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Abstract To assess the efficacy of radioimmunotherapy (RIT) with 90yttrium-ibrutinib-tiuxetan (90Y-IT) in mantle cell lymphoma, data from 90 patients registered in the RIT Network with a median follow-up (FU) of 5.5 years after RIT were evaluated. 90Y-IT was given as first-line therapy in 45 (50%) and for relapse in 45 (50%) patients. Most patients received 90Y-IT as consolidation after chemoimmunotherapy in first line (98%) and in relapse (53%). As a first-line treatment, 30 patients...
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Abstract Hereditary xerocytosis (HX), also known as dehydrated stomatocytosis (DHSt) is a dominantly inherited genetic disorder exhibiting red cell membrane dehydration caused by the loss of the monovalent cation K+ and water. Variants in mechanosensitive Piezo ionic channels of the PIEZO1 gene are the primary cause of HX. We have utilized high throughput and highly precise next-generation sequencing (NGS) to make a diagnosis and examine the genotype-phenotype relationship in inflexible...
Fri Feb 28, 2020 02:00
French 3D printer manufacturer and service provider Prodways Group has reported its financial earnings for fourth quarter and full year 2019. FY 2019 revenue was reported at €71.3 million, representing a growth of 17.1% from FY 2018, which was €60.9 million. Prodways’ Products division, comprising the design and manufacture of on-demand parts and medical applications, […]
Fri Feb 28, 2020 13:58
New Jersey-based Rutgers University engineers have developed their version of bio-ink, which is made of living cells and used to 3D print scaffolds for human tissue growth. The team originally set out to build a nerve graft for peripheral nerves but changed the focus of their work during the course of the study, eventually leading […]
Fri Feb 28, 2020 13:49
Waste management can cause big problems for the Earth, what with all the Global Warming issues we have since we can remember. But what if there is hope? What if... The post The Great Ocean...
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Abstract Background The overuse of antimicrobials in food animals and the subsequent contamination of the environment have been associated with development and spread of antimicrobial resistance. This review presents information on antimicrobial use, resistance and status of surveillance systems in food animals and the environment in Africa. Methods ...
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Abstract Background Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus), particularly methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), remains the predominant cause of infections in drug users. This cross-sectional study aims to elucidate the prevalence, risk factors, phenotypic and molecular characteristics of S. aureus carriage among community-based drug users. Methods ...
Mon Mar 02, 2020 02:00
Abstract Background Among all cases of nosocomial pneumonia, Staphylococcus aureus is the second most prevalent pathogen (17.8%). In Europe, 29.9% of the isolates are oxacillin-resistant. The changing epidemiology of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) nosocomial infections and the decreasing susceptibility to first-line antibiotics leave clinicians with few therapeutic options. The objective of our study was to determine...
Fri Feb 28, 2020 02:00
Inadequate handovers between hospital and home can lead to adverse health outcomes. A group particularly at risk are patients at the end of life because of complex health problems, frequent care transitions and involvement of many professionals. (Source: Journal of Pain and Symptom Management)
Mon Mar 02, 2020 00:00
We express gratitude to Dr. Argo for reading and taking interest in our work.1 In the letter “Estimation of chronic post-surgical pain after thoracic surgery: case closed?”2 Dr. Argo raises interesting and important questions. He points to issues that are not only of concern in our study but also more general when conducting studies of chronic postsurgical pain in any patient population . (Source: Journal of Pain and Symptom Management)
Fri Feb 07, 2020 00:00
Empathy is increasingly described as a learnable skill and is included in professionalism requirements for healthcare providers, yet there are few effective tools for developing and practicing empathy skills. (Source: Journal of Pain and Symptom Management)
Fri Feb 28, 2020 00:00
Pediatric palliative care aims to achieve the best possible quality of life for children with life-threatening/life-limiting conditions and their families (1). Globally, it is estimated that over 21 million children need palliative care every year (2). In China, pediatric palliative care is in the early stage of development. The importance of pediatric palliative care, and its need are mostly under-recognized. There are sporadic hospital-based services and only a few hospices, which are mostly located...
