General News

CIPHER’s new wet labs will be operational in January 2023 Photo by Jacob Scannell. On UNC Charlotte’s main campus, supplies and equipment are already being placed on the fourth floor of the bioinformatics building. That is where the new wet labs of the Center for Computational Intelligence to Predict Health and Environmental Risks (CIPHER) will […]

SARS-CoV-2 reinfection likely without vaccination Researchers from Yale School of Public Health and Temple University joined forces provided the first estimates of the expected probability of infection given IgG antibody levels to the spike protein for SARS-CoV-2, as well as for SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and the endemic coronaviruses HCoV-229E, HCoV-HKU1, HCoV-OC43, and HCoV-NL63, under endemic conditions. […]

Professors Daniel Janies and Adam Reitzel, co-directors of the new CIPHER center at UNC Charlotte. Photographs By Herman Nicholson. In a new article, Phillip Brown (assistant director of strategic content for University Communications) writes about how CIPHER researchers are taking a collaborative approach to protect public health. In the article, Brown interviews Drs. Daniel Janies […]

Photo by Kat Lawrence. Like it or not, we need bats. They get a bad rap (and can be a little scary). Yet, they are essential to a balanced ecosystem. Dr. Laurel Yohe, Assistant Professor of Bioinformatics at UNC Charlotte, explains why. Moreover, in this article by Susan Messina, Dr. Yohe also shares the existential […]

UNC Charlotte’s response to monkeypox This electron microscopic (EM) image depicted a monkeypox virion obtained from a clinical sample associated with the 2003 prairie dog outbreak. It was a thin-section image of a human skin sample. On the left were mature, oval-shaped virus particles, and on the right were the crescents and spherical particles of […]

It’s been a bit since we’ve heard much about a new COVID variant. With people starting to get their boosters and the holidays in full-swing, this seems like an inopportune time to hear about a new, “mega-mutated” variant: B.1.1.529. B.1.1.529 was first uploaded to GISAID on November 22nd (accession: EPI_ISL_6752027) by a team of researchers […]

Omicron variant: Group of local researchers discusses vaccine effectiveness against the new SARS-CoV-2 variant Transmission electron micrograph of SARS-CoV-2 virus particles, isolated from a patient. Image captured and color-enhanced at the NIAID Integrated Research Facility (IRF) in Fort Detrick, Maryland. Credit: NIAID (click here). Professor Daniel Janies (Charlotte’s Department of Bioinformatics and Genomics) and other […]

UNC Charlotte is part of the ARPA-H in NC Coalition UNC Charlotte is one of the members that compose the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) in NC Coalition. The ARPA-H in NC Coalition was formed to partner with the agency in its mission to improve the health and lives of all Americans. This […]

Fundamentals of genomic epidemiology and the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic Ultrastructural morphology exhibited by coronaviruses highlighting the protein particles E, S, and M located on the outer surface of SARS-COV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19. Source: Public Health Image Library (PHIL, ID ID #23312). Researchers at UNC Charlotte’s Bioinformatics Research Center (BRC) published […]

Charlotte’s Bioinformatics Lab informs Mecklenburg County’s COVID-19 public health approach Photo by Susan Messina. Since the emergence last summer of the COVID-19 delta variant, UNC Charlotte has partnered with the Mecklenburg County Health Department to provide genome sequencing — the process of extracting and examining RNA from positive COVID-19 tests — to help health officials […]