The team started with nanoparticles of iron oxide, which have already found use in both MRI and MPI, and joined them to the nerve-binding peptide NP41. [42] Northeastern chemical engineer Thomas Webster, who specializes in developing nano-scale medicine and technology to treat diseases, is part of a contingency of scientists that are contributing ideas and technology to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to fight the COVID-19 outbreak. [41] According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, common human coronaviruses usually cause mild to moderate upper-respiratory tract illnesses, like the common cold. [40] When diseases reinforce each other, they rapidly accelerate through the population, then fizzle out as they run out of new hosts. [39] It's no coincidence that some of the worst viral disease outbreaks in recent years-SARS, MERS, Ebola, Marburg and likely the newly arrived 2019-nCoV virus-originated in bats. [38] An interdisciplinary team of researchers at Colorado State University has used computational chemistry, biochemistry and virology to uncover new information on how viruses such as West Nile, dengue and Zika replicate. [37] David Baker, Professor of Biochemistry and Director of the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington will speak about how algorithmic processes such as de novo design predict protein structures, protein folding mechanisms, and new protein functions. [36] A research team at Kobe University has developed a method of artificially controlling the anchorage position of target proteins in engineered baker's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae). [35] Scientists have found a new way to home in on the proteins covering a particular cell's surface. The feat offers insight into how brain cells form intricate networks during development. [34]