Draft Genome Sequence of Xylella fastidiosa subsp. Fastidiosa Strain IVIA5235, Isolated from Prunus avium in Mallorca Island, Spain

We report the complete annotated genome sequence of the plant-pathogenic bacterium Xylella fastidiosa subsp. fastidiosa strain IVIA5235. This strain was recovered from a cherry tree in Mallorca, Spain

Multifocal Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation in Primary Progressive Aphasia Does Not Provide a Clinical Benefit Over Speech Therapy

Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is a group of neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia characterized by language deterioration. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a non-invasive intervention for brain dysfunction.To evaluate the tolerability and efficacy of tDCS combined with speech therapy in the three variants of PPA. We evaluate changes in fMRI activity in a subset of patients.Double-blinded, randomized, cross-over, and sham-controlled tDCS study. 15 patients with PPA were included. Each patient underwent two interventions: a) speech therapy + active tDCS and b) speech therapy + sham tDCS stimulation. A multifocal strategy with anodes placed in the left frontal and parietal regions was used to stimulate the entire language network. Efficacy was evaluated by comparing the results of two independent sets of neuropsychological assessments administered at baseline, immediately after the intervention, and at 1 month and 3 months after the intervention. In a subsample, fMRI scanning was performed before and after each intervention.The interventions were well tolerated. Participants in both arms showed clinical improvement, but no differences were found between active and sham tDCS interventions in any of the evaluations. There were trends toward better outcomes in the active tDCS group for semantic association and reading skills. fMRI identified an activity increase in the right frontal medial cortex and the bilateral paracingulate gyrus after the active tDCS intervention.We did not find differences between active and sham tDCS stimulation in clinical scores of language function in PPA patients

Divergent abiotic spectral pathways unravel pathogen stress signals across species

Abstract: Plant pathogens pose increasing threats to global food security, causing yield losses that exceed 30% in food-deficit regions. Xylella fastidiosa (Xf) represents the major transboundary plant pest and one of the world’s most damaging pathogens in terms of socioeconomic impact. Spectral screening methods are critical to detect non-visual symptoms of early infection and prevent spread. However, the subtle pathogen-induced physiological alterations that are spectrally detectable are entangled with the dynamics of abiotic stresses. Here, using airborne spectroscopy and thermal scanning of areas covering more than one million trees of different species, infections and water stress levels, we reveal the existence of divergent pathogen- and host-specific spectral pathways that can disentangle biotic-induced symptoms. We demonstrate that uncoupling this biotic–abiotic spectral dynamics diminishes the uncertainty in the Xf detection to below 6% across different hosts. Assessing these deviating pathways against another harmful vascular pathogen that produces analogous symptoms, Verticillium dahliae, the divergent routes remained pathogen- and host-specific, revealing detection accuracies exceeding 92% across pathosystems. These urgently needed hyperspectral methods advance early detection of devastating pathogens to reduce the billions in crop losses worldwide

Cortical microstructure in primary progressive aphasia: a multicenter study

Cortical mean diffusivity is a novel imaging metric sensitive to early changes in neurodegenerative syndromes. Higher cortical mean diffusivity values reflect microstructural disorganization and have been proposed as a sensitive biomarker that might antedate macroscopic cortical changes. We aimed to test the hypothesis that cortical mean diffusivity is more sensitive than cortical thickness to detect cortical changes in primary progressive aphasia (PPA).In this multicenter, case-control study, we recruited 120 patients with PPA (52 non-fluent, 31 semantic, and 32 logopenic variants; and 5 GRN-related PPA) as well as 89 controls from three centers. The 3-Tesla MRI protocol included structural and diffusion-weighted sequences. Disease severity was assessed with the Clinical Dementia Rating scale. Cortical thickness and cortical mean diffusivity were computed using a surface-based approach.The comparison between each PPA variant and controls revealed cortical mean diffusivity increases and cortical thinning in overlapping regions, reflecting the canonical loci of neurodegeneration of each variant. Importantly, cortical mean diffusivity increases also expanded to other PPA-related areas and correlated with disease severity in all PPA groups. Cortical mean diffusivity was also increased in patients with very mild PPA when only minimal cortical thinning was observed and showed a good correlation with measures of disease severity.Cortical mean diffusivity shows promise as a sensitive biomarker for the study of the neurodegeneration-related microstructural changes in PPA.© 2022. The Author(s)

Impact of cortical and subcortical atrophy in the diagnosis and prognosis of bvFTD: A multicenter longitudinal study

AbstractBackgroundThe behavioral variant of frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) presents with variable patterns of cortical and subcortical atrophy on Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). We aimed to assess the clinical utility of two reproducible measurements of cerebral atrophy (Harper's visual atrophy scale [HVAS], and the Magnetic Resonance Parkinsonism Index [MRPI]) in a large multicenter sample of bvFTD with longitudinal follow‐up.MethodsWe included 466 participants from three centers: 241 bvFTD (according to the International bvFTD Criteria Consortium), and 225 healthy controls (HC). Clinical deterioration was assessed with Mini‐Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the Clinical Deterioration Scale Sum‐of‐boxes (CDR‐sb). bvFTD participants were considered to have an increased certainty of underlying Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration (+FTLD) when: (i) FTLD was confirmed at autopsy (n=72); (ii) a secondary FTLD‐related phenotype was identified during follow‐up (n=47) or (iii) a FTLD‐related mutation was found (n=49). Six raters blinded to clinical data were first asked to dichotomize participants according to the presence of "a clear pattern of atrophy suggestive of probable bvFTD", and then applied the HVAS (ICC(2,k)=.86 to .96). The MRPI was calculated with a fully automated algorithm.ResultsMean age of bvFTD participants was 63.3 ± 10, 68% were male (MMSE=23 ± 7 and CDR‐sb=6.7 ± 3.5). Blinded raters had 52% sensitivity and 97% specificity for the identification of bvFTD participants (AUC=.74, p=.001). All HVAS measures with the exception of posterior atrophy discriminated between bvFTD and HC (AUC=.77 to .83, p<.001). The composite bvFTD score (average score of orbitofrontal, anterior cingulate, anterior temporal, medial temporal lobe and frontal insula regions) showed the best diagnostic accuracy for the differentiation of bvFTD from HC (AUC=.91, p<.001 in +FTLD). This composite score also differentiated between bvFTD participants that were not considered to have a clear pattern of atrophy suggestive of probable bvFTD (blinded raters) and HC (p<.001). We hypothesized that HVAS and MRPI scores may be independent predictors of clinical deterioration and survival in bvFTD (definitive results pending).ConclusionThe combination of HVAS and MRPI may provide valuable diagnostic and prognostic information in the behavioral syndromes verifying bvFTD criteria. These measures represent reliable, reproducible and affordable imaging biomarkers