Detection of COVID-19 and its severity using chest X-rays and electronic health records

COVID-19 first emerged in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, and has since spread throughout the world. More than one year has passed, and the virus continues to mutate and infect individuals at an increasingly alarming rate. Providing proper treatment to patients during the initial stages of the infection is highly vital for their survival. There is also a need for quicker testing. Such a situation demands an automated, easy-to-use COVID detection toolkit. Recent research using computer vision techniques suggests that chest X-rays contain essential features about the effects of the virus in the chest region. Advanced deep learning techniques and clinical imaging can be utilized to create a tool to detect COVID-19 and its severity. The proposed tool considers chest X-rays as well as a patient's symptoms to predict whether the patient has COVID or not and predict the severity for positive cases. © 2021 IEEE.

A bioorthogonal chemical reporter for fatty acid synthase-dependent protein acylation.

Mammalian cells acquire fatty acids (FAs) from dietary sources or via de novo palmitate production by fatty acid synthase (FASN). Although most cells express FASN at low levels, it is upregulated in cancers of the breast, prostate, and liver, among others, and is required during the replication of many viruses, such as dengue virus, hepatitis C, HIV-1, hepatitis B, and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, among others. The precise role of FASN in disease pathogenesis is poorly understood, and whether de novo FA synthesis contributes to host or viral protein acylation has been traditionally difficult to study. Here, we describe a cell-permeable and click chemistry-compatible alkynyl acetate analog (alkynyl acetic acid or 5-hexynoic acid [Alk-4]) that functions as a reporter of FASN-dependent protein acylation. In an FASN-dependent manner, Alk-4 selectively labels the cellular protein interferon-induced transmembrane protein 3 at its known palmitoylation sites, a process that is essential for the antiviral activity of the protein, and the HIV-1 matrix protein at its known myristoylation site, a process that is required for membrane targeting and particle assembly. Alk-4 metabolic labeling also enabled biotin-based purification and identification of more than 200 FASN-dependent acylated cellular proteins. Thus, Alk-4 is a useful bioorthogonal tool to selectively probe FASN-mediated protein acylation in normal and diseased states.

Heat efficiently inactivates coronaviruses inside vehicles (preprint)

Heat is an established method to inactivate coronaviruses, and there is utility in using heat to reduce viral load on common touch points in vehicles exposed to a person shedding SARS-CoV-2. As SARS-CoV-2 is a Biosafety level (BSL)-3 pathogen, real world testing of heat as a sanitation method for public and private vehicles becomes a challenge, requiring a surrogate coronavirus that can be handled safely outside of a BSL-3 facility. In this study, we used Bovine Coronavirus (BCoV) as a surrogate for SARS-CoV-2 to test the efficacy of heat-based betacoronavirus inactivation. In vitro, a 30-minute exposure to 56{degrees}C completely inactivated BCoV in solution, and a 15-minute exposure reduced recovery of BCoV >1000-fold. When heated to 56{degrees}C for 15 minutes, the infectivity of BCoV spotted and dried on typical porous and non-porous automobile interior materials was reduced by 99 - 99.99%. When BCoV was spotted and dried on hard plastic (seat) material placed inside an out of service transit bus, 56{degrees}C heat for 30 minutes reduced BCoV infectivity 85 - 99.5%. Thus, 56{degrees}C is an accessible, rapid, and effective method to inactivate coronaviruses inside motor vehicles.