Nature Middle East | House of Wisdom

NME’s weekly science dose (June 27 – July 4)

It’s not easy being a science researcher starting off a career in Egypt. Sameh Soror, a structural biologist at Helwan University, Cairo, knows this all too well. As the first Arab to now co-chair the Global Young Academy (GYA), an organization that helps support early career scientists across the world, he’s keen to give his colleagues a voice.

The GYA helps its members set up National Young Academies in different countries to lobby national governments to address issues of concern for young researchers. However, bureaucracy continues to complicate the establishment of such academies in the region. Soror tells NME about ongoing plans to establish one in Egypt, amongst other things, here.

In other news, while migraines are a common neurological disorder, little is known about their links to genetic influences. A new study, including researchers from King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre in Riyadh, has identified links between 12 gene loci and migraine susceptibility.

The researchers combed through 9 genome-wide association studies involving a total of 23,285 migraine sufferers and 95,425 population-matched controls. Read more about the study here.

Finally, a drug-resistant strain of salmonella has been on the rise in the region for a number of years now, and new research from Morocco and France has highlighted how it has spread and acquired resistance to antibiotics.  The research analyzed hundreds of subcultures of the strain, called  S Kentucky ST198-X1, and found that a far greater percentage of more recently collected isolates were resistant to the commonly-used antibiotic ciprofloxcin. More details here.

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