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In 2013, an 18-month old boy got sick after playing near a hollow tree in his backyard, in a remote West African village. He developed a fever and started vomiting. His stool turned black. Two days later, he died. Two years and more than 11,000 deaths later, the World Health Organization put out a report saying the Ebola outbreak that likely emanated from that hollow tree may have been caused in part by deforestation, led by "foreign mining and timber operations." The tree the boy played near was infested with fruit bats — bats that may have been pushed into the boy's village because upwards of 80 percent of their natural habitat had been destroyed. (Rott, 6/22)

Ned Sharpless is worried. The director of the National Cancer Institute believes the Covid-19 pandemic is posing a danger to cancer patients across a wide spectrum of care and research. People — and their health care providers — are postponing screening measures like mammograms and colonoscopies. Fewer cancers are being diagnosed, and treatment regimens are being stretched out into less frequent encounters. Clinical trials have seen patient enrollment plummet. (Cooney, 6/19)

Over the past few weeks, 23andMe and other genetic testing companies have made headlines for releasing candid statements acknowledging that their field and their products are too white. It’s a problem with which geneticist Tshaka Cunningham is all too familiar. As executive director of the nonprofit Faith Based Genetic Research Institute, Cunningham has traveled widely to speak at Black churches about the value of genetic research. And as co-founder and chief scientific officer of a genetics startup called TruGenomix, he’s working to recruit more diverse cohorts to build a genetic test for gauging risk of developing PTSD. (Robbins, Garde and Feuerstein, 6/19)

New research untangles the complex code the brain uses to distinguish between a vast array of smells, offering a scientific explanation for how it separates baby powder from bleach, lemon from orange, or freshly cut grass from freshly brewed coffee. A single scent can trigger a complex chain of events in what’s known as the olfactory bulb, the brain’s control center for smell. To unravel the intricacies of that process, researchers in the U.S. and Italy turned to a technique known as optogenetics, which uses light to control neurons in the brain. (Isselbacher, 6/18)

Getting the right drug to the right place at the right time has been the leading principle of precision medicine, guided by GPS-like genomic advances to engineer targeted therapies. New research from the Whitehead Institute suggests more traditional chemotherapy drugs could also be fine-tuned to hit smaller targets within cells, possibly boosting their efficacy. (Cooney, 6/18)

Robert Taylor has lived on the banks of the Mississippi River in Reserve, Louisiana, his entire life. Both of his parents worked in the local sugar refinery when plantations made up this stretch of the river between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. But where sugar cane once grew, chemicals now spew from smoke stacks. When the petrochemical industry moved in, the predominantly Black community’s health began to suffer. “We didn't know why. We were just ignorant plantation hands, you know, the descendants of slaves," he said. (Denne, 6/21)

A neurologist who encased his healthy right arm in a pink fiberglass cast for two weeks has shown how quickly the brain can change after an injury or illness. Daily scans of Dr. Nico Dosenbach's brain showed that circuits controlling his immobilized arm disconnected from the body's motor system within 48 hours. But during the same period, his brain began to produce new signals seemingly meant to keep those circuits intact and ready to reconnect quickly with the unused limb. (Hamilton, 6/18)

A new study from China showed that antibodies faded quickly in both asymptomatic and symptomatic COVID-19 patients during convalescence, raising questions about whether the illness leads to any lasting immunity to the virus afterward. The study, which focused on 37 asymptomatic and 37 symptomatic patients, showed that more than 90% of both groups showed steep declines in levels of SARS-COV-2–specific immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies within 2 to 3 months after onset of infection, according to a report published yesterday in Nature Medicine. Further, 40% of the asymptomatic group tested negative for IgG antibodies 8 weeks after they were released from isolation. (Roos, 6/19)

As states gradually begin to reopen and some grapple with the consequences of loosened restrictions, experts are peering into what the future with COVID-19 may look like. While viruses are capable of mutating on their own and may evolve over time, experts say it's society's collective actions rather than the virus itself that may determine whether the virus becomes more or less dangerous. (David and Johnson, 6/18)