SCIENCE sciencemag.org 9 JULY 2021 • VOL 373 ISSUE 6551 141IMAGE: ERIN DILLON AND JORGE CEBALLOS
those numbers, the company is in a “con-
tinued and constructive dialogue with the
European Medicines Agency” to authorize
the vaccine, CureVac CEO Franz-Werner
Haas said last week.A genetic ‘vaccination’ for bats
INFECTIOUS DISEASES |To p r e v e n t
another pandemic, two researchers have
proposed spreading a genetic change
through populations of wild bats to protect
them from coronaviruses that could spill
into humans. The approach, known as
a gene drive, is “far from orthodox,” say
Daniel Douek of the U.S. National Institute
of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and
Yaniv Erlich of the Interdisciplinary Center
Herzliya in their proposal, published last
week on Github and first reported by
STAT. The method would use the gene
editing technology CRISPR to introduce a
strand of genetic material into the genome
of horseshoe bats, a known coronavirus
reservoir. The added strand would destroy
invading coronavirus and would prefer-
entially pass to an altered bat’s offspring,
spreading the immunity widely through
the population. Gene drive approaches are
under development to eradicate populations
of other animals, including mosquitos that
transmit malaria and other viruses that
harm humans. but no animals bearing such
modifications have yet been released.Iran unveils ambitious telescope
ASTRONOMY |Iran last week inaugurated
what aspires to be a world-class optical
telescope—but the facility is months away
from seeing first light. Perched on Mount
Gargash in central Iran, the $30 million
Iranian National Observatory (INO) will
study exoplanets and gamma ray bursts,
hunt for dark matter, and probe galaxy
formation. Although INO’s 3.4-meter
mirror is relatively small by today’s
standards, Gargash’s tranquil air rivals
that of Hawaii’s Mauna Kea, home to
some of the world’s top telescopes, which
could make INO the best general-purpose
telescope in the region. Shifting political
winds delayed construction for years, and
international sanctions on most foreign
transactions forced Iranian scientists to
find creative ways to import the primary
mirror from Germany. The mirror has not
yet been installed, and it will take months
to calibrate before observations can begin.
For that reason, some Iranian astrono-
mers criticized INO’s inauguration as
premature. It came shortly before Iranian
President Hassan Rouhani, an INO sup-
porter, finishes his term next month.Europe research body gets chief
LEADERSHIP |The European Commission
last week appointed German biologist
Maria Leptin as the new president of
the European Research Council (ERC),
which as Europe’s largest basic science
funder hands out roughly €2 billion in
grants per year. Her 4-year term begins
on 1 October. Leptin comes to ERC after
10 years leading the European Molecular
Biology Organization, an intergovernmen-
tal research institute based in Heidelberg,
Germany, that is funded by 30 countries.
She has chaired an evaluation panel for
ERC grants since 2008. Leptin is seen as
a safe pair of hands after the contentious
resignation last year of her predeces-
sor, Italian American nanoscientist
Mauro Ferrari. Ferrari fell out with ERC’s
Scientific Council after he proposed solicit-
ing grants for studies of COVID-19, which
would have departed from the body’s tradi-
tion of relying on bottom-up ideas.Big gravity observatory advances
ASTROPHYSICS |European physicists’
plans to build the Einstein Telescope, a
radical new gravitational-wave observa-
tory, received a boost last week when an
advisory panel added the facility to its
road map of future projects. Over the next
3 to 4 years, developers will flesh out the
design for the €1.9 billion observatory,
which could be built by 2035. It would be
nestled in a triangular tunnel, 10 kilo-
meters on a side, containing three pairs
of V-shaped detectors called interfero-
meters. With 10 times the sensitivity of
existing detectors, it could detect gravi-
tational waves from black-hole mergers
throughout the universe. Physicists hope
the recommendation by the panel, the
European Strategy Forum on Research
Infrastructures, will help them expand
the collaboration from the current five
nations—Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands,
Poland, and Spain—to all of Europe.This image of a modern
requiem shark scale
was taken at 175x
magnification.CONSERVATIONShark scales reveal teeming ancient population
S
hark skin may look as smooth as a wetsuit, but it consists of tiny scales that are
specialized for speed, toughness, or defense. Now researchers have shown that
the scales, called denticles, shed by sharks can reveal changes in population size.
Erin Dillon, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Santa Barbara,
collected denticles from a 7000-year-old reef that is now on dry ground in
Panama, and from nearby living coral reefs. The denticles had accumulated in the
ancient sediment three times faster than they do today, Dillion and colleagues report
this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggesting that
the shark population was once three times larger. Shark populations in the western
Caribbean began to decline precipitously in the 1980s after fishers targeted them.