A new scientific book concludes that the solution to stopping viruses and epidemics that cause major health crises such as the emerging corona virus may be in understanding and studying the billions of small organisms that spread in nature, which are responsible for the diseases that the world has lived and is experiencing.
The agency publishedBloombergA report adapted from the book “Humans Against Microbes”, confirms that these organisms spread quietly in nature or within wildlife, and they cause diseases and viruses.
After the Corona virus and what caused it in the world, the book expects scientists to focus their work on these organisms, which are microscopic microbes that multiply and spread viruses throughout the earth.
The book calls for investing in a long-term surveillance system to understand how these microscopic creatures behave and the dangers they pose.
The potential gains from revealing the genetic secrets of microbes go beyond epidemic prevention, but also include all of the next great civilizational challenges such as food security, biological weapons, ocean health, and climate change, to name a few, according to the report prepared by the agency.
To understand these microorganisms and examine their nature and work, the book calls for the use of artificial intelligence, which has proven to be an important element in the fight against diseases and epidemics, and will play a pivotal role in the future.
The report conveys how, for example, in the early 2020s, artificial intelligence helped discover a unique antibiotic effective against dangerous strains of Escherichia coli and drug-resistant tuberculosis, by a team led by synthetic biologist James Collins at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States.
Another element, according to the report, in the fight against these microorganisms is bioengineering that disables vectors of animal diseases.
The report notes that last year, a British biotech company released genetically modified mosquitoes into the air to suppress a type of mosquito called Aedes aegypti, which transmits Zika and dengue fever and spreads rapidly around the world.
As vaccine makers work to target new mutants of the virus that causes Covid-19, scientists are looking further and searching for a comprehensive vaccine capable of attacking future strains of Corona or even staving off another pandemic.