Stouthejlesen0261

Virus contamination of water is a threat to human health in many countries. Current solutions for inactivation of viruses mainly rely on environmentally burdensome chemical oxidation or energy-intensive ultraviolet irradiation, which may create toxic secondary products. Here, we show that renewable plant biomass-sourced colloidal lignin particles (CLPs) can be used as agglomeration agents to facilitate removal of viruses from water. We used dynamic light scattering (DLS), electrophoretic mobility shift assay (EMSA), atomic force microscopy and transmission electron microscopy (AFM, TEM), and UV spectrophotometry to quantify and visualize adherence of cowpea chlorotic mottle viruses (CCMVs) on CLPs. Our results show that CCMVs form agglomerated complexes with CLPs that, unlike pristine virus particles, can be easily removed from water either by filtration or centrifugation. Additionally, cationic particles formed by adsorption of quaternary amine-modified softwood kraft lignin on the CLPs were also evaluated to improve the binding interactions with these anionic viruses. We foresee that due to their moderate production cost, and high availability of lignin as a side-stream from biorefineries, CLPs could be an alternative water pretreatment material in a large variety of systems such as filters, packed columns, or flocculants. Copyright © 2020 American Chemical Society.Metagenome assembly from short next-generation sequencing data is a challenging process due to its large scale and computational complexity. Clustering short reads by species before assembly offers a unique opportunity for parallel downstream assembly of genomes with individualized optimization. However, current read clustering methods suffer either false negative (under-clustering) or false positive (over-clustering) problems. Here we extended our previous read clustering software, SpaRC, by exploiting statistics derived from multiple samples in a dataset to reduce the under-clustering problem. Using synthetic and real-world datasets we demonstrated that this method has the potential to cluster almost all of the short reads from genomes with sufficient sequencing coverage. The improved read clustering in turn leads to improved downstream genome assembly quality. © 2020 Li et al.Shrublands and grasslands comprise over 30% of the land surface and are among the most exploited ecosystems for livestock production. Across natural landscapes, the distribution and abundance of wild herbivores are affected by interspecific competition for foraging resources, hunting and the development of infrastructure among other factors. In Argentine Patagonia, the abundance of domestic sheep grazing on native vegetation outnumbers the widely distributed guanaco (Lama guanicoe) and sheep ranching monopolizes the most productive lands. In this work, we aimed to assess the spatial variation in the abundance of guanacos in Península Valdés, a representative landscape of Patagonia, investigating the incidence of natural and human-related factors. We conducted ground surveys during the austral autumn in 2017 totaling 383.4 km along areas with and without sheep ranching. We built density surface models to account for the variation in guanaco abundance and obtained a map of guanaco density at a resolution of 4 km2. We estimated an overall density of 11.71 guanacos.km-2 for a prediction area of 3,196 km2, although the density of guanacos tripled in areas where sheep ranching was terminated (in around 20% of the surface of Península Valdés) compared to areas with sheep. Guanacos were more abundant at lower values of primary productivity and sheep stocking rates and further from inhabited ranch buildings, suggesting competition with sheep and conflict with humans. Although guanacos selected open, grass-dominated habitats across sheep-free sites, fences dividing properties and paddocks played a significant role in the spatial structure of their population in Península Valdés affecting negatively the abundance of guanacos. Our results indicate that actions to improve habitat connectivity for guanacos, favor the coexistence among guanacos and sheep ranching, and promote responsible human activities and attitudes towards wildlife are needed. © 2020 Antún and Baldi.The brown anole, Anolis sagrei, is a native species to the Caribbean; however, A. sagrei has invaded multiple parts of the USA, including Florida, Louisiana, Hawai'i and more recently California. The biological impacts of A. sagrei invading California are currently unknown. Evidence from the invasion in Taiwan shows that they spread quickly and when immediate action is not taken eradication stops being a viable option. In Orange County, California, five urban sites, each less than 100 ha, were surveyed for an average of 49.2 min. Approximately 200 A. sagrei were seen and verified across all survey sites. selleck chemicals The paucity of native lizards encountered during the surveys within these sites suggests little to no overlap between the dominant diurnal western fence lizard, Sceloporus occidentalis, and A. sagrei. This notable lack of overlap could indicate a potentially disturbing reality that A. sagrei are driving local extirpations of S. occidentalis. © 2020 Fisher et al.Background Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common cancers worldwide. However, the molecular mechanisms involved in HCC remain unclear and are in urgent need of elucidation. Therefore, we sought to identify biomarkers in the prognosis of HCC through an integrated bioinformatics analysis. Methods Messenger RNA (mRNA) expression profiles were obtained from the Gene Expression