rapid dissemination of the vaccine to both developed and developing countries and the pharmaceutical companies involved have committed to doing that at cost during the pandemic period, shesaid.

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COVID-19 vaccines: Progress being made, but still a long way to go - Loop News Trinidad and Tobago

By: Lifestyle Desk | New Delhi | Updated: June 13, 2020 11:01:19 pm A 10-minute jog or treadmill workout can changes molecules in the body, a study found. (Source: getty images)

A 10-minute workout on a treadmill or a jog is enough to alter more than 9,000 molecules in the body, a new study by the Stanford University School of Medicine found.

Published in the journal Cell, the study aimed to document all the tiny changes that happen to the bodys blood post-workout, highlighting what researchers have been asserting till now, that is, exercise is essential for good health. The study was conducted by Michael Snyder, chair of the genetics department at Stanford University and his team.

I had thought, its only about nine minutes of exercise, how much is going to change? A lot, as it turns out, Snyder was quoted as saying by New York Times.

Some of the changing molecules were involved in metabolic functions or digestive and immune system function while others were involved in inflammation and insulin resistance levels, researchers found.

Read| Post lockdown, how does outdoor fitness change? An expert answers

All participants for the study were between the ages 40 and 75, ranging from fit to overweight. Their blood was drawn before and after they ran on a treadmill for about 10 minutes. A majority of the molecules were found to have either decreased or increased after the workout. For some, the molecular changes lingered for longer.

Researchers found thousands of molecules that might correlate with peoples fitness levels, including markers of metabolism and immunity, reported Insider. They are however yet to know the exact impact of each molecular change.

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Just 10 minutes on a treadmill can affect your body: Study - The Indian Express

By: Tech Desk | New Delhi | Updated: June 13, 2020 7:14:46 pm Representational Image byenriquelopezgarrefromPixabay.

As part of science round-up, we are curating and bringing you the most important science stories of the week. This way, you do not have to go about fishing for the stories elsewhere. Heres everything that happened from June 8 to June 13, 2020:

A new study, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, found that office workers sleep more hours each night when they are exposed to more sunlight during the day at work. The researchers tested the differences insleep patternsof people working in nearly identical office environments, with the only difference being the amount of lighting they have been exposed to during their shifts.

The researchers found that both groups slept longer when they worked in the office with more natural lighting. On average, they slept 37 minutes longer. The sunlight also had a positive effect on the cognitive tests of the workers, which only grew more and more with each passing day.

In a study, published in the Journal of Alzheimers Disease, scientists have revealed the effects of Covid-19 on the human brain. They conducted a comprehensive review of how the SARS-CoV-2 (novel coronavirus) to classify the damage caused by the virus into three stages.

In the first stage, the damage is limited to epithelial cells of nose and mouth, which leads to transient loss of smell and taste. In the second stage, the overactive immune system causes a cytokine storm in the form of toxic proteins due to the virus. It ends up forming blood clots that cause strokes in the brain.

Also read | Science round-up June 1-7: Sun-Earth like duo found, Gene-editing could destroy coronavirus and more

In the third stage, a much powerful cytokine storm damages the blood-brain barrier, which is basically the protective insulation layer in blood vessels of the brain. It causes the patient to develop seizures, confusion, encephalopathy as the blood content, inflammatory markers, and virus particles invade the brain. It can also send the patient to go into a coma.

This week, the Jupiter, Saturn, and the Moon lined up to form a triangle in the southeastern sky. Dr Ian Musgrave told CGTN that while Jupiter and Venus get close to each other in the sky every year, Jupiter and Saturn only do this once in 20 years.

Research by scientists at the KEM Hospital, Pune, CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad, and the University of Exeter in the UK, states that a new way of diagnosing type 1 diabetes through genetics could pave the way for better treatment among the Indian population. The research shows that a genetic risk score is effective in diagnosing type 1 diabetes in Indians. Click here to read more.

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Science round-up June 8-13: Brain damage due to Covid-19, natural light in office ensures better sleep, and more - The Indian Express

Over 70 years ago, a Bedouin shepherd named Muhammed ed-Dib entered a cave in the Qumran area west of the Dead Sea. In it he found large clay jars containing parchment scrolls wrapped in linen. Ed-Dib didnt know it, but he had stumbled upon the first pieces of one of the most important archaeological discoveries of the 20th century, which would come to be known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. The scrolls opened a window to the spiritual world and quotidian life of the Second Temple period one of the most tempestuous eras in Jewish history and shed light on the process by which various Jewish sects sprang up during that time, one of which would morph into Christianity. But even today these archaeological finds continue to raise more questions than answers.

A major reason for the contentious disputes is that the collection of scrolls in Israel today consists of nearly 25,000 fragments of parchment and papyrus (the lions share of all the known scroll artifacts in the world) which, it is estimated, come from more than 930 different ancient manuscripts. This vast jigsaw puzzle, with an unknown number of pieces that have been lost over time, includes the earliest versions found to date of all the books of the Hebrew Bible (with the exception of the Book of Esther), as well as the biblical apocrypha and many other works previously unknown.

The conventional theory is that some of those works were written or copied by a zealous Jewish sect, identified by most scholars as the Essenes, who led an ascetic life in the desert. However, there is now general agreement that the collection also includes scrolls that originated from outside the sect, written by other learned individuals of that period. Accordingly, the question of which texts are unique to the sect and which were brought in from outside is crucial for understanding the significance of the texts, and to what extent they represent the ideas in currency in Judea of the latter Second Temple period (334 B.C.E.-70 C.E.). A study published this week as the cover story of the scientific journal Cell has harnessed the most advanced tools of biological research in order to help solve the mystery.

The study was conducted by researchers from Tel Aviv University, led by Prof. Oded Rechavi, from the George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences and the Sagol School of Neuroscience, and Prof. Noam Mizrahi from the department of biblical studies, in collaboration with Prof. Mattias Jakobsson of Uppsala University in Sweden, the Israel Antiquities Authority, Prof. Dorothee Huchon-Pupko from TAUs zoology department, and Prof. Christopher E. Mason of Weill Cornell Medicine.

Using techniques of DNA sequencing and sophisticated methods of computation, the scientists were able to identify and catalog 26 parchment fragments (plus another 13 leather artifacts) according to the DNA of the animals on whose skins the scrolls were written, and thus to determine which fragments are related to one another, and which ones not.

There are many scrolls fragments that we dont know how to connect, and if we connect wrong pieces together it can change dramatically the interpretation of any scroll, says Prof. Rechavi. Assuming that fragments that come from the same sheep belong to the same scroll, it is like piecing together parts of a puzzle.

The methods the researchers employed have already helped to shed light on a host of important historical and religious issues: how the concept of sacredness in regard to the texts of biblical books changed over time; when basic notions arose in the realm of Jewish mysticism from which the kabbala sprang; and what the origin was of the idea that prayer could replace sacrificial offerings an idea that was formerly thought to have emerged only following the destruction of the Second Temple, in 70 C.E.