Fri Feb 28, 2020 00:00
Oxygenic photosynthesis starts with the oxidation of water to O2. Cyanobacteria are the only known prokaryotes capable of oxygenic photosynthesis and therefore, it is assumed that water oxidation is a late innovation relative to the origin of life. However, when exactly oxygenic photosynthesis originated remains lively debated. Here we show that the origin of photosystem II, the water-splitting enzyme, occurred at an early stage during the evolution of life and long before the origin of Cyanobacteria....
Mon Mar 02, 2020 02:00
We develop an analytical framework for predicting the fitness of hybrid genotypes, based on Fishers geometric model. We first show that all of the model parameters have a simple geometrical and biological interpretation. Hybrid fitness decomposes into intrinsic effects of hybridity and heterozygosity, and extrinsic measures of the (local) adaptedness of the parental lines; and all of these correspond to distances in a phenotypic space. We also show how these quantities change over the course of divergence,...
Sun Mar 01, 2020 02:00
It is regarded as best practice in phylogenetic reconstruction to perform relative model selection to determine an appropriate evolutionary model for the data. This procedure ranks a set of candidate models according to their goodness-of-fit to the data, commonly using an information theoretic criterion. Users then specify the best-ranking model for inference. While it is often assumed that better-fitting models translate to increase accuracy, recent studies have shown that the specific model employed...
Sun Mar 01, 2020 02:00
Here, we developed a novel evolution of protein domains (EvoProDom) model for evolution of proteins, which was based on mix and merge of protein domains. We collected and integrated genomic and proteome data for 109 organisms. These data include protein domain content and orthologous protein families. In EvoProDom, we defined evolutionary events, such as translocations, as reciprocal exchanges of protein domains between orthologous proteins of different organisms. We found that protein domains, which...
Sun Mar 01, 2020 02:00
What determines the level of genetic diversity of a species remains one of the enduring problems of population genetics. Since, neutral diversity depends upon the product of the effective population size and mutation rate there is an expectation that diversity should be correlated to measures of census population size. This correlation is often observed for nuclear but not for mitochondrial DNA. Here we revisit the question of whether mitochondrial DNA sequence diversity is correlated to census population...
Sat Feb 29, 2020 02:00
We introduce a new pattern of population genetic structure in a host-parasite system that can arise after secondary contact (SC) of previously isolated populations. Due to different generation time and therefore different tempo of molecular evolution the host and parasite populations reach different degrees of genetic differentiation during their separation (e.g. in refugia). Consequently, during the SC the host populations are able to re-establish a single panmictic population across the whole recolonized...
Sat Feb 29, 2020 02:00
The smaller a population is, the faster it looses genetic variation due to genetic drift. Loss of genetic variation can reduce population growth rate, making populations even smaller and more vulnerable to loss of genetic variation, and so on. Ultimately, the population can be driven to extinction by this "eco-evolutionary extinction vortex". So far, extinction vortices due to loss of genetic variation have been mainly described verbally. However, quantitative models are needed to better understand...
Sat Feb 29, 2020 02:00
Opsins are the primary light-sensing molecules in animals. Opsins have peak sensitivities to specific wavelengths which allows for color discrimination. The opsin protein family has undergone duplications and losses, dynamically expanding and contracting the number of opsins, throughout invertebrate evolution, but it is unclear what drives this diversity. Light availability, however, appears to play a significant role. Dim environments are associated with low opsin diversity in deep-sea fishes and...
Sat Feb 29, 2020 02:00
Nematostella vectensis is a sea anemone (Actiniaria, Cnidaria) inhabiting estuaries over a broad geographic range where environmental conditions such as temperatures and salinity vary widely. In cnidarians, antagonistic interactions with predators and prey are mediated by their venom, which may be metabolically expensive. In this study, we challenged Nematostella polyps with heat, salinity, UV light stressors and a combination of all three to determine how abiotic stressors impact toxin expression...
