FROM THE EDITOR

It has been almost one year since the first case of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) 
has been reported in China, which eventually led to the ongoing pandemic. As of 
16 December 2020, the World Health Organization reported 72,196,732 confirmed 
cases of COVID-19 and 1,630,521 deaths globally, and 451,839 confirmed cases 
and 8,812 deaths in the Philippines (https://covid19.who.int/). Although these 
numbers continue to increase every day, there is light at the end of the tunnel 
because the US Food and Drug Administration has recently issued emergency use 
authorization for one of the vaccines that have been developed to combat this 
dreaded disease. Other vaccines are expected to be authorized for emergency use 
in the coming days. These vaccines have been developed and approved for use at 
an unprecedented speed – barely one year. Normally, it takes about 10 years for 
vaccines to be developed and approved. We hope that these vaccines will reach the 
shores of the Philippines soon so that we can already put an end to this pandemic 
and get back to our normal lives.

In this issue, we feature four research articles. The first article is by Torres et al. 
who used geometric morphometrics to uncover body shape differences among 
populations of the striped snakehead (locally known as dalag) from three sites in 
Laguna de Bay and to correlate these shape differences with the physicochemical 
characteristics of water in those sites. The authors wanted to find out if there were 
selective pressures within each site that would lead to different morphotypes in 
the species. The authors found that shape variation was greatest in the head region, 
which was correlated with differences in dissolved oxygen content and pH of water 
in the three sampling sites. The second article is by Bacaoco et al. who designed 
a low-cost differential optical absorption spectroscopy (DOAS) for air quality 
monitoring in urban areas. The authors demonstrated that the DOAS set-up that they 
developed is capable of measuring trace amounts of atmospheric nitrogen dioxide 
(NO

2
) concentration and aerosol optical thickness (AOT). In addition to its reliable 

sensitivity and it being a cheaper alternative for environmental monitoring of 
pollutants, the set-up can also be made portable so that it can be easily transported 
to the field. The third article is by Buenaventura and Yago who developed a selective 
and sensitive electrochemical biosensor for uric acid determination using carbon 
paste electrode (CPE) modified with copper (II) oxide (CuO) particles and urate 
oxidase (UOx) enzyme. The authors also demonstrated that their UOx-CuO-CPE 



biosensor is reusable, reproducible, and stable even after five weeks of storage. 
Uric acid is the end-product of purine catabolism in humans and other primates. 
Abnormal levels of uric acid can lead to various diseases; hence, uric acid levels 
are routinely analyzed in clinical laboratories during physical examination. The 
last article is by Fornillos et al. who used DNA barcoding to establish the identity 
of bivalves collected from two freshwater environments in the Philippines. The 
bivalves were found to be Chinese pond mussel (Sinanodonta woodiana), which are 
known invasive exotic species. Genetic analyses of DNA sequences of these bivalves 
from the Philippines and from other countries revealed that the S. woodiana that 
were included in the authors’ study could have originated from Indonesia or 
Malaysia. The authors surmised that introduced fish species carrying the larvae of 
this exotic bivalve species could have been the most likely route of introduction 
into the Philippines.

                                                                                              Jonas P. Quilang, Ph.D.

                        Editor-in-Chief