But before applying themselves to matters of remote Jewish history, the researchers had first to overcome a series of challenges, starting with how to collect the sensitive samples. In most cases, to avoid damage to the priceless antiquities, the researchers extracted DNA from tiny scroll crumbs (dust) that fell off, or were scraped off the backs of the fragments. The researchers even demonstrated that they could retrieve authentic ancient DNA from adhesive tape used in the 1950s to piece fragments together that was removed from scrolls.

We were not even allowed to touch the scrolls, says Dr. Sarit Anava, from Rechavis laboratory at TAU. The solution, she explains, was for the Israel Antiquities Authority, which stores all of the scroll pieces in its laboratories at the Israel Museum, to place the samples in test tubes, which she took to Sweden to the laboratory of geneticist Mattias Jakobsson at Uppsala University, which was specially adapted to enable the isolation of ancient genetic materials. In this way, a scroll-crumb is transformed into a window onto Jewish history.

Weve thought for years that the scrolls DNA should be examined, says Prof. Jonathan Ben-Dov, an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls from the University of Haifas department of Jewish history and biblical studies. Everyone waited for it to happen, and it finally succeeded, adds Ben-Dov, who was not involved in the new study.

If so, what has been discovered?

Comparing texts

The first insight divined by the researchers related to the way inhabitants of Judea in the Second Temple period viewed the texts of the Bible. Apparently, the Judaism of that era didnt have one standard version of each of the sacred texts; in other words, not every jot and tittle in the Bible was regarded with the same holiness it would later possess. The scholars reached this conclusion by examining four fragments of parchment containing sections from the Book of Jeremiah.

Today all editions of the Hebrew Bible are absolutely identical, down to the letter. This was the case even before the invention of printing, in fact since the emergence of the authoritative Masoretic Text of the Bible in Tiberias in the early Middle Ages a version that has been preserved almost without alteration to this day. However, other, even-older versions of the Scriptures also exist, notably the Septuagint. This Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, originating in Alexandria and dating to the third and second centuries B.C.E., was eventually adopted by the Greek Orthodox Church and remains in use today. The differences between the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint are especially striking in Jeremiah.

Its not a matter of the interchange of a letter here and there, or differences between a few isolated words, says Noam Mizrahi, the biblical scholar. The Septuagint text of Jeremiah is 15 percent shorter than the long version reflected in the Masoretic Text. Furthermore, the two texts differ in the way their sections are arranged; in some of the prophecies there are differences in the order and in the content of the verses. The result is, in effect, completely different editions of the prophetic text, and at times entirely different texts.

Differences of this sort in the books of the Hebrew Bible disappeared in the wake of the destruction of the Temple.

What remained are smaller differences at the orthographical level, which persisted into the Middle Ages because the books were copied by hand, Mizrahi continues. In late antiquity and the Middle Ages, rigorous mechanisms of quality control were applied, which ensured that the differences would hardly ever affect an understanding of the content.

Which versions of Jeremiah appear on the scroll fragments examined by the research team? One fragment contains a long version close the Masoretic text, two contain a short version that resembles the Septuagint, and a fourth has a different, independent text.

Mizrahi: There was a scholarly debate over three of these segments, about whether they originally belonged to the same scroll or came from different scrolls, because they look very similar to each other but differ in the handwriting of the copyist.

Enter genetic classification: The scientists discovered that the vast majority of scroll pieces they examined were written on the skin of sheep an animal that could also be bred in the climatic conditions of the Judean Desert 2,000 years ago. The fragments of the Book of Jeremiah that stirred debate, however, were written on the skins of two different animals: two on sheep and two on the skin of a cow, an animal that was not ordinarily raised in the Judean Desert.

For the scientists, discovery of which animal skin was used for copying the texts represents a significant, genetic confirmation of the hypothesis that the writing was not solely the work of the desert sect but of someone from the outside.

Cow-skin scrolls were manifestly not produced there, but originated externally, Mizrahi says. And while theoretically they might have been brought to Qumran as blank parchments, such a scenario makes very little sense from a practical and economic point of view, so it seems they were brought already as written manuscripts. The conclusion that these are two separate versions of Jeremiah neither of which, apparently, was copied by the local sect, but rather originated in a different context and place, points to the possibility that an openness to divergent texts of the Holy Scriptures reflects a more general approach in Judea at that time.

He adds, As long as there was only the Greek translation, it could be argued that [the existence of different versions could be attributed to] the Diaspora [the Jews of Alexandria]. But the scrolls indicate that the multiplicity of versions was a basic feature of Judaism as a whole, during that period, and particularly in Judea.

According to Prof. Michael Segal an expert in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the dean of humanities at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem the new findings are consistent with a current theory that holds that some of the scrolls came from outside Qumran. One reason is that some of them antedate the founding of the community itself, notes Segal, who was not involved in the current study. To which Jonathan Ben-Dov adds, We have been playing with theories about the biblical text for hundreds of years. Now, thanks to biology, we have an Archimedes fulcrum, with whose aid we can examine those theories.

Heavenly temple

One of the greatest challenges of DNA research is to locate genetic material of sufficiently high quality to enable laboratory analysis. According to Prof. Yitzhak Pilpel, head of the molecular genetics department of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, who was not involved in the study, this is particularly true in cases of genetic samples that need to be extracted from the most minuscule fragments of ancient relics. To overcome this obstacle, scientists involved in the new research used a variety of methods that enabled them to examine the surviving ancient genetic material at different resolutions. For example, the species of animal from which the scrolls were fashioned sheep or cow was identified by comparing sections of the mitochondrial DNA found in the cells of the parchment skin to that of more than 10 species of animals until a match was found. Other methods allowed the scientists to determine the genetic relationship between the different sheep whose skins were used in creating the scrolls.

The second method analyzing the basic genetic groups (haplogroups) of the sheep made it possible for the researchers to derive insight concerning Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, one of the most intriguing and important texts found in the Qumran scrolls.

This is a composition that was unknown before the discovery of the scrolls, but 10 copies of it were found among the scrolls themselves clear evidence of its importance, Prof. Mizrahi explains. What was not clear was whether the importance of Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice was unique to the sectarian group that left the scrolls behind, or whether it represents the works popularity among a broader community.

One reason for the considerable interest in this composition is that one copy of the Songs was found 55 kilometers south of the Qumran caves, in the excavations on Mt. Masada. Many scholars had discerned a connection between the discoveries at both sites. In their view, during the Great Revolt of 66-70 C.E, when the Romans who ruled the country were preparing to lay siege to Jerusalem, and the Qumran community was annihilated the sects survivors fled and joined the Jewish rebels who had barricaded themselves at Masada.

The new study calls this hypothesis into question, at least as far as the textual evidence is concerned. A comparison of the DNA of the sheep showed that the scrolls found at Qumran were all made from animals belonging to one genetic population group, whereas the scroll found at Masada was made from the skin of a sheep from a different group.

We did not expect that result, Mizrahi admits. It shows that it is unlikely that this copy of the Songs was brought to Masada by a refugee from Qumran, because this scroll differs biologically, materially, from the scrolls found at Qumran.

