Introduction Rhinoviruses (RV) and Enteroviruses (EV) are among the main causative etiologies of Lower Respiratory Tract Infection (LRTI) in children. The clinical spectrum of RV/EV infection is wide, which could be explained by diverse environmental, pathogen-, and host-related factors. Little is known about the nasopharyngeal microbiota as a risk factor or disease modifier for RV/EV infection in pediatric patients. This study describes distinct nasopharyngeal microbiota profiles according to RV/EV LRTI status in children. Methods Cross-sectional case-control study, conducted at Hospital Sant de Déu (Barcelona, Spain) from 2017 to 2020. Three groups of children <5 years were included: healthy controls without viral detection (Group A), mild or asymptomatic controls with RV/EV infection (Group B), and cases with severe RV/EV infection admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) (Group C). Nasopharyngeal samples were collected from participants for viral DNA/RNA detection by multiplex-PCR and bacterial microbiota characterization by 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Results A total of 104 subjects were recruited (A=17, B=34, C=53). Children’s nasopharyngeal microbiota composition varied according to their RV/EV infection status. Richness and diversity were decreased among children with severe infection. Nasopharyngeal microbiota profiles enriched in genus Dolosigranulum were related to respiratory health, while genus Haemophiluswas specifically predominant in children with severe RV/EV LRTI. Children with mild or asymptomatic RV/EV infection showed an intermediate profile. Conclusions These results suggest a close relationship between the nasopharyngeal microbiota and different clinical presentations of RV/EV infection.

A document by Fernanda Mota. Click on the document to view its contents.

Objectives: Airway clearance therapy (ACT) is an important component of therapy for cystic fibrosis (CF) but is associated with significant treatment burden. Highly effective CFTR modulator therapy (HEMT) has improved pulmonary function for many people with CF(pwCF). We sought to understand changes in attitudes and practices about ACT in the post-HEMT era. Study design: Surveys of CF community members and CF care team members Methodology: Separate surveys were created for the CF community and CF care providers to evaluate attitudes towards ACT and exercise in the post-HEMT era. We solicited answers from pwCF via the CF Foundation’s Community Voice and from CF care providers via CF Foundation listservs. Surveys were available between July 20 and August 3, 2021. Results: Surveys were completed by 153 community members (parents of children and pwCF) and 192 CF care providers. Belief that exercise can substitute partially for ACT was endorsed similarly by community members (59%) and providers (68%) . After starting HEMT, 36% of parents of children and 51% of adults did fewer ACT treatments including 13% who stopped ACT. Adults reported altering their ACT regimen more than parents of children. Half of providers had changed their ACT recommendations for those on HEMT. Fifty-three percent of respondents had discussed changing ACT with their care team (36% of parents, 58% of pwCF). Conclusions: Providers should be aware that ACT management changes may have been undertaken by pwCF who have pulmonary benefits of HEMT. Treatment burden should be considered in co-management decisions regarding ACT and exercise.

Animals show among-individual variation in behaviours, including migration behaviours, which are often repeatable across time periods and contexts, commonly termed “personality”. These behaviours can be correlated, forming a behavioural syndrome. In this study, we assessed the repeatability and correlation of different behavioural traits i.e., boldness, exploration and sociality and the link to migration patterns in Atlantic cod juveniles. To do so, we collected repeated measurements within two short-term (three days) and two long-term (two months) intervals of these traits and genotypes of the Pan I locus, which is indirectly correlated to feeding migration patterns in this species. We found that mainly exploration behaviour was repeatable in the short- and long-term intervals, and a trend for the relationship between exploration and the Pan I locus. Boldness and sociality were only repeatable in the second short-term interval indicating a possible development of stability over time and did not show a relation with the Pan I locus. We found no indication of behavioural syndromes among the studied traits. Although we were unable to identify the existence of a migration syndrome for the migratory genotype (Pan IBB), this study is the first one to highlight the existence of a possible link between the personality trait exploration and the migration-linked Pan I locus. This supports the need for further research that should focus on the effect of exploration tendency and other personality traits on cod movement, including the migratory (frontal) ecotype, to develop management strategies based on behavioural units, rather than treating the population as a single homogeneous stock.

