Publications by authors named "D J Martin"

Botswana, like the rest of the world, has been significantly impacted by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). In December 2022, we detected a monophyletic cluster of genomes comprising a sublineage of the Omicron variant of concern (VOC) designated as B.1.

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Now that it has been realized that viruses are ubiquitous, questions have been raised on factors influencing their diversity and distribution. For phytoviruses, understanding the interplay between plant diversity and virus species richness and prevalence remains cardinal. As both the amplification and the dilution of viral species richness due to increasing host diversity have been theorized and observed, a deeper understanding of how plants and viruses interact in natural environments is needed to explore how host availability conditions viral diversity and distributions.

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Prion diseases, or transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), are neurodegenerative disorders caused by the accumulation of misfolded conformers (PrP) of the cellular prion protein (PrP). During the pathogenesis, the PrP seeds disseminate in the central nervous system and convert PrP leading to the formation of insoluble assemblies. As for conventional infectious diseases, variations in the clinical manifestation define a specific prion strain which correspond to different PrP structures.

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Introduction: In September 2023 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved an updated mRNA COVID-19 vaccine targeting the XBB.1.5 sublineage.

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