According to Ben-Dov, the new biological information thats come to light does not rule out a connection between the sites. After all, the study itself showed that at Qumran there were scrolls made from the skin of different animals, such as cows, he says. Still, he adds, the findings reinforce the possibility that the Masada scroll is not directly connected to Qumran. This possibility that this religious work was widely circulated in the Judea at that time, outside the sect has significant implications for understanding the spiritual life of Second Temple Judea.

Mizrahi adds that discovering the source of the copies of Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice is particularly important, because of the uniqueness of the text. It is a liturgical composition a collection of Sabbath prayers but also contains an internal narrative. It describes the heavenly temple and the angels rite of worship. It can be inferred, then, that the authors and readers of the text assumed that there is in heaven a temple parallel to the earthly one and that angel-priests in it are engaged in worship. However, activity in the heavenly temple did not center around offering sacrifices as was true in the Jerusalem Temple, but focused on nonstop uttering of praises of God.

Why is this important? This was a period when the Temple was still operating, Mizrahi explains. The conventional view of researchers until a generation ago was that the idea of fixed and statutory prayer replacing sacrificial offerings in the Temple emerged in Judaism only after the destruction of the Second Temple. Accordingly, at the dawn of Qumran studies, the approach that derived from analysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the discovery of the prayer collections they contain, was that the Judean Desert sect predated Judaisms transition from sacrificial rituals to the practice of prayer. Scholars in the past explained that the disputes between different sects of the Second Temple period sects, and the insistence of one of them on particularly strict rules of ritual purification led to the latter keeping their distance from the Jerusalem Temple and remaining secluded in the desert hence their development of the idea of prayers as a substitute.

However, Mizrahi says now, this hypothesis needs to be reconsidered in light of the discovery that the Masada copy of Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice is not genetically linked to the Qumran copies.

It turns out that the idea of prayer as the center of worship was popular beyond Qumran. Were these other communities of the [same] sect that lived in other places? Possibly, he says, referring to a theory that offshoots of the main sect were active elsewhere. But now we know that the centrality of prayer in the worship of God was not unique to Qumran.

Beyond this, there are additional distinctive features of the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, among them elements that would surface centuries later in early Jewish mystical writings known as Hekhalot and Merkhavah (literally, the Heavenly Palaces and the Divine Chariot-Throne) literature. This is a collection of mystical compositions of which the earliest manuscripts were found in the Cairo Genizah. Scholars are divided about the dating of the original works, but its conventionally thought that they were written in the second half of the first millennium C.E.

Says Mizrahi: This is the oldest layer of Jewish mystical literature, and the foundation on which other mystical doctrines were built, including what would subsequently feed the kabbala literature.

For example, the concept of the chariot of God, which first appears in Ezekiel, develops in the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice and hundreds of years later in the Hekhalot literature into the idea that the believer can, through a spiritual journey, be elevated to the heavenly temple, enter the Holy of Holies and see Gods chariot. For 30 years, scholars have been arguing about the nature of the connection between the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice and the mystical literature that appeared later.

Over the years, the discovery of this text and the fact that it was attributed to the Qumran community contributed to cultivating the notion that the sect served as a source of inspiration for ideas that later informed Jewish and Christian mysticism. The problem was that until now, no one knew exactly how the transition came about.

As long as Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice was perceived as a work unique to Qumran, there was a missing link between Qumran and the whole mystical tradition that develops in late antiquity, the early Middle Ages and afterward, Mizrahi says. But if we know now that Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice was a work that was known outside Qumran and until now there was no clear sign of that then we can understand that there were other channels of transmission of these texts and ideas that bridge the missing link.

Scroll clusters

Another significant achievement of the new genetic study is to reinforce one of the leading methods today for classifying the Dead Sea Scrolls, which until now was based on an analysis of the way they were written. For this purpose, the scientists analyzed sheep sequence variation in the nuclear genome, by means of deep DNA sequencing and algorithms developed by Moran Neuhof, Dr. Hila Gingold and Or Sagy from Prof. Rechavis laboratory. These comparisons enabled them to distinguish between a cluster of scrolls made from sheep bearing high genetic similarities, and scrolls made from sheep that do not belong to this cluster and that are also genetically remote from one another.

This time the researchers applied DNA analysis to the nuclear sheep genome (rather than the mitochondrial genome, which doesnt allow distinguishing between individual sheep), to evaluate the system of classification proposed by Prof. Emanuel Tov, who was editor-in-chief of the international Dead Sea Scrolls Publication Project. The Bible scholar classified the findings into two groups according to 20 scribal signs, such as how the authors of the scrolls inserted corrections, spelled words, marked the explicit name of God (the Tetragrammaton) and so on. According to this classification method, presented in a series of publications, principally during the 1930s, the overwhelming majority of the texts possessing a content unique to the members of the Qumran sect match one scribal style, which was labeled QSP (Qumran Scribal Practice). According to Tov, these scrolls were written by the sects scribes. Tov believes that the other scrolls found at Qumran, labeled Non-QSP, were probably brought to the sect from the outside.

It turns out that all the scrolls we sampled whose nuclear DNA indicates that they belong to one cluster, namely that they are genetically close, were classified as QSP scrolls, whereas the Non-QSP scrolls belong to different clusters, Rechavi says.

Ben-Dov notes that in recent years the theory about the Qumran scribal practice came in for criticism, but now the researchers have shed new light on the subject. Until now this group of scrolls was characterized according to philological markers, and now we also have biological markers, he says.

In addition, the fact that no genetic similarity was found between the external scrolls and the first cluster nor between any of those scrolls in the external cluster supports the hypothesis that the Non-QSP scrolls originated in various places throughout Judea. One of the copies of Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice found in Qumran now turns out to belong to the second cluster as well.

This is further reinforcement for the hypothesis that the Songs was widespread outside the sects circles, Rechavi avers.

One of the reasons for the confusion about the connection between different scroll fragments stems from the way they were found. Only about a quarter of the scrolls were found in situ by archaeologists, while most were found by Bedouin and sold to researchers in the 1950s, with the sellers not always having an interest in saying exactly where the valuable antiquities had come from. Now, with the aid of the new genetic tools, the scientists are able to unravel part of the tangle, and identify mistakes of earlier researchers. For example, the study found that a fragment from Isaiah, which until now was cataloged as part of the Qumran scrolls, deviates genetically from all the other Qumran scrolls. This raises intriguing questions: Did the fragment really come from the Qumran caves, or perhaps from a place that hasnt yet been identified? Mizrahi notes, adding, Perhaps segments resembling it are still lurking among the 25,000 scroll fragments found to date.

What next? Pnina Shor, founder of the Dead Sea Scrolls Project unit in the Israel Antiquities Authority, who took part in the research study, notes that the authority is working to enlist state-of-the-art scientific tools in an effort to improve the deciphering and preservation of the scrolls. With the aid of international collaboration, the IAA is now drawing on tools such as artificial intelligence to make progress in assembling the physical and textual jigsaw puzzle. Another plan is to make use of a particle accelerator to read segments of a scroll that congealed, rendering it impossible to separate its layers. The IAA is also adopting the biological tools. The present study is proof of its feasibility, Shor says.

