Direct Molecular Detection and Genotyping of Borrelia burgdorferi from Whole Blood of Patients with Early Lyme Disease

Direct molecular tests in blood for early Lyme disease can be insensitive due to low amount of circulating Borrelia burgdorferi DNA. To address this challenge, we have developed a sensitive strategy to both detect and genotype B. burgdorferi directly from whole blood collected during the initial patient visit. This strategy improved sensitivity by employing 1.25 mL of whole blood, a novel pre-enrichment of the entire specimen extract for Borrelia DNA prior to a multi-locus PCR and electrospray ionization mass spectrometry detection assay. We evaluated the assay on blood collected at the initial presentation from 21 endemic area patients who had both physician-diagnosed erythema migrans (EM) and positive two-tiered serology either at the initial visit or at a follow-up visit after three weeks of antibiotic therapy. Results of this DNA analysis showed detection of B. burgdorferi in 13 of 21 patients (62%). In most cases the new assay also provided the B. burgdorferi genotype. The combined results of our direct detection assay with initial physician visit serology resulted in the detection of early Lyme disease in 19 of 21 (90%) of patients at the initial visit. In 5 of 21 cases we demonstrate the ability to detect B. burgdorferi in early Lyme disease directly from whole blood specimens prior to seroconversion

Opuntia in México: Identifying Priority Areas for Conserving Biodiversity in a Multi-Use Landscape

BACKGROUND: México is one of the world's centers of species diversity (richness) for Opuntia cacti. Yet, in spite of their economic and ecological importance, Opuntia species remain poorly studied and protected in México. Many of the species are sparsely but widely distributed across the landscape and are subject to a variety of human uses, so devising implementable conservation plans for them presents formidable difficulties. Multi-criteria analysis can be used to design a spatially coherent conservation area network while permitting sustainable human usage. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Species distribution models were created for 60 Opuntia species using MaxEnt. Targets of representation within conservation area networks were assigned at 100% for the geographically rarest species and 10% for the most common ones. Three different conservation plans were developed to represent the species within these networks using total area, shape, and connectivity as relevant criteria. Multi-criteria analysis and a metaheuristic adaptive tabu search algorithm were used to search for optimal solutions. The plans were built on the existing protected areas of México and prioritized additional areas for management for the persistence of Opuntia species. All plans required around one-third of México's total area to be prioritized for attention for Opuntia conservation, underscoring the implausibility of Opuntia conservation through traditional land reservation. Tabu search turned out to be both computationally tractable and easily implementable for search problems of this kind. CONCLUSIONS: Opuntia conservation in México require the management of large areas of land for multiple uses. The multi-criteria analyses identified priority areas and organized them in large contiguous blocks that can be effectively managed. A high level of connectivity was established among the prioritized areas resulting in the enhancement of possible modes of plant dispersal as well as only a small number of blocks that would be recommended for conservation management

NOTEWORTHY COLLECTIONS

Volume: 43Start Page: 452End Page: 45

Calyptridium parryi Var. Martirense (Montiaceae), A New Taxon Endemic to the Sierra De San Pedro M\ue1rtir, Baja California, Mexico

Volume: 58Start Page: 258End Page: 26

Auto-ML Cyber Security Data Analysis Using Google, Azure and IBM Cloud Platforms

Machine Learning can be used with cybersecurity data to protect organizations by using artificial intelligence (AI) to generate rules and models for thread detection. Cloud platforms offer the ability to scale AI efforts as well as automatically generate machine learning models (Auto ML). Adoption of Auto-ML is increasing which is resulting in rapid improvements of the technology. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate the Auto ML functionalities against cyber security threat detection using available tools in free tier accounts created on three different cloud platforms (Microsoft Azure, Google, and IBM). We determined the performance of these tools by the evaluating the optimization speed and accuracy results. A comparison of the advantages of each of the results from the different platforms are presented. Overall, all three platforms performed greater than 70% accuracy with the IBM Cloud Platform having the strongest performance

Direct molecular detection and genotyping of Borrelia burgdorferi from whole blood of patients with early Lyme disease. PLoS One 2012

Abstract Direct molecular tests in blood for early Lyme disease can be insensitive due to low amount of circulating Borrelia burgdorferi DNA. To address this challenge, we have developed a sensitive strategy to both detect and genotype B. burgdorferi directly from whole blood collected during the initial patient visit. This strategy improved sensitivity by employing 1.25 mL of whole blood, a novel pre-enrichment of the entire specimen extract for Borrelia DNA prior to a multilocus PCR and electrospray ionization mass spectrometry detection assay. We evaluated the assay on blood collected at the initial presentation from 21 endemic area patients who had both physician-diagnosed erythema migrans (EM) and positive two-tiered serology either at the initial visit or at a follow-up visit after three weeks of antibiotic therapy. Results of this DNA analysis showed detection of B. burgdorferi in 13 of 21 patients (62%). In most cases the new assay also provided the B. burgdorferi genotype. The combined results of our direct detection assay with initial physician visit serology resulted in the detection of early Lyme disease in 19 of 21 (90%) of patients at the initial visit. In 5 of 21 cases we demonstrate the ability to detect B. burgdorferi in early Lyme disease directly from whole blood specimens prior to seroconversion

Data from: Plant diversity and endemism in the California Floristic Province

The California Floristic Province (CFP) is an area of high biodiversity and endemism corresponding roughly to the portion of western North America having a Mediterranean-type climate. High levels of diversity and endemism in the CFP are attributed to the unique geo-climatic setting of the region. In recent years, much has been learned about the origins of plant diversity in western North America. This work, however, has been hindered by a focus on political rather than biotic regions, such that much more is known about diversity and endemism in the state of California than the natural biotic region represented by the CFP. Here we present a preliminary list of native land plants (vascular plants and bryophytes) found in the CFP, as well as an analysis of diversity and endemism patterns at the level of both species and minimum rank taxa (MRT; species and infraspecific taxa). A total of 6,927 MRT are native to the CFP, including 6,143 vascular plants and 784 bryophytes. Of these, 2,612 vascular plants are endemic to the CFP (42%) compared to 37 endemic bryophytes (5%). Finally, 2,506 native CFP vascular plant MRT (41% of the CFP flora) and 454 CFP bryophyte MRT (58% of the CFP flora) are found outside California in the Oregon and Baja California parts of the CFP. This high degree of sharing across political boundaries among both vascular plants and bryophytes highlights the cohesiveness of the CFP, and the need to focus more research effort on biotic regions