Laser- based PVI has been around for many years and this modality of ablation is to provide a continuous circular overlapping lesions around the PVs' ostia. In order to ensure the continuity of the lesion, a camera is embedded in the system as to guide the placement of sequential applications with the target to make an adequate overlapping of two contiguous lesions as to reduce the likelihood of gaps. The first version of the system required the operator to manually rotate the catheter as to create a continuous arc of lesion around the PV's ostium. This approach is time-consuming, with a substantial overall time for each PV. The evolvement of the technique has been recently offered, with a novel semi-automated VGLA as to improve ablation efficiency by using a motorized system which moves the laser arc continuously in order to reduce the application time and, hopefully, minimize the creation of gaps.

Rationale: Position-Specific (PS) δ13C values of propane has proven its ability to provide valuable information on evolution history of natural gases. Two major approaches to measure PS δ13C values of propane are quantitative NMR (qNMR) and GC-Py(rolysis)-GC-IRMS. The qNMR has verified measurement accuracy, however, required large sample size and long experimental time limit its applications. The GC-Py-GC-IRMS is more versatile method with small sample size, but its accuracy has not been demonstrated. Methods: We measured PS δ13C values of propane from nine natural gases, using the both methods and evaluated the accuracy of GC-Py-GC-IRMS method. Results: The results show that large carbon isotope fractionations occurred for the both terminal and central carbons within propane during pyrolysis. The isotope fractionations during the pyrolysis are reproducible at optimum conditions, but vary between the two GC-Py-GC-IRMS systems tested, affected by experimental conditions (e.g., pyrolysis temperature, flow rate, and reactor conditions). Conclusions: Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate and calibrate each GC-Py-GC-IRMS system using propane gases whose PS δ13C values are accurately determined. This study also highlights a need of PS isotope standards for propane and other molecules.

Bullous pemphigoid is an autoimmune disorder characterized by blister formation. Hypereosinophilic syndrome is a myeloproliferative disorder that presents with papules, nodules, urticarial lesions, and blisters. The coexistence of these disorders may highlight common molecular and cellular factors. We describe a 16-years-old patient with coexistence of hypereosinophilic syndrome and bullous pemphigoid.

70-year-old male with primary progressive multiple sclerosis that had a severe episode of oropharyngeal dysphagia following initiation of carbamazepine. He was being treated for trigeminal neuralgia. Four days after discontinuation of carbamazepine resulted in a complete resolution of the patient's dysphagia, and he returned to baseline.

Background: Among children with tracheostomies, little is known about how respiratory culture results differ between states with and without acute respiratory infections (ARI), or the overall test performance of respiratory cultures. Objective: To determine the association of respiratory culture organism isolation with diagnosis of ARI in children with tracheostomies, and assess test characteristics of respiratory cultures in the diagnosis of bacterial ARI (bARI). Methods: This single-center, retrospective cohort study included respiratory cultures of children with tracheostomies obtained between 2010-2018. The primary predictor was ARI diagnosis code at the time of culture; the primary outcomes were respiratory culture organism isolation and species identified. Generalized estimating equations were used to assess for association between ARI diagnosis and isolation of any organism while controlling for potential confounders and accounting for within-patient clustering. A multinomial logistic regression equation assessed for association with specific species. Test characteristics were calculated using bARI diagnosis as the reference standard. Results: Among 3,578 respiratory cultures from 533 children (median 4 cultures/child, IQR: 1-9), 25.9% were obtained during ARI and 17.2% had ≥1 organism. Children with ARI diagnosis had higher odds of organism identification (aOR 1.29, 95% CI 1.16–1.44). When controlling for covariates, ARI was associated with isolation of H. influenzae, M. catarrhalis, S. pneumoniae, and S. pyogenes. Test characteristics revealed a 24.3% sensitivity, 85.2% specificity, 36.5% positive predictive value, and 76.3% negative predictive value in screening for bARI. Conclusion: The utility of respiratory culture testing to screen for, diagnose, and direct treatment of ARI in children with tracheostomies is limited.

