8,727 research outputs found
Targeted mutagenesis in a human-parasitic nematode.
Parasitic nematodes infect over 1 billion people worldwide and cause some of the most common neglected tropical diseases. Despite their prevalence, our understanding of the biology of parasitic nematodes has been limited by the lack of tools for genetic intervention. In particular, it has not yet been possible to generate targeted gene disruptions and mutant phenotypes in any parasitic nematode. Here, we report the development of a method for introducing CRISPR-Cas9-mediated gene disruptions in the human-parasitic threadworm Strongyloides stercoralis. We disrupted the S. stercoralis twitchin gene unc-22, resulting in nematodes with severe motility defects. Ss-unc-22 mutations were resolved by homology-directed repair when a repair template was provided. Omission of a repair template resulted in deletions at the target locus. Ss-unc-22 mutations were heritable; we passed Ss-unc-22 mutants through a host and successfully recovered mutant progeny. Using a similar approach, we also disrupted the unc-22 gene of the rat-parasitic nematode Strongyloides ratti. Our results demonstrate the applicability of CRISPR-Cas9 to parasitic nematodes, and thereby enable future studies of gene function in these medically relevant but previously genetically intractable parasites
Matterport3D: Learning from RGB-D Data in Indoor Environments
Access to large, diverse RGB-D datasets is critical for training RGB-D scene
understanding algorithms. However, existing datasets still cover only a limited
number of views or a restricted scale of spaces. In this paper, we introduce
Matterport3D, a large-scale RGB-D dataset containing 10,800 panoramic views
from 194,400 RGB-D images of 90 building-scale scenes. Annotations are provided
with surface reconstructions, camera poses, and 2D and 3D semantic
segmentations. The precise global alignment and comprehensive, diverse
panoramic set of views over entire buildings enable a variety of supervised and
self-supervised computer vision tasks, including keypoint matching, view
overlap prediction, normal prediction from color, semantic segmentation, and
region classification
Simultaneous precise editing of multiple genes in human cells
Abstract. When double-strand breaks are introduced in a genome by CRISPR they are repaired either by non-homologous end joining (NHEJ), which often results i
Poverty and development : the Human Development Report and the World Development Report, 1990
After the"adjustment decade"of the 1980s, attention in the 1990s seems to be turning once again to longer-term issues of development - particularly of poverty alleviation. Just as the 1980s were heralded by a series of reports on adjustment, so the 1990s have seen two major reports on poverty: World Development Report 1990: Poverty, by the World Bank, and Human Development Report 1990 by the UNDP. The author presents an overview of conceptual issues and the best policies for alleviating poverty, based on a review of these two reports. He poses basic questions on the definition and measurement of poverty, looks at what has actually happened to poverty in developing countries in the last three decades, and reviews policies to help alleviate poverty. The consensus represented in these two reports, he concludes, offers hope that the polarization of policy analysts into"camps"is a thing of the past - and that policies for the 1990s can be built on fundamental agreement about the basics: (a) that poverty alleviation requires growth, but growth is not enough; (b) that growth must be broad-based and labor-intensive, and must go hand in hand with targeted basic social expenditures; and (c) that the international community must do its share, by supporting these efforts in the 1990s through greatly increased capital flows to development countries.Poverty Assessment,Health Economics&Finance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Achieving Shared Growth,Governance Indicators
Measuring well-being with social indicators, HDIs, PQLI, and BWI for 133 countries for 1975, 1980, 1985, 1988, and 1992
Well Being;Measurement;Social Indicators;welfare economics
Quantifying protein densities on cell membranes using super-resolution optical fluctuation imaging
Surface molecules, distributed in diverse patterns and clusters on cell
membranes, influence vital functions of living cells. It is therefore important
to understand their molecular surface organisation under different
physiological and pathological conditions. Here, we present a model-free,
quantitative method to determine the distribution of cell surface molecules
based on TIRF illumination and super-resolution optical fluctuation imaging
(SOFI). This SOFI-based approach is robust towards single emitter
multiple-blinking events, high labelling densities and high blinking rates. In
SOFI, the molecular density is not based on counting events, but results as an
intrinsic property due to the correlation of the intensity fluctuations. The
effectiveness and robustness of the method was validated using simulated data,
as well as experimental data investigating the impact of palmitoylation on CD4
protein nanoscale distribution in the plasma membrane of resting T cells.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures plus Supplementary Informatio
Extension of the crRNA enhances Cpf1 gene editing in vitro and in vivo.
Engineering of the Cpf1 crRNA has the potential to enhance its gene editing efficiency and non-viral delivery to cells. Here, we demonstrate that extending the length of its crRNA at the 5 end can enhance the gene editing efficiency of Cpf1 both in cells and in vivo. Extending the 5 end of the crRNA enhances the gene editing efficiency of the Cpf1 RNP to induce non-homologous end-joining and homology-directed repair using electroporation in cells. Additionally, chemical modifications on the extended 5 end of the crRNA result in enhanced serum stability. Also, extending the 5 end of the crRNA by 59 nucleotides increases the delivery efficiency of Cpf1 RNP in cells and in vivo cationic delivery vehicles including polymer nanoparticle. Thus, 5 extension and chemical modification of the Cpf1 crRNA is an effective method for enhancing the gene editing efficiency of Cpf1 and its delivery in vivo
National Adaptation Strategies to Climate Change Impacts: A Case Study of Mozambique
human development, climate change
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