Sat Feb 29, 2020 02:00
Comparative anatomy studies of the skull of archosaurs provide insights on the mechanisms of evolution for the morphologically and functionally diverse species of crocodiles and birds. One of the key attributes of skull evolution is the anatomical changes associated with the physical arrangement of cranial bones. Here, we compare the changes in anatomical organization and modularity of the skull of extinct and extant archosaurs using an Anatomical Network Analysis approach. We show that the number...
Sat Feb 29, 2020 02:00
Opioid substitution and syringes exchange programs have drastically reduced hepatitis C virus (HCV) spread in France but HCV sexual transmission in men having sex with men (MSM) has recently arisen as a significant public health concern. The fact that the virus is transmitting in a heterogeneous population, with new and classical hosts, makes prevalence and incidence rates poorly informative. However, additional insights can be gained by analyzing virus phylogenies inferred from dated genetic sequence...
Fri Feb 28, 2020 02:00
Bacteria adapting to living in a host cell caused the most salient events in the evolution of eukaryotes, namely the seminal fusion with an archaeon 1, and the emergence of both the mitochondrion and the chloroplast 2. A bacterial clade that may hold the key to understanding these events is the deep-branching gammaproteobacterial order Legionellales - containing among others Coxiella and Legionella - of which all known members grow inside eukaryotic cells 3. Here, by analyzing 35 novel Legionellales...
Fri Feb 28, 2020 02:00
Cooperation can be favored through the green-beard mechanism, where a set of linked genes encodes both a cooperative trait and a phenotypic marker (green beard), which allows carriers of the trait to selectively direct cooperative acts to other carriers. In theory, the green-beard mechanism should favor cooperation even when interacting partners are totally unrelated at the genome level. Here, we explore such an extreme green-beard scenario between two unrelated bacterial species - Pseudomonas aeruginosa...
Fri Feb 28, 2020 02:00
The phylogenetic utility of targeted enrichment methods has been demonstrated in taxa that often have a history of single gene marker development. These genomic capture methods are now being applied to resolve evolutionary relationships from deep to shallow timescales in clades that were previously deficient in molecular marker development and lacking robust morphological characters that reflect evolutionary relationships. Effectively capturing 1000s of loci, however, in a diverse group across a...
Fri Feb 28, 2020 02:00
Mountains of Southwest China (MSWC) is a biodiversity hotspot with very unique and highly complex terrain. With the majority of studies focusing on the biogeographic consequences of massive mountain building, the Quaternary legacy of biodiversity for the MSWC has long been overlooked. Here, we took a comparative phylogeography approach to examine factors that shaped community-wide diversification. With data from 30 vertebrate species and the results reveal spatially concordant phylogeographic structure,...
Fri Feb 28, 2020 02:00
Genomic imprinting is the differential expression of alleles in diploid individuals, with the expression being dependent upon the sex of the parent from which it was inherited. Haig's kinship theory hypothesizes that genomic imprinting is due to an evolutionary conflict of interest between alleles from the mother and father. In social insects, it has been suggested that genomic imprinting should be widespread. One recent study identified parent-of-origin expression in honeybees and found evidence...
Fri Feb 28, 2020 02:00
Maize landraces are well adapted to their local environments and present valuable sources of genetic diversity for breeding and conservation. But the maintenance of open-pollinated landraces in ex-situ programs is challenging, as regeneration of seed can often lead to inbreeding depression and the loss of diversity due to genetic drift. Recent reports suggest that the production of doubled-haploid (DH) lines from landraces may serve as a convenient means to preserve genetic diversity in a homozygous...