It is well understood that natural disasters interact to affect the resilience and prosperity of communities and disproportionately affect low income families and communities of color. However, given the lack of a common theoretical framework, it is rare for these interactions to be well understood or quantified. As an example, we consider the interaction of severe weather events (e.g., hurricanes and tornadoes) and epidemics (e.g., COVID-19). Observing events unfolding in southeastern U.S. communities has caused us to conjecture that the interactive effects of catastrophic disturbances and stressors might be much more considerable than previously recognized. For instance, hurricane evacuations increase human aggregation, a key factor that affects the transmission of acute respiratory infections like SARS-CoV-2. Similarly, weather damage to health infrastructure could significantly reduce a community’s ability to provide services to people sick with COVID-19 and other diseases. As globalization and human population and movement continue to increase and weather events due to climate change are becoming more intense and severe, such complex interactions are expected to magnify and significantly impact environmental and human health.

Identifying sex-linked markers in genomic datasets is important, because their analyses can reveal sex-specific biology, and their presence in supposedly neutral autosomal datasets can result in incorrect estimates of genetic diversity, population structure and parentage. But detecting sex-linked loci can be challenging, and available scripts neglect some categories of sex-linked variation. Here, we present new R functions to (1) identify and separate sex-linked loci in ZW and XY sex determination systems and (2) infer the genetic sex of individuals based on these loci. Two additional functions are presented, to (3) remove loci with artefactually high heterozygosity, and (4) produce input files for parentage analysis. We test these functions on genomic data for two sexually-monomorphic bird species, including one with a neo-sex chromosome system, by comparing biological inferences made before and after removing sex-linked loci using our function. We found that standard filters, such as low read depth and call rate, failed to remove up to 28.7% of sex-linked loci. This led to (i) overestimation of population FIS by ≤ 9%, and the number of private alleles by ≤ 8%; (ii) wrongly inferring significant sex-differences in heterozygosity, (iii) obscuring genetic population structure, and (iv) inferring ~11% fewer correct parentages. We discuss how failure to remove sex-linked markers can lead to incorrect biological inferences (e.g., sex-biased dispersal and cryptic population structure) and misleading management recommendations. For reduced-representation datasets with at least 15 known-sex individuals of each sex, our functions offer convenient, easy-to-use resources to avoid this, and to sex the remaining individuals.

Although plastid genome (plastome) structure is highly conserved across most seed plants, investigations during the past two decades have revealed several disparately related lineages that have experienced substantial rearrangements. Most plastomes have two inverted repeat regions and two single-copy regions with few dispersed repeats. However, the plastomes of some taxa do harbor long repeat sequences (>300 bp). These long repeats make it difficult to assemble complete plastomes using short read data, leading to misassemblies and consensus sequences that have spurious rearrangements. Long read sequencing can potentially overcome these challenges. However, there is no consensus as to the most effective method for accurately assembling plastomes using long read data. Here, we generated a pipeline, plastid Genome Assembly Using Long-read data (ptGAUL) to address the problem of assembling of plastomes using long read data from Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) or Pacific Biosciences (Pacbio) platforms. We demonstrated the efficacy of the ptGAUL pipeline using 16 published long read datasets. We showed that ptGAUL produces accurate and unbiased assemblies. Additionally, we applied ptGAUL to assemble four Juncus (Juncaceae) plastomes using ONT long reads. Our results revealed many long repeats and rearrangements in Juncus plastomes compared with basal lineages of Poales.

A document by George Crossley. Click on the document to view its contents.

Adaptive phenotypes are shaped by a combination of genetic and environmental forces, and while the literature is rich with studies focusing on either genetics or environment contributions, those that consider both are rare. Here we utilize the cichlid oral jaw apparatus to fill this knowledge-gap. First, we employed RNA-seq in bony and ligamentous tissues important for jaw opening to identify differentially expressed genes between species and across foraging environments. Our foraging treatments were designed to force animals to employ either suction or biting/scraping, which broadly mimic pelagic or benthic modes of feeding. We found a large number of differentially expressed genes between species, and while we identified relatively few differences between environments, species differences were far more pronounced when reared in the pelagic versus benthic environment. Further, these data carried the signature of genetic assimilation, and implicated cell cycle regulation in shaping the jaw across species and environments. Next, we repeated the foraging experiment and performed ATAC-seq procedures on nuclei harvested from the same tissues. Cross-referencing results from both analyses revealed subsets of genes that were both differentially expressed and differentially accessible in either the pelagic (n=15) or the benthic environment (n=11), as well as loci where differences were robust to foraging environment (n=13). All in all, these data provide novel insights into the epigenetic, genetic, and cellular bases of species- and environment-specific bone shapes, as well as the evolution of phenotypic plasticity in this iconic model system.