The study examined only a small number of the scrolls, but according to the scientists a promising path to solving the riddles residing in the Qumran scrolls lies in expanding the use of genetic analysis. The development of the methods that made the latest breakthroughs possible took years, but the researchers are convinced that the next stage will be far more rapid. Rechavi: I hope we will be able to sample a large number of scrolls and discover how to put the puzzle together.

According to Prof. Oren Harman, a historian of science from Bar-Ilan University, the use of ancient DNA is like the invention of a new tool, like the microscope or the telescope. It allows us to tell a new story, sometimes a different story from the one the archaeologists, anthropologists and historians told until now. Like every scientific tool, emphasizes Harman, who was not involved in the study, ancient DNA should also serve to solve good questions, and not stand on its own. Its important to remember that analysis of the results of studies that rely on ancient DNA is based on a statistical interpretation of the data, and that different interpretations are possible for the same data.

Prof. Pilpel, the molecular geneticist, notes that the researchers conclusions about the scrolls they examined appear to be solid. One of the reasons for this is the choice of scrolls that are of interest if it is shown that they are not connected to one another. It is easier to establish that two sections of skin do not belong to the same animal all you have to do is show that there are a certain number of differences in the DNA, and that can be done even if the genetic material that remains is of low quality.

The various Bible scholars surveyed by Haaretz all say they are certain that even if the biological information serves only to show that different scroll fragments do not match one another, there are many fascinating questions to ask with the use of this tool. There is hope of achieving a more accurate classification of the scrolls in the future, says Michael Segal. According to Ben-Dov, We [Bible scholars] have been wrestling with different theories for so many years, but biology is providing us with a new way to make our arguments.

Prof. Mizrahi sums up the field of scrolls research in the following way: We are adrift on an ocean of uncertainty, and scientific research creates a small island of probability in it. The more we increase knowledge, the more we discover more cogently how much we have left to discover.

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DNA unlocks the secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls - Haaretz

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--MiraDx, a Los Angeles-based molecular genetics company that transitioned its CLIA-certified lab to provide COVID-19 tests for essential workers, is now expanding access to its PCR viral testing to public and private universities and colleges across the country. MiraDx aims to enable students, faculty, and staff to resume on-campus education later this year in an environment that provides a clear framework and easy and comprehensive access to highly accurate testing for the COVID-19 virus.

MiraDx is able to develop testing programs customized to the needs of an individual institution. Notably, the MiraDx lab, which is now exclusively processing COVID-19 tests, has dedicated reserved capacity for college programs, both to optimize turnaround time and mitigate the backlog many other labs are currently experiencing. With specific days allocated to individual schools, MiraDx will be able to deliver test results back to school officials through a secure server within 48 hours of receipt at the lab.

Accurate and sensitiveCOVID-19 testing of all Americans is of the utmost importance, said Dr. Joanne Weidhaas, co-founder of MiraDx. As our company continues to provide testing for thousands of first responders and essential workers, we have also turned our attention to another matter of national importance: enabling our youth to continue their on-campus education as safely and as soon as possible. Our goal is to contribute in a meaningful way to institutions of higher learning to allow students, faculty, and staff to return to campus in good health and give parents peace of mind that their children are safe.

MiraDxs discussions with over 100 schools across the country, along with guidance from health officials, have helped to inform the development of emerging testing protocols, to include day one clearance testing of the entire student body and faculty, followed by repeat sentinel testing throughout the semester.

We are focused on delivering the highest quality, most sensitive and dependable testing programs possible, said Dr. Weidhaas, herself an educator at UCLA. We are only going to commit to programs today we know we can achieve in the fall we are not going to sell capacity we do not have, and in fact, we are building in a buffer of capacity in each college testing day.

MiraDx has a CLIA-certified lab with a high complexity molecular processing designation that allows it to conduct PCR testing, a highly sensitive approach that results in over 90 percent accuracy in COVID-19 testing and is considered the gold standard in testing. To determine whether an individual is infected with COVID-19, a sample is collected from a swab of the back of the throat, where the highest viral load exists for this coronavirus. The MiraDx test includes an air-tight vial, collection swab, a biohazard bag, and simple instructions for collecting the sample, which is collected under the supervision of a healthcare professional. MiraDxs analysis technique can identify as little as four copies of COVID-19 RNA in an individual sample, meaning that the virus can be detected even during the early stages of infection and/or in asymptomatic individuals. Non-PCR based testing approaches are either less sensitive (resulting in more false negatives) or do not tell patients when they are no longer contagious, which either leaves them in quarantine too long or presents the risk of them coming out of quarantine too soon.

MiraDxs COVID-19 test has been developed in line with the FDAs Emergency Use Authorization requirements.

About MiraDx

Dr. Joanne Weidhaas, MD, PhD, MSM is the co-founder of MiraDx and a professor and vice-chair in the department of radiation oncology at UCLA.

MiraDx is a Los Angeles-based molecular genetics company that identifies, validates, develops, and delivers novel germline biomarker tests for individualized cancer treatment, and now performs COVID-19 testing. Its goal is to improve human health and advance personalized medicine through the application of novel functional germline biomarkers. To learn more about MiraDx, please visit miradx.com. Please send inquiries to info@miradx.com

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Molecular Genetics Company MiraDx Offers COVID-19 Viral Testing To U.S. Universities and Colleges - Business Wire

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Fears about catching coronavirus from contaminated surfaces have driven some people to become compulsive about cleaning countertops and wiping down their groceries. As the pandemic took hold, some poison centers even reported increased calls about excessive exposure to cleaning agents.

In recent weeks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention appeared to adjust its stance on surface transmission of the coronavirus. New language on its website was interpreted as deemphasizing concerns, creating some confusion about the risk of catching covid-19 from frequently touched objects.

Pittsburgh-based infectious disease and critical care physician Dr. Amesh Adalja said that while the contact spread of the virus can certainly occur, it is not responsible for the bulk of transmission.

Weve always known that there is a small contribution from contaminated surfaces. I think the CDC guidance reflects the fact that were trying to focus on the main route of how this virus gets from person to person. It is from another person directly, Adalja said. Our public health strategy needs to be focused on eliminating the person-to-person spread,and there can be less emphasis on contact spread.

After some news outlets ran with the idea that the CDC was no longer concerned about surface transmission, the agency issued a statement clarifying that contact with a contaminated surface is still one way to catch covid-19.

It may be possible that a person can get covid-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their own mouth, nose or possibly their eyes. But this isnt thought to be the main way the virus spreads, the statement said. The change on the website was intended to make it easier to read, and was not a result of any new science.

Dr. Arvind Venkat, an Allegheny Health Network emergency physician, observed that we live in a hyper-connected world, and social media can create controversies that arent always there. So, the combination of not having consistent communication and an environment in which everything is so fragmented is a bad combination in a public health crisis.

Venkat also past president of the Pennsylvania College of Emergency Physicians said public health authorities must communicate carefully and accurately to maintain trust with the public.

