Nature: Monkeypox virus keeps getting better at spreading among humans

October 31, 2024 —

However, the pattern did not show up in a report posted to a preprint server in August¹. In that study, a team sequenced clade Ia virus samples collected between 2018 and 2024. That the researchers didn’t spot the pattern suggests that it might be a recent development. “We didn’t pick up on strong signs of evolution” in the more rural and endemic regions of the DRC, says Dr. Jason Kindrachuk, a virologist at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, who collaborates with Mbala and co-authored the August preprint as well as the Virological one. “But in Kinshasa, it seems that there is something unique going on.”

To read the full article, please visit Nature.

Central Africa, Infectious Disease, Monkeypox, mpox, Virology

Rady Faculty dean urges new grads to ‘take flight’ in their careers

As the sun shone brightly into the Brodie atrium at Bannatyne campus for fall convocation on Oct. 31, Dr. Peter Nickerson, vice-provost (health sciences) and dean, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, asked the graduates of four health programs to take inspiration from the mural by Anishinaabe artist Blake Angeconeb that surrounded them.

New Zealand scholar finds common ground with Manitoba’s Indigenous people

While visiting the College of Rehabilitation Sciences this fall, Katrina Pōtiki Bryant, associate dean Māori at the School of Physiotherapy, University of Otago in New Zealand, said she was struck by the many similarities between Indigenous people in Manitoba and her homeland.