Dawsonweaver3611

Securinega suffruticosa (Pall.) Rehd is an excellent natural secondary shrub in the Shell Islands of Yellow River Delta. The roots of S. Mps1-IN-6 cell line suffruticosa have high medicinal value and are used to treat diseases, such as neurasthenia and infant malnutrition. Any organism that is isolated from this species is of immense interest due to its potential novel bioactive compounds. In this research, the distribution and diversity of culturable endophytic fungi in S. suffruticosa were studied, and the endophytic fungi with antimicrobial activity were screened. A total of 420 endophytic fungi isolates were obtained from the S. suffruticosa grown in Shell Islands, from which 20 genera and 35 species were identified through morphological and internal transcribed spacer (ITS) sequence analyses. Chaetomium, Fusarium, Cladosporium, and Ceratobasidium were the dominant genera. The high species richness S (42), Margalef index D' (5.6289), Shannon-Wiener index H' (3.1000), Simpson diversity index Ds (0.9459), PIE index (0.8670), aere identified for the first time.The risk of many complex diseases is determined by a complex interplay of genetic and environmental factors. Advanced next generation sequencing technology makes identification of gene-environment (GE) interactions for both common and rare variants possible. However, most existing methods focus on testing the main effects of common and/or rare genetic variants. There are limited methods developed to test the effects of GE interactions for rare variants only or rare and common variants simultaneously. In this study, we develop novel approaches to test the effects of GE interactions of rare and/or common risk, and/or protective variants in sequencing association studies. We propose two approaches 1) testing the effects of an optimally weighted combination of GE interactions for rare variants (TOW-GE); 2) testing the effects of a weighted combination of GE interactions for both rare and common variants (variable weight TOW-GE, VW-TOW-GE). Extensive simulation studies based on the Genetic Analysis Workshop 17 data show that the type I error rates of the proposed methods are well controlled. Compared to the existing interaction sequence kernel association test (ISKAT), TOW-GE is more powerful when there are GE interactions' effects for rare risk and/or protective variants; VW-TOW-GE is more powerful when there are GE interactions' effects for both rare and common risk and protective variants. Both TOW-GE and VW-TOW-GE are robust to the directions of effects of causal GE interactions. We demonstrate the applications of TOW-GE and VW-TOW-GE using an imputed data from the COPDGene Study.BACKGROUND Sepsis-induced cardiomyopathy (SIC) is known to show cardiac dysfunction in patients with sepsis. Both a decrease or an increase in ejection fraction (EF), an indicator of cardiac function, can occur. The purpose of this study was to identify factors associated with abnormal left ventricular (LV) function measured by EF in patients with sepsis in the intensive care unit (ICU). METHODS This was a retrospective study performed from November 2016 to December 2018. Three-hundred and sixty-six patients (mean age, 73 ± 13 years; 191 [52%] men) admitted to the ICU with sepsis were included. Patients were classified into three categories according to LV EF (group 1 -[EF less then 50%, n = 36], group 2 -[50≤EF less then 70%, n = 252], and group 3 -[EF≥70%, n = 78]). Echocardiographic assessment was performed within 48 hours of diagnosis of sepsis. We analyzed clinical factors including mortality, echocardiographic findings, and laboratory parameters. RESULTS Decreased LV EF occurred in 36 (10%) patients and closely when they present with sepsis.Human respirovirus type 3 (HRV3) is a leading etiology of lower respiratory tract infections in young children and ranks only second to the human respiratory syncytial virus (HRSV). Despite the public health importance of HRV3, there is limited information about the genetic characteristics and diversity of these viruses in Kenya. To begin to address this gap, we analyzed 35 complete hemagglutinin-neuraminidase (HN) sequences of HRV3 strains isolated in Kenya between 2010 and 2013. Viral RNA was extracted from the isolates, and the entire HN gene amplified by RT-PCR followed by nucleotide sequencing. Phylogenetic analyses of the sequences revealed that all the Kenyan isolates grouped into genetic Cluster C; sub-clusters C1a, C2, and C3a. The majority (54%) of isolates belonged to sub-cluster C3a, followed by C2 (43%) and C1a (2.9%). Sequence analysis revealed high identities between the Kenyan isolates and the HRV3 prototype strain both at the amino acid (96.5-97.9%) and nucleotide (94.3-95.6%) levels. No amino acid variations affecting the catalytic/active sites of the HN glycoprotein were observed among the Kenyan isolates. Selection pressure analyses showed that the HN glycoprotein was evolving under positive selection. Evolutionary analyses revealed that the mean TMRCA for the HN sequence dataset was 1942 (95% HPD 1928-1957), while the mean evolutionary rate was 4.65x10-4 nucleotide substitutions/site/year (95% HPD 2.99x10-4 to 6.35x10-4). Overall, our results demonstrate the co-circulation of strains of cluster C HRV3 variants in Kenya during the study period. This is the first study to describe the genetic and molecular evolutionary aspects of HRV3 in Kenya using the complete HN gene.BACKGROUND Echinococcosis is a chronic zoonosis caused by tapeworms of the genus Echinococcus. Treatment of the disease is often expensive and complicated, sometimes requiring extensive surgery. Ultrasonographic imaging is currently the main technique for diagnosis, while immunological analysis provides additional information. Confirmation still needs pathological analysis. However, these diagnostic techniques generally detect infection in late stages of the disease. An accurate, early and non-invasive molecular diagnostic method is still unavailable. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We sequenced the cell-free DNA (cfDNA) from plasma of echinococcosis patients and confirmed the presence of Echinococcus DNA. To improve detection sensitivity, we developed a method based on targeted next-generation sequencing of repeat regions. Simulation experiments demonstrate that the targeted sequencing is sensitive enough to detect as little as 0.1% of an Echinococcus genome in 1 mL of plasma. Results obtained using patient plasma shows that the Area Under the Curve (AUC) of the method is 0.