Since this is a new virus, were still learning as we go along. The fact that there is contradictory and changing data is to be expected, Venkat said. So, when something changes, we need to make sure that we convey that in a systematic way so that it doesnt get perceived as going back and forth.

So, what are the chances of catching covid-19 from an object or surface laden with germs?

I think the relative risk of picking it up from common things given the precautions that everybody is taking is much lower, said Seema Lakdawala, assistant professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

But if you are a health care worker and you are working in a hospital setting with patients that are symptomatic and coughing and sneezing large volumes of the virus into their environment then, yes, the risk of catching it from a surface is much higher.

The feeling among medical experts who spoke with the Tribune-Review is people are unlikely to catch the virus from doing things like grocery shopping. Lakdawala, an expert in virus transmission, said she does not wipe down her groceries.

Everyone has their own comfort level. If somebody is taking the time to wipe down every single material three times, I would say that is a waste of their time, Lakdawala said. I think its important for the general public to understand, What kind of information do I need to make a risk assessment for myself?

Adalja said that while its important for people to continue to take protective action, they can be a little less concerned about contaminated surfaces they may have touched.

I think people can be less worried about making sure they scrub their groceries. Thats less likely to be impactful than other things, like washing your hands and trying to avoid crowded spaces and other social-distancing measures.

Paul Guggenheimer is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Paul at 724-226-7706 or pguggenheimer@triblive.com.

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Even as scientists race to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, experts acknowledge that children could be among the last members of society to be vaccinated.

At least 10 vaccines are being tested in people across the globe, with the United States' top infectious disease doctor, Anthony Fauci, optimistically estimating we could have a viable vaccine by early 2021. While preliminary data on these vaccines has been encouraging, children have been excluded from early studies.

Fauci told ABC News it's possible that studies in children might "catch up" to those in adults, if they are done correctly.

"There is no reason not to believe that [a vaccine] wouldn't be available simultaneously for adults and children," Fauci said.

But other vaccine experts interviewed by ABC News said studies among children could take much longer to complete, and a hard look at the timeline of ongoing vaccine trials raises questions about whether families can expect their children to be vaccinated at some point in the upcoming academic school year.

"Children will be vaccinated, in time," said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, who sits on the Food and Drug Administration's vaccine advisory committee.

"To date, my sense is that children are not part of these initial studies," Offit added. "It would be unfathomable giving children a vaccine that has not been adequately tested in children."

Work on a COVID-19 vaccine is underway at American biotechnology company Moderna in Massachusetts. Moderna plans to start phase II of its vaccine trials soon and phase III in the summer of 2020.

The process for testing a COVID-19 vaccine in children could take "extra months and maybe years longer," according to Paul Duprex, PhD, Director of the Center for Vaccine Research and professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at the University of Pittsburgh.

Throughout history, scientists have constantly been reminded that children are not simply small adults. Their bodies and immune systems work differently than adults, so they need to be studied separately -- preferably after safety has already been well-established in adults.

"Every person is special, but kids are especially special," said Duprex. "They are our charges. The emotional baggage that goes with something going wrong in clinical trials involving kids -- and I'm not saying adults are not important -- it's just different."

For now, vaccine trials remain laser-focused on members of society deemed to have the highest risk, such as front-line workers and adults. Although some groups have announced their intention to test vaccines in children, ABC News contacted four vaccine groups and none said they have actually started studies in children yet.

Typically, vaccines are tested in a stepwise approach: phase 1 for safety, phase 2 to start testing effectiveness and a massive phase 3 study with thousands of people.

The pharmaceutical company Pfizer told ABC News it will advance a vaccine into children once positive data from phases 1 and 2 is available in adults. Another company, Inovio said it plans "to assess pediatric populations in the future."

The University of Oxford, which has partnered with the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, is one of the few vaccine groups that has announced formal plans to start testing in children.

But a University spokesperson told ABC News that children will not be injected right away, and will only be given the vaccine once "all of the adults studies are moving along and have generated sufficient safety data."

In the United States, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is collaborating with pharmaceutical companies for vaccine trials, told ABC News the agency would continue to work with CDC to better understand how the virus affects children.

In a statement, the agency said: "We will continue to plan for follow-on clinical trials to include younger age groups so such trials can commence if epidemiological CDC data indicate a need to test COVID-19 vaccines in children."

With vaccine skepticism on the rise, experts stressed that it will be important to proceed with caution. According to an ABC News/Washington Post poll, 27% of American adults said they were not inclined to get a vaccine -- even if it was available for free.

With any new vaccine, the ethical thing to do is test for safety in healthy adults first, and then begin testing it among people who need it the most, explained Jennifer Miller, Ph.D., an assistant professor at Yale School of Medicine and founder of Bioethics International and the Good Pharma Scorecard.

For COVID-19, that means older adults, front-line workers and people with underlying medical conditions. Children are far less likely to die of this disease.

"About 2% of the cases reported are in the pediatric population," said Dr. David Kimberlin, professor and co-director of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama-Birmingham.

"It's about minimizing risks, it's about informed consent and it's about the population that needs it the most," Miller said.

Minimizing risk is important, especially when it comes to children and vaccines, experts agreed.

Very rarely have candidate vaccines caused a disease to become more severe when the individual is subsequently exposed to the natural infection.

This happened in 1966, when a chemically inactivated vaccine candidate for a childhood lung disease called RSV led to the death of several children. "That tragic event set the RSV vaccine field back decades," said Duprex. "In fact, there still is no licensed RSV vaccine."

Fauci proposed that children might be tested in a so-called "bridging study," in which children are studied in a Phase I trial to ensure the vaccine is safe, and then quickly folded into a large phase 3 study.

Other experts noted it's theoretically possible that studies in children could "catch up" to those in adults, though unprecedented. But even if we do not have a vaccine for children right away, that doesn't necessarily mean children will have to remain socially distant indefinitely.

Eventually, widespread vaccination of adults could end up protecting children thanks to "herd immunity," which is when enough people are vaccinated to snuff out an ongoing chain of infections.

"Usually it's the older way around -- vaccinating children protects older adults," Kimberlin said. But in the case of COVID-19, if we find a successful vaccine and most adults become immune to the virus, "parents could still very legitimately look at that as a win for children because it's a win for society."

See more here:
In the race for a vaccine, children may be last to be vaccinated - ABC News

June 1, 2020

Germanys footballing pantheon has yet to reserve a spot for Paderborn.

The Westphalian cathedral city may date back more than 1200 years, but its achievements on the countrys soccer pitches arent quite so historic.

Though SC Paderborn 07 formed from a merger in the 1980s dines among lavish contemporaries at Germanys top table, it remains slim pickings on the global stage.

The club might not yet have made an international impression, but someone with first-hand experience of the citys footballing journey is leaving an indelible mark on the world.

Prior to co-founding Newcastle-based life science company QuantuMDx Group, Jonathan OHalloran was enmeshed within Paderborns soccer fraternity.

Taken to Germany by his fathers British Army commitments, a pre-teen Jonathan known as Jono by those closest to him supplemented kickabouts among friends with more structured matches through the club.