Fri Feb 28, 2020 02:00
Sperm of some species form motile, coordinated groups as they migrate through the female reproductive tract to the site of fertilization. This collective motion is predicted to improve sperm swimming performance and therefore may be beneficial in a competitive context, but limited evidence supports this theory. Here we examine sperm aggregates across closely-related species of Peromyscus mice that naturally vary by mating system, and thus sperm competition intensity. We find that phylogenetic history...
Fri Feb 28, 2020 02:00
Understanding the genetic causes of evolutionary diversification is challenging because differences across species are complex, often involving many genes. However, cases where single or few genetic loci affect a feature that varies dramatically across a radiation of species would provide tractable opportunities to understand the genetics of diversification. Here, we show the diversification of bioluminescent signals in cypridinid ostracods ("sea fireflies") to be strongly influenced by a single...
Mon Mar 02, 2020 02:00
The world's second largest expanse of tropical rain forest is in Central Africa and it harbours enormous species diversity. Population genetic studies have consistently revealed significant structure across central African rain forest plants, in particular a North-South genetic discontinuity close to the equator at the level of a climatic inversion. Here, we take a phylogeographic approach using 351 nuclear markers in 112 individuals across the distribution of the African rain forest tree species...
Fri Feb 28, 2020 02:00
Experimental and theoretical studies have highlighted the impact of gene flow on the probability of evolutionary rescue in structured habitats. Mathematical modelling and simulations of evolutionary rescue in spatially or otherwise structured populations showed that intermediate migration rates can often maximize the probability of rescue in gradually or abruptly deteriorating habitats. These theoretical results corroborate the positive effect of gene flow on evolutionary rescue that has been identified...
Mon Mar 02, 2020 02:00
The resolution of the Tree of Life has accelerated with advances in DNA sequencing technology. To achieve dense sampling, it is often necessary to obtain DNA from historical museum specimens to supplement modern genetic samples. However, DNA from historical material is generally degraded and fragmented, which presents various challenges. In this study, we evaluated how the coverage at variant sites and missing data among historical and modern sample types impacts phylogenomic inference. We explored...
Fri Feb 28, 2020 02:00
While numerous studies have found horizontal transposon transfer (HTT) to be widespread across metazoans, few have focused on HTT in marine ecosystems. To investigate potential recent HTTs into marine species we searched for novel repetitive elements in sea snakes, a group of elapids which transitioned to a marine habitat at most 18 Mya. Our analysis uncovered repeated HTTs into sea snakes following their marine transition. Such major shifts in habitat should require significant genomic changes.The...
Mon Mar 02, 2020 02:00
Many but not all lineage-specific genes can be explained by homology detection failure [NEW RESULTS]
Genes for which homologs can be detected only in a limited group of evolutionarily related species, called "lineage-specific genes," are pervasive: essentially every lineage has them, and they often comprise a sizable fraction of the groups total genes. Lineage-specific genes are often interpreted as "novel" genes, representing genetic novelty born anew within that lineage. Here, we develop a simple method to test an alternative null hypothesis: that lineage-specific genes do have homologs outside...
Mon Mar 02, 2020 02:00
A striking feature of microRNAs is that they are often clustered in the genomes of animals. The functional and evolutionary consequences of this clustering remain obscure. Here, we investigated a microRNA cluster miR-6/5/4/286/3/309 that is conserved across drosophilid lineages. Small RNA sequencing revealed expression of this microRNA cluster in Drosophila melanogaster leg discs, and conditional overexpression of the whole cluster resulted in leg appendage shortening. Transgenic overexpression lines...
Fri Feb 28, 2020 02:00
Understanding the role that antibodies play in controlling HIV-1 infection and in the dynamics that underpin the formation of the HIV-1 reservoir are important steps towards combatting this global disease. To address these gaps, we performed whole-genome, deep sequence analysis of longitudinal plasma HIV-1 samples from an individual who failed to develop detectable anti-HIV-1 antibodies for 4 years post infection. These analyses reveal limited evolution despite months of measurable viremia during...
Fri Feb 28, 2020 02:00
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