Key PointsPrevious studies have linked recurrent or persistent BPPV to age, anxiety or/and depression and medical comorbidityFactors such as the socioeconomical status have not been assessed.In our retrospective powered cohort we showed that there is a positive correlation between recurrent or persistent BPPV and ageWe found no correlation with the presence of underlying anxiety/depression and recurrent or persistent BPPV and age.While one would have expected that the socioeconomical and educational status would have had an impact on recurrent/persistent BPPV, using the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation, we did not identify such link.

Recently, enormous culture profiles and datasets from biomanufacturing processes to produce recombinant therapeutic proteins (RTP) such as monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) could be generated by virtue of the advancement in process analytical techniques and artificial intelligence (AI). Thus, now it is highly necessary to develop AI-based data-driven models (DDMs) and exploit them accordingly in order to further enhance operational efficiency and accelerate reliable product supply. Since bioprocess is a complex and dynamic system, DDMs are practical and particularly useful to describe the intrinsic relationship among biological and process parameters and cell culture conditions by capturing inherent patterns and to produce high-quality RTP under consistent operations as well as to decrease cost and time by predicting incipient or abrupt faults during the cell cultures. In this work, we provide the practical guideline for choosing the best DDM on given mAb-producing Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cell culture data sets, enabling us to forecast culture performance such as VCD, and mAb titer as well as glucose, lactate and ammonia concentrations in real time manner. Via the case study with 32 fed-batch data sets of CHO cell cultures, we suggested best combination of model elements including AI algorithms and multi-step ahead forecasting strategies, for good prediction in terms of the computational load as well as the model accuracy and reliability, which is applicable to implementation of interactive data-driven model within bioprocess digital twins. We believe this systematic study can help bioprocess engineers to start developing predictive DDMs with their own data and learn how their cell cultures behave in near future, thereby making proactive decision possible.

Do we need more studies?Max M. van Noesel, MD, PhD, MSc1,2*Department of Solid Tumors, Princess Máxima Center for Pediatric Oncology, Utrecht, the NetherlandsDivision Imaging & Oncology, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, the Netherlands*Correspondance to: M.M van Noesel, MD, PhD, MSc, Department of Solid Tumors, Princess Máxima Center, Heidelberglaan 25, 3584 CS Utrechtc, Telephone: +31-6 5000 6581, Email: [email protected] Text word count: 968 Abstract: - Short running title: Highlight PBC-22-1061 Tables: - Figures: - Abbreviations: -

The design and fabrication of flexible, porous, conductive electrodes with customizable functions become the prime challenge in the development of new-generation wearable electronics, especially for rechargeable batteries. Here, NiCo bi-alloy particulate catalysts loaded self-supporting carbon foam framework (NiCo@SCF) as a flexible electrode has been fabricated through one facile adsorption-pyrolysis method using a commercial melamine foam. Compared with the electrode with Pt/C and Ir/C benchmark catalysts, the NiCo@SCF electrode exhibited superior bifunctional electrocatalytic performance in alkaline media with a half-wave potential of 0.906V for oxygen reduction reaction, an overpotential of 286 mV at j=10 mA cm−2 for oxygen evolution reaction, and stable bifunctional performance with a small degradation after 20,000 voltammetric cycles. The as-assembled aqueous zinc-air battery (ZAB) with NiCo@SCF as a self-supporting air cathode demonstrated a high peak power density of 178.6 mW cm-2 at a current density of 10 mA cm−2 and a stable voltage gap of 0.94V a 540 h charge-discharge operation. Remarkably, the as-assembled flexible solid-state ZAB with self-supporting NiCo@SCF as air cathode presented an engaging peak power density of 80.1 mW cm-2 and excellent durability of 95 h undisrupted operation, showing promise for the design of wearable ZAB.