King Tut had club foot, malaria: study

The celebrated pharaoh Tutankhamen had a club foot, walked with a cane and was killed by malaria, according to a study that used modern genetic testing and computer technology.

Researchers from Egypt, Italy and Germany used DNA testing to draw "the most plausible" family tree to date for Tutankhamen and computerised tomography (CT) scans to determine that the pharaoh and his forebears were unlikely to have had the feminine physiques they are depicted within 3000-year-old artefacts.

They analysed DNA taken from 11 mummies, including the boy king himself, and scanned all but one of the mummies to determine if they were related, look for evidence of genetic disorders and infectious diseases, and determine what killed Tutankhamen at the age of 19.

Tutankhamen, who is often referred to as King Tut, died just nine years into his reign, which lasted from 1333 BC to 1324 BC.

"Many scholars have hypothesised that Tutankhamen's death was attributable to an accident, such as a fall from his chariot or a kick by a horse or other animal; septicaemia or fat embolism secondary to a femur fracture; murder by a blow to the back of the head; or poisoning," the study's authors write.

But genetic testing found evidence that Tutankhamen had been infected with Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes an often deadly form of malaria.
Club foot

The scans and genetic fingerprinting carried out on Tutankhamen also showed he had several disorders, some of which ran in the family. They included a bone disease and a club foot.

So rather than the majestic ruler that Tut is often depicted as, the pharaoh was probably "a young but frail king who needed canes to walk because of the bone-necrotic and sometimes painful Koehler disease II, plus oligodactyly (hypophalangism) in the right foot and clubfoot on the left," they write.

Tut's many disorders probably weakened his immune system over time, and the researchers believe he might have died when, in his immuno-deficient state, he sustained a "sudden leg fracture, possibly introduced by a fall," which snowballed into a life-threatening condition when he contracted malaria.

Experts call for 'resilience thinking'

Society needs to learn from resilient ecosystems if it is to better cope with unanticipated shocks in the future, say experts.

The call comes ahead of a conference on resilience begins today at the Australian National University in Canberra, hosted by Australia 21.

"Resilience is about how we [as individuals or as organisations or societies] bounce back from adversity, from shocks", says Dr Steven Cork, who leads Australia 21's Resilience Project.

He says thinking about resilience is important because humans are facing many challenges that are beyond our control to predict and control - from climate change to the global financial crisis.

"We keep being hit by more and more things that we weren't anticipating," says Cork.
Learning from ecology

Cork says resilience is a feature that has been recognised in the field of ecology for many years.

He says one feature of a resilient ecosystem is that it can more easily bounce back from a shock when it has the ability to keep functioning if one part collapses.

But, says Cork, the typical society relies on centralised networks that are vulnerable to threats.

"It's all dependent on one or a few people or agencies. If they collapse then the whole system collapses," says Cork.

'safe' virus proposed as vaccine

A company is planning to inject people with an HIV vaccine made of the deadly virus itself, albeit a deactivated version.

Vaccines against many viruses, including flu, are made from deactivated versions of those viruses, but such an approach was previously dismissed as too risky in the case of HIV.

Now VIRxSYS of Gaithersburg, Maryland, is resurrecting the controversial approach, thanks to successful tests of a similar vaccine against SIV – also known as simian HIV – in monkeys.

"We said 'let's use HIV against itself', and that's what we're doing," says Gary McGarrity, VIRxSYS's vice president of scientific and clinical affairs.
High-profile flop

The idea of turning to the virus itself follows years of frustration with prospective vaccines based on viruses other than HIV, such as adenoviruses that cause colds.

Adenoviruses have been modified to carry parts of the HIV virus. Although there were hints of modest success with one such vaccine last year, the previous best bet proved to be a high-profile flop in 2007, during a trial dubbed "STEP".

Crucially, the new tests in monkeys suggest a vaccine based on HIV itself might be more effective than these attempts. The company is planning to apply for approval to perform human trials.

VIRxSYS says such trials would initially be only in people who already carry the virus, rather than in healthy people at risk of infection. This will certainly make for a less controversial trial, as it would avoid any chance of the vaccine going "live" and infecting people who didn't have HIV to start with.

Warmer seas may rob corals and rainforests of clouds

Rising ocean temperatures might leave coral reefs in seriously hot water – without clouds for protection.

Five years ago Graham Jones and his team at Southern Cross University in Lismore, New South Wales, Australia, demonstrated that algae living in coral tissue produce a gas called dimethyl sulphide (DMS). When released into the atmosphere, DMS helps clouds form over coral reefs. Jones says that the clouds block sunlight and cool the sea.

His team have now discovered that a rise in ocean temperature of only 2 °C causes some algae to stop producing DMS. As a result, fewer clouds will form over the coral, thinks Jones, allowing more sunlight to shine on the water, warming it still more.
Jones and his colleague Esther Fischer studied staghorn corals taken from Heron Island in Queensland, Australia, by subjecting them to different water temperatures in the lab while recording the amount of DMS released into the atmosphere.

When the water temperature rose from the annual mean of 24 °C to 26 °C, no DMS was released, says Jones.

Normally, DMS exuded by coral algae is picked up by the wind and carried up into the atmosphere. The gas is oxidised and forms small sulphur aerosol particles that attract water vapour and produce clouds.

The findings support Jones's past work, which found that extreme warming of water around the Great Barrier Reef in the early 1990s led to lower DMS levels in the water. But he says this is the first study to measure the effect of water temperature on the amount of DMS entering the atmosphere.