A left winger with a strikers instinct, he was to tweak football commentator parlance a Jono-On-The-Spot figure, always in the right place at the right time to help his sides attacks.

Like a lot of youngsters, he harboured dreams of playing professionally, but when they failed to materialise, Jonathan found a new career outlet.

Instead of being a totemic figure on the pitch, he is now at the vanguard of next generation healthcare technology, which is leading the charge to transform disease detection and treatment.

At a time when the worlds medical services are battling against the coronavirus pandemic, Jonathan is, to return to that football phrase again, Jono-On-The-Spot.

Already known for work alongside Bill and Melinda Gates foundation to improve tuberculosis detection and treatment, and the development of a panel test to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted infections, QuantuMDx recently launched a coronavirus test for laboratory use.

Working with manufacturing partner Biofortuna Limited, QuantuMDx operating out of the Lugano Building, on Newcastles Melbourne Street says the test is able to deliver results in little more than an hour.

It has scaled up production capability to an initial two million tests a week, with capacity to slide that figure up to three million.

The test, known as a SARS-CoV-2 assay, has been developed using advanced bioinformatics, with its accuracy validated by use of 90 pre-extracted residual samples from Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Shown to be clinically equivalent to the comparator assay presently used in NHS hospitals, QuantuMDx is now translating the test and a respiratory panel on to its landmark Q-POC platform.

A cost-effective, portable and battery-operated molecular diagnostic tool, Q-POC can analyse patient DNA samples in depending on the complexity of a test as little as ten to 30 minutes.

Such expediency and portability mean QuantuMDxs coronavirus tests could potentially be analysed in as little as 15 minutes in hospitals, pharmacies, care homes, schools or immigration zones.

For governments around the world, the development stands quite literally as a life-changing intervention in their efforts to ramp up contact tracing of COVID-19.

With potential for use in airports to quickly test travellers, it could also help the global sporting landscape emerge from its coronavirus shutdown.

With Q-POC, people doing the contact testing can put it in their backpack, go and swab people, test them and get a result immediately, says chief executive Jonathan.

That is an obvious game-changer.

In airports, if someone comes through and theyve got a fever then they can be quickly tested.

It could be used in sporting environments and by the big banks and supermarkets, which want staff back safely but quickly, continues Jonathan, who reveals the company is now looking at honing its strategy again to deliver early testing for flu and SARS.

Weve got a device the world needs; it is a silver lining to a large global cloud.

Yet it could all have been so much different.

As a youngster, it was football, rather than genetics, that piqued Brightonian Jonathans interest.

The son of a Liverpool FC- supporting mother and a father whose family followed the fortunes of Millwall, he was always destined to fall for its charms.

But when he returned to the UK from Germany, the landscape began to shift.

I was in a bit of an Army bubble in Germany; I grew up on lots of different bases and remember playing lots of football, recalls Jonathan.

We moved back when I was 13 and I began at a private school in Lewes, east Sussex.

That was a bit of a culture shock; I went from an Army school to somewhere that was very prim and proper and even made us do homework!

When I was 16 or 17, I realised my dreams of professional football were not destined to succeed and that I needed to do something else, continues Jonathan, sipping tea from a Liverpool FC mug.

I was colour-blind, dyslexic and tone deaf, so I quickly found the arts were not for me, and instead I clicked with science.

I remember a teacher showing us an experiment one day and I got it immediately I was quicker than all of the smarter kids in the class to understand genetics.

From that point on, I knew what I wanted to do.

I looked at all of the universities for a straight genetics degree, but not of them did one, so instead I studied molecular genetics with biotechnology at Sussex University.

His academic journey continued when he was accepted into the esteemed Harvard University to study how mutations in DNA sequencing cause disease.

If his school science lesson prompted an interest in genetics, Jonathans time on the other side of the Atlantic truly crystallised his career path.

I benefited from an amazing education over there, but it became pretty obvious when I started writing my thesis that the academic life wasnt for me, he says.

At that time, I was reading a lot of books on epidemiology and about how viruses and plagues can wreak havoc globally.

I realised pretty early on that we needed to improve work on human diagnostics.

So I applied for jobs in laboratories and got one at Nuffield Health, in Tunbridge Wells, continues Jonathan.

That gave me exposure to a lot of pathology disciplines, and I got to play with a lot of devices.

After about four years in, I thought, I could build one of these.

And that is exactly what he did.

QuantuMDx began life not in a high-tech, modern laboratory, but in Jonathans Sussex garage.

Now backed by medical entrepreneur Elaine Warburton, who helped Jonathan co-found the venture, he began laying the research foundations that would set the business on its trail to present-day success.

It was also around this time that the company secured a grant from the Cape Biotech Trust, which saw Jonathan relocate to the southernmost tip of Africa.

The move albeit for a transitory period would prove to be another seminal moment in Jonathans professional life and the evolution of QuantuMDx.

While I was getting the data in my makeshift laboratory, Elaine who is now a non-executive director was raising money for the business on the back of that data, he recalls.

We received funding from Cape Biotech Trust and part of the deal was that we had to move to South Africas Tygerberg Hospital for two years so I packed up the garage and went.

We were based right next to the World Health Organisations tuberculosis laboratory.

On my coffee breaks I was having discussions with its scientists about tuberculosis.

I couldnt get my head around the disease. It was killing millions of people every year, so I started learning about genetic mutations that were stopping treatments from working.

When changes to funding requirements forced Jonathan and Elaine to return to the UK earlier than planned, the duo found a home in the North East.

Eminent geneticist Professor Sir John Burn who is now QuantuMDx vice-chairman and whose CV lists time at Londons Great Ormond Street Hospital offered the fledgling business initial space at Newcastles International Centre for Life.

Providing the company with a much-needed base, the residence close to like-minded operators and an ever-flowing stream of highly- skilled university graduates provided crucial momentum, which QuantuMDx has more than maintained from its Lugano Building site.

The quality of students and the catchment area we have is quite large, says Jonathan, who now counts more than 70 staff on QuantuMDxs books.

People from the North East want to stay here; they dont want to go off to Oxford or Cambridge, and that is such a huge benefit for us.

Furthermore, every time we put a call out to the universities for support, they all say yes, we can help, weve got a group doing that.

We have really meshed ourselves into the local life sciences sector.

Speaking as a soft southerner, he laughs, Brighton is supposed to be this wonderful city, but it is nothing compared to Newcastle.

This strong ecosystem and interest in QuantuMDxs ever-evolving revolutionary technology, leaves Jonathan in no doubt where his business is headed.

I always had a vision where this company would be, he says.

If we get the execution right, we are starting the commercial growth on a path towards becoming a unicorn [the term used to describe a privately-owned start-up company valued at more than $1 billion].

We have evolved our strategy for coronavirus; we have honed it and we are now doing it.

We are poised for rapid growth; it is going to be a very exciting time for us over the next 18 months.

We are going to be a different company again.