Omnibus database and The Cancer Genome Atlas-Liver Hepatocellular Carcinoma (TCGA-LIHC) for the screening of common differentially expressed genes (DEGs). Function and pathway enrichment analysis, protein-protein interaction network construction and key gene identification were performed. The significance of key genes in HCC was validated by overall survival analysis and immunohistochemistry. Meanwhile, based on TCGA data, prognostic microRNAs (miRNAs) were decoded using univariable and multivariable Cox regression analysis, and their target genes were predicted by miRWalk. Results Eleven hub genes (upregulated ASPM, AURKAovel therapeutic targets at the molecular and pathway levels. ©2020 Ma et al.Although Phosphatidylethanolamine-binding protein (PEBP) genes have been identified in several plants, little is known about PEBP genes in pears. In this study, a total of 24 PEBP genes were identified, in which 10, 5 and 9 were from Pyrus bretschneideri genome, Pyrus communis genome and Pyrus betuleafolia genome, respectively. Subsequently, gene structure, phylogenetic relationship, chromosomal localization, promoter regions, collinearity and expression were determined with these PEBP genes. It was found that only PbFT from PEBP genes of P. bretschneideri was relatively highly expressed in leaves during flower bud differentiation. Whereas, expression patterns of TFL1 homologues, gene23124 and gene16540, were different from PbFT in buds. The expression pattern and the treatment of reduction day-length indicated that the expression of PbFT in leaves were regulated by day-length and circadian clock. Additionally, the phenotype of transgenic Arabidopsis suggested that PbFT played a role in not only promoting flower bud differentiation, but also regulating the balance between vegetative and reproductive growth. These results may provide important information for further understanding of the evolution and function of PEBP genes in pears. © 2020 Zhao et al.Twist1, a basic helix-loop-helix transcription factor that regulates a number of genes involved in epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT), is upregulated in prostate cancer. Androgen regulation of Twist1 has been reported in a previous study. However, the mechanism of androgen regulation of the Twist1 gene is not understood because the Twist1 promoter lacks androgen receptor (AR)-responsive elements. Previous studies have shown that the Twist1 promoter has putative binding sites for PEA3 subfamily of ETS transcription factors. Our lab has previously identified Ets Variant 1 (ETV1), a member of the PEA3 subfamily, as a novel androgen-regulated gene that is involved in prostate cancer cell invasion through unknown mechanism. In view of these data, we hypothesized that androgen-activated AR upregulates Twist1 gene expression via ETV1. Our data confirmed the published work that androgen positively regulates Twist1 gene expression and further showed that this positive effect was directed at the Twist1 promoter. The positive effect of androgen on Twist1 gene expression was abrogated upon disruption of AR expression by siRNA or of AR activity by Casodex. More importantly, our data show that disruption of ETV1 leads to significant decrease in both androgen-mediated upregulation as well as basal level of Twist1, which we are able to rescue upon re-expression of ETV1. Indeed, we are able to show that ETV1 mediates the androgen upregulation of Twist1 by acting on the proximal region of Twist1 promoter. Additionally, our data show that Twist1 regulates prostate cancer cell invasion and EMT, providing a possible mechanism by which ETV1 mediates prostate cancer cell invasion. In conclusion, in this study we report Twist1 as an indirect target of AR and androgen regulation through ETV1. © 2020 Khatiwada et al.Background Individual and collective self are two fundamental self-representations and are important to human experience. The present study aimed to investigate whether individual and collective self have essential difference in neural mechanism. Methods Event-related potentials were recorded to explore the electrophysiological correlates of individual and collective self in a self-referential task in which participants were asked to evaluate whether trait adjectives were suitable to describe themselves (individual self-referential processing), a famous person (individual non-self-referential processing), Chinese (collective self-referential processing) or American (collective non-self-referential processing). Results At the early stages, results showed that larger P2 and smaller N2 amplitudes were elicited by individual self-referential than by individual non-self-referential processing whereas no significant differences were observed between collective self-referential and collective non-self-referential processing at these stages. In addition, at the late P3 stage (350-600 ms), larger P3 amplitudes were also elicited by individual self-referential than by individual non-self-referential processing during 350-600 ms interval. However, the collective self-reference effect, indicated by the differences between collective self-referential and collective non-self-referential processing, did not appear until 450 ms and extended to 600 ms. Moreover, individual self-reference effect was more pronounced than collective self-reference effect in the 350-500 ms interval, whereas individual and collective self-reference effect had no significant difference in the 500-600 ms interval. These findings indicated that the time courses of neural activities were different in processing individual and collective self. © 2020 Liu et al.