Gain-Of-Function: Loss-Of-Funding 2xz11

This week, the White House posted an executive order which details the istration’s intent to stop ‘dangerous gain of function research’. We talk to Gigi Gronvall, an immunologist and biosecurity expert at Johns Hopkins University who fears the timing and added bureaucracy could stop all sorts of important biosciences unnecessarily, and that the order is somewhat ideologically driven. Also, NASA’s Juno mission has provided data on the most powerful volcanic event ever recorded, which took place on the planet Io, one of Jupiter’s moons. Hellish Io, squeezed as it is by the immense gravity of Jupiter, has not been observed from its poles before in this manner. Last week at EGU25 Science in Action got to speak with the mission’s principal investigator, Scott Bolton of Southwest Research Institute. That’s not all from Jupiter’s moons, because we also ask whether there could there be life on Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa? Scientists believe their glaciated oceans may harbour conditions suitable for life. Also at the EGU meeting were Jonathan Lunine, Chief Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, and Athena Coustenis, Director of Research at the Paris Observatory in Meudon. Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Alex Mansfield with Tabby Taylor-Buck Production Coordinator: Josie Hardy (Image: Clinical technician extracts viruses from swab samples. Credit: Jane Barlow - WPA Pool/Getty Images) 2b5011