Jonathan OHalloran@BiotechRockstar

QuantuMDxwww.quantumdx.com@QuantuMDx

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Jono-on-the-spot - North East Times

This past semester I had the privilege of being an adjunct lecturer for a college-level general biology course. In my unit on human evolution, I taught about human diversity and skin color. At first I was intimidated; how was I going to talk about this incredibly complex topic with a class of 18- to 20-year-olds? I decided the best way to talk about race was to start with the bare facts of biology. I hope that the following (albeit reduced) explanation may help some readers understand why the ideals of white supremacy are both factually and morally wrong.

All human genes are a sequence of four different molecules. They are adenosine, thymine, cytosine and guanine. Every gene that a human being has and every living organism has, for that matter is made up of just these four molecules in different sequences. The human genome, the summation of these letter sequences, is 3 billion molecules long. If it were a book, it would have 200,000 pages in it, it would be as tall as the Washington monument (555 feet tall) and would take about 9.5 years to read aloud. Any given human is only 0.1% genetically different from another human. This means if we were to compare the 200,000-page books of sequences from two strangers, 200 pages of this book would vary (footnote 1).

In the eyes of biology, there is no such thing as race because it is a social construct. The reason we see such diversity in human skin color is because of environmental factors and slight changes in certain genes.

When the human species, Homo sapiens, first emerged in Africa 200,000 years ago, most individuals had dark skin. This was because they had a gene that resulted in their skin having lots of melanin, a pigment that helps protect skin cells from UV radiation. Living in equatorial Africa, this helped prevent skin cancer and early death. Individuals with lots of melanin could, theoretically, live longer and be able to reproduce, passing their genes onto their offspring because they were less likely to die of cancer at a young age.

As humans migrated across the planet and populations grew, individuals were born that had random small alterations, or mutations, in their melanin-producing gene. White skin, for example, is caused by having a mutation in the melanin gene which reduces its concentration in our cells. This mutation was more common in humans who had migrated away from the equator, to the north. At these higher latitudes, UV radiation is not as intense, thus the threat of skin cancer is not as great. It is also thought that having white skin in these more northern populations was advantageous because it helped individuals produce more vitamin D. Simply put, not having lots of melanin in these low-UV-radiation environments did not mean you would perish before producing offspring and actually helped you produce more vitamin D (2). This combination of random mutations and migration patterns in early humans is the basis for the modern-day concept of race.

When we look at what race is in the light of biology, the idea that one is superior to the other, that they should not mix, or that one must be conquered is meaningless. One race is not favored above the rest because there are no biologically defined races, just genetic diversity. Humans are 99.9% identical, no matter where they come from in the world, so why should 0.1% determine their worth? Why should a single change in a gene determine your socio-economic standing? Why should it mean you are more likely to be brutalized by others? Why cant that 0.1% difference be celebrated as the beauty and diversity that it really is? Its about time we start celebrating these differences in our appearances and start treating each other with the one thing we all share, our humanity.

Madeline Clark lives in Saranac Lake.

Footnotes:

1. Shuster, M., Vigna, J., Sinha, G., Tontonoz, M., and Kilburn, K.S. (2018). Biology for a changing world (3rd ed.). W.H. Freeman & Company.

2. Canfield, V.A., Berg, A., Peckins, S., Wentzel, S.M., Ang, K.C., Oppenheimer, S., and Cheng, K.C. (2013). Molecular Phylogeography of a human autosomal skin color locus under natural selection. G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics, 3(11), 2059-2067. https://doi.org/10.1534/g3.113.007484

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A lesson in race, for those who need it | News, Sports, Jobs - The Adirondack Daily Enterprise

AP Photo/Crime Stoppers via Houston Chronicle, File

The case almost went cold for good.

On Jan. 15, 2012, Gelareh Bagherzadeh was sitting in the driver's seat of her silver Nissan Altima when she was shot twice in the head, point blank, from the passenger side of her car. She had been talking to a friend, who heard her scream, then silence, and called 911. Gelareh's cell phone was found at her feet. The car had smashed into the garage of a townhouse, one in a row behind The Galleria, an upscale mall in Houston, and the acrid smell of burnt tire rubber was thick in the air.

Her purse and wallet were there, seemingly intact, so it didn't appear to be a robbery. There were no signs of sexual assault.

It was a mystery, one thathad enough twists and turnsto end up the subject ofDateline and NBC News' latest true crime podcast, Motive for Murder.

"I'm no stranger to mystery, to secrets people are desperately trying to hide, and the things those people are willing to do to get what they want," Motive for Murderhost and longtimeDateline correspondent Josh Mankiewiczexplained as episode one got underway.

**This is documented real life, and Dateline covered the case in 2019,sothis isn't exactly a SPOILERalert, but there are major revelations about the case ahead.

An early theory that turned the story into national news was that perhaps Gelareh's outspoken political views had gotten her killed. Perhaps the Iranian government was involved.

The 30-year-old had moved to Houston from her native Iran for school and was studying molecular genetics at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center when she was killed. But she remained plugged in to the troubles at home andshe took part in protests in Houston supporting theIranian Green Movement, which disputed the legitimacyof then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election in 2009 and was demanding regime change.

Her activism certainly worried her parents, Ebrahim Bagherzadeh and Monireh Zangeneh, but they remembered their daughter being unafraid of any potential consequencesthough, according to the Houston Chronicle, she had asked that her name not be used when the paper posted a video from a 2010 protest on its website.

Friends in Gelareh's inner circle were skeptical, however, that the Iranian government would "waste their energy and time" by orchestrating the death of a student activist all the way in Texas. Though "if they had...they would take credit for it" to warn off other dissidents, observed Gelareh's close friend, Kathy Soltis.

Local police said early on that they didn't suspect either apoliticalmotive or that she was targeted because of her ethnicity.

Fingerprints found on the car, the bullets recovered at the scene, a cigarette butt on the ground outside the car doorall were sent to the lab for forensic testing.

Dead ends, the lot.

In the meantime, detectives started probing the possibility that the motive had something to do with one of three overarching motives for so many murders: love, money or pride.

Houston PD homicide investigator DetectiveRichard Bolton, now retired, recalled to Mankiewicz the inevitable part of the probe when they looked into the men in Gelareh's life, including her fairly new boyfriend, Cory Beavers, and the friend who said he heard a scream on the phone seemingly seconds before she was shot,Robeen Bandarwho also was her ex-boyfriend.

Bandar explained (to police and Mankiewicz) thatthey had had an amicable breakup and had mutually decided they would be better off just being friends.

Police asked why heheard a scream but didn't recallhearinga gun shot or screeching tires. Bandar said it was probably shock or denial of what he may indeed have heard.

Onto Gelareh's current boyfriend, Cory, the last known person to see her alive.

He told police that she had surprised him by showing up at his house, but he had a test to study for so they only hung out for awhile. When sheleft, he told her to text him when she got home to let him know she had arrived safely. He never heard from or saw her again.

Cory said he didn't know Gelareh was dead until he drove up to her house the next day and a reporter approached him and asked if he knew anything about "the girl who lived here."

He knocked on the door and Ibrahim answered, and he was the one to tell Cory that Gelareh was dead.

