Background:The clinical characteristics of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-2019) patients outside the epicenter of Hubei Province are less understood. Methods:We analyzed the epidemiological and clinical features of all COVID-2019 cases in the only referral hospital in Shenzhen Results: Among the 298 confirmed cases, 233 (81.5%) had been to Hubei, while 42 (14%) did not have a clear travel history. Only 218 (73.15%) cases had a fever as the initial symptom. Compared with the nonsevere cases, severe cases were associated with older age, those with underlying diseases, and higher levels of C-reactive protein, interleukin-6, and erythrocyte sedimentation rate. Slower clearance of the virus was associated with a higher risk of progression to critical condition. As of March 6, 2020, 268 (89.9%) patients were discharged and the overall case fatality ratio was 1.0%. Conclusions:In a designated hospital outside Hubei Province, COVID-2019 patients could be effectively managed by properly using the existing hospital system.Mortality may be lowered when cases are relatively mild, and there are sufficient medical resources to care and treat the disease.

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Highly effective and highly efficient decontamination of mercury from aqueous media remains a serious task for public health and ecosystem protection. Here we report that this task can be addressed by creating a mercury 'nano-trap' as illustrated by functionalizing a high surface area and robust porous organic polymer with a high density of strong mercury chelating groups. The resultant porous organic polymer-based mercury 'nano-trap' exhibits a recordhigh saturation mercury uptake capacity of over 1,000 mg g À 1 , and can effectively reduce the mercury(II) concentration from 10 p.p.m. to the extremely low level of smaller than 0.4 p.p.b. well below the acceptable limits in drinking water standards (2 p.p.b.), and can also efficiently remove 499.9% mercury(II) within a few minutes. Our work therefore presents a new benchmark for mercury adsorbent materials and provides a new perspective for removing mercury(II) and also other heavy metal ions from contaminated water for environmental remediation.

The cleavages at the junctions of the flavivirus nonstructural (NS) proteins NS2A/NS2B, NS2B/NS3, NS3/NS4A, and NS4B/NS5 share an amino acid sequence motif and are presumably catalyzed by a virus-encoded protease. We constructed recombinant vaccinia viruses expressing various portions of the NS region of the dengue virus type 4 polyprotein. By analyzing immune precipitates of 35S-labeled lysates of recombinant virus-infected cells, we could monitor the NS2A/NS2B, NS2B/NS3, and NS3/NS4A cleavages. A polyprotein composed of NS2A, NS2B, and the N-terminal 184 amino acids of NS3 was cleaved at the NS2A/NS2B and NS2B/NS3 junctions, whereas a similar polyprotein containing only the first 77 amino acids of NS3 was not cleaved. This finding is consistent with the proposal that the N-terminal 180 amino acids of NS3 constitute a protease domain. Polyproteins containing NS2A and NS3 with large in-frame deletions of NS2B were not cleaved at the NS2A/NS2B or NS2B/NS3 junctions. Coinfection with a recombinant expressing NS2B complemented these NS2B deletions for NS2B/NS3 cleavage and probably also for NS2A/NS2B cleavage. Thus, NS2B is also required for the NS2A/NS2B and NS2B/NS3 cleavages and can act in trans. Other experiments showed that NS2B was needed, apparently in cis, for NS3/NS4A cleavage and for a series of internal cleavages in NS3. Indirect evidence that NS3 can also act in trans was obtained. Models are discussed for a two-component protease activity requiring both NS2B and NS3.

With rapid progress in DNA synthesis and sequencing, strain engineering starts to be the rate-limiting step in synthetic biology. Here, we report a gRNA-tRNA array for CRISPR-Cas9 (GTR-CRISPR) for multiplexed engineering of Saccharomyces cerevisiae . Using reported gRNAs shown to be effective, this system enables simultaneous disruption of 8 genes with 87% efficiency. We further report an accelerated Lightning GTR-CRISPR that avoids the cloning step in Escherichia coli by directly transforming the Golden Gate reaction mix to yeast. This approach enables disruption of 6 genes in 3 days with 60% efficiency using reported gRNAs and 23% using un-optimized gRNAs. Moreover, we applied the Lightning GTR-CRISPR to simplify yeast lipid networks, resulting in a 30-fold increase in free fatty acid production in 10 days using just two-round deletions of eight previously identified genes. The GTR-CRISPR should be an invaluable addition to the toolbox of synthetic biology and automation.