03

I did not realize for a week I had what turned out to be early Covid-19 symptoms, which suddenly brought this thing in the media into my (and my colleagues’ and friends’) immediate realm. At the same time, I had to follow the research shutdown of ETH, and my lab with it, from quarantine.

Low genetic diversity of Mycobacterium tuberculosis suggests mainly human factors for variations in infection outcome. Published in PNAS, the ETH groups of Zampieri, Sauer, and Stelling with the Gagneux lab (Swiss TPH) developed an approach to systematically predict metabolic functionality of rare genetic variants and identify strain-specific metabolic vulnerabilities.

We are used to certain habits in our days. We never think much of them simply because we never expect anything to happen and change them. This is what this situation has done. It has led to a lot of confusion in our routines, but it also gave us time now to do the tasks we were keeping for “later”.

Proteusins are a family of post-translationally modified peptides that largely remain in silico-predicted. In a recent Angewandte Chemie article, the Piel and Oxenius groups (IMB) describe the first cyanobacterial proteusin representative named landornamide A with an intriguing antiviral activity.

A glimpse at the email subject, “ETH Zurich suspends classroom teaching”, was enough to realize that the final semester of my bachelor’s studies has just changed drastically. Although this step was not surprising, I was staggered: From one moment to the next, my desk became an auditorium, a laboratory bench, a meeting room and the place to socialize.