Police also looked intocrimes with similar M.O.s in the area, wondering if she was the victim of a carjacking gone wrong. They looked at a lawsuit her father was embroiled in at the time with a former employer.

More dead ends.

Four months after the murder, police announced that the family was offering a $200,000 reward for information that led to justice for Gelareh, the largest Crime Stoppers reward on offer in the country at the time.

The dozen or so tips that merited follow-up also led nowhere. But then there was another shooting that November.

The victim was Cory Beavers' identical twin brother, Coty. And homicide detectives don't put much stock in coincidences.

Coty Beavers' wife, Nesreen Irsan,had called 911 to report that her boyfriend had been shot. "Why did God do this to me?"she's heard wailing on the call.

She had found her husband's body in their apartment when she returned home from work. She told police she last saw Coty that morning, when he walked her down to her car to see her off, as he usually did. When police responded to her 911 call, it was apparent he had been dead for awhile. It was later determined that his wedding ring had been moved from his ring finger to the middle finger of his left hand.

Coty and Nesreen were newlyweds. According to Cory, Nesreenalso a student at MD Anderson, like Cory and Gelarehwas originally interested in him, but Cory was determined to keep his mind on his studies and introduced Nesreen to Coty. Nesreen was friends withGelareh, meanwhile, and she's the one who introduced her to Cory after he saw the two of them walking together at school. He was smitten immediatelyand after talkingto her more at a party not long after, they started dating.

By the time his newlywed brother was killed, Corystill reeling from the murder of his girlfriendwas fed up with what he felt was time wasted by the police looking at him as a suspect and any other activity that didn't get them any closer to finding Gelareh's killer.

Nesreen, meanwhile, had her own traumatic past. In the summer of 2011 she had run away from her strict Muslim household and her controlling father, whom she described as "violent and abusive," with only the clothes she was wearing. She climbed out of a window and went to a neighbor's house and asked for a rideto Coty and Cory's mom Shirley Beavers' house in Spring, Texas.

Nesreen had been dating Coty and keeping it a secret from her father, Ali Irsan, with the help of her sister Nadiawho would simultaneously cover for Nesreen but also threaten to tell on her.

When Ali Irsan found out about Nesreen and Coty, he barred his 23-year-old daughter from leaving the house.

Mayra Beltran/Houston Chronicle via AP

Police had no recourse to bring Ali's adult daughter back to their house if she didn't want to be there, so Ali showed up at Shirley's house himself (how he found out where they lived,whether the address was online or Nadia told him, or whatever, they didn't know). Ali knocked on their neighbors' doors, offering $100 for information on Coty's whereabouts. In the ensuing days, the Beavers would go outside in the morning to find that the air had been let out of their tires, so they had to start moving their cars. An order of protection Nesreen obtained against her father didn't stop himbut that at least paved the way for police to obtain a warrant to search the Irsan family's home, as well as two other properties Ali owned. They found a dismantled hand gun.

Cory recalled to Mankiewicz a fight he witnessed between Nadia and Nesreen during college, ostensibly over a petty issue,in which Nadia told her sister, "'I can't wait until my dad puts a bullet in your head.'"

"I believed her," Cory said.

Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle via AP, File

Going through boxes of documents they'd confiscated, police found paperwork that indicated Ali Irsan was committing multiple acts of fraud, such as falsely claiming disability benefits and opening credit cards in his kids' names.

Sothe Harris County Sheriff's Department brought in theFBI, and ultimately a task force thatcame to includethe Montgomery and Harris County sheriff offices, the FBI, the Houston Police Department, the Social Security Administration Office and Homeland Security got to work.

According to authorities, Irsan, a naturalized citizen, had first come to the U.S. from Jordan in 1978 and proceeded to marry a blind woman whom he physically and sexually abused, and had four children with. While still married, he brought a teenage bride, Shmou, over from Jordan, and they had eight more children, including Nesreen and Nadia.

In 2014, Irsan was chargedin federal court with conspiracy to defraud the United States, theft of public money and benefits fraud, and Shmou and Nadia were arrested, too. In April 2015, he pleaded guiltyto conspiracy to defraud and was sentenced to 45 months in prison; his wife and daughterwere convicted of providing false statements as part of the fraud schemeand were each sentenced to two years in prison.

But back to the double murder investigation.

Yet another thing discovered in the course of the investigation into Irsan was the revelation that he had been pulled over by a Texas State Trooper on the day of Gelareh's murder. His wife and one of his sons were also in the cara silver Toyota Camry.

Which, incidentally, matched the description given by a witness back in 2012 who told police she saw what looked to be a silver Camry speeding away from the site of the shooting. Nothing had ever come of it.

The location and timing of the traffic stop put Irsan's car exactly where it would have been had he driven away from the crime scene after the shooting. Dash-cam footage showed Ali barely able to stand, and he told the trooper hewas diabetic and suffering from low blood sugar, so he had been speeding on his way to find sugar.

There was no evidence that he was a diabetic.

It was almost a fluke that the trooper still had the dash-cam footage after two years. According to Mankiewiecz, the officer just had a funny feeling about the guy...

Furthermore, per authorities and Cory Beavers, it turned out that Gelareh and Alihad crossed pathstheir seeming lack of interaction having been a nagging issue when trying to connect Ali to both her murder and that of his son-in-law.

AfterNesreen fled her family's home in 2011, Ali started calling her classmates under the guise of simply being a concerned dad.

Gelareh wasn't having it, and told him she saw right through what he was trying to do.

Toward the end of the year, he called again. Gelareh called back and first talked to Nadia, who then passed the phone to her father, who asked (according to Cory), "Is this that Iranian bitch?" Gelareh proceeded to tell him off in Farsi. He hung up. A few weeks later she was dead.

In May 2014, Ali Irsan was charged with Gelareh's murder. That charge would be dropped for tactical reasons, because once authorities had connected him to both killings, Irsan was charged in 2015 with capital murder, for what has since been characterized as two so-called "honor killings."

Or make that three. In 1999, Irsan fatally shot his 29-year-old son-in-law Amjad Alidam. He told police Alidam had been abusing his daughter, and he killed him in self-defense. Authorities later said they couldn't build a case to prove otherwise.

In 2018, jurors spent 35 minutes deliberating before convicting him of themurders of Gelareh Bagherzadeh and Coty Beavers.

During the penalty phase of the trial, a former neighborsaidthat Ali Irsan hadbragged to him that he "got away with murder" inthe death of his other son-in-law."He said he invited his son-in-law to his house and shot him," the witness, Randy Wilkinson, testified. "He said he shot him with a 12-gauge shotgun and planted a gun on him."

His sonNasim Irsan, the one who was in the Camry with him, pleaded guilty in both murders as well and was sentenced last August to 40 years in prison. Ali Irsan iscurrently on death row in Texas.

The finale ofMotive for Murderwill be outThursday, June 4, wherever you get your podcasts.

(E! and NBC News are both members of the NBCUniversal family.)

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All About the Twisted Story Behind Motive for Murder - E! NEWS