Selection of diazotrophic bacterial communities in biological sand filter mesocosms used for the treatment of phenolic-laden wastewater

Agri effluents such as winery or olive mill waste-waters are characterized by high phenolic concentrations. These compounds are highly toxic and generally refractory to biodegradation. Biological sand filters (BSFs) represent inexpensive, environmentally friendly, and sustainable wastewater treatment systems which rely vastly on microbial catabolic processes. Using denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis and terminal-restriction fragment length polymorphism, this study aimed to assess the impact of increasing concentrations of synthetic phenolic-rich wastewater, ranging from 96 mg L−1 gallic acid and138 mg L−1 vanillin (i.e., a total chemical oxygen demand (COD) of 234 mg L−1) to 2,400mg L−1 gallic acid and 3,442 mg L−1 vanillin (5,842 mg COD L−1), on bacterialcommunities and the specific functional diazotrophic community from BSF mesocosms. This amendment procedure instigated efficient BSF phenolic removal, significant modifications of the bacterial communities, and notably led to the selection of a phenolic-resistant and less diverse diazotrophic community. This suggests that bioavailable N is crucial in the functioning of biological treatment processes involving microbial communities, and thus that functional alterations in the bacterial communities in BSFs ensure provision of sufficient bioavailable nitrogen for the degradation of wastewater with a high C/N ratio.Web of Scienc

Trends in upper gastrointestinal diagnosis over four decades in Lusaka, Zambia: a retrospective analysis of endoscopic findings

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: There a shortage of robust information about profiles of gastrointestinal disease in sub-Saharan Africa. The endoscopy unit of the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka has been running without interruption since 1977 and this 38-year record is largely intact. We report an analysis of endoscopic findings over this period. METHODS: Written endoscopy records from 29th September 1977 to 16th December 2014 were recovered, computerised, coded by two experienced endoscopists and analysed. Temporal trends were analysed using tables, graphs, and unconditional logistic regression, with age, sex of patient, decade, and endoscopist as independent variables to adjust for inter-observer variation. RESULTS: Sixteen thousand nine hundred fifty-three records were identified and analysed. Diagnosis of gastric ulcer rose by 22 %, and that of duodenal ulcer fell by 14 % per decade. Endoscopically diagnosed oesophageal cancer increased by 32 % per decade, but gastric cancer rose only in patients under 60 years of age (21 % per decade). Oesophageal varices were the commonest finding in patients presenting with haematemesis, increasing by 14 % per decade in that patient group. Two HIV-related diagnoses, oesophageal candidiasis and Kaposi’s sarcoma, rose from almost zero to very high levels in the 1990s but fell substantially after 2005 when anti-retroviral therapy became widely available. CONCLUSIONS: This useful dataset suggests that there are important trends in some endoscopic findings over four decades. These trends are not explained by inter-observer variation. Reasons for the divergent trends in incidence of peptic ulceration and apparent trends in diagnosis of upper gastrointestinal cancers merit further exploration

Contributions of green infrastructure to enhancing urban resilience

© 2018, The Author(s). After briefly reviewing key resilience engineering perspectives and summarising some green infrastructure (GI) tools, we present the contributions that GI can make to enhancing urban resilience and maintaining critical system functionality across complex integrated social–ecological and technical systems. We then examine five key challenges for the effective implementation of GI that include (1) standards; (2) regulation; (3) socio-economic factors; (4) financeability; and (5) innovation. We highlight ways in which these challenges are being dealt with around the world, particularly through the use of approaches that are both context appropriate and socially inclusive. Although progress surmounting these challenges has been made, more needs to be done to ensure that GI approaches are inclusive and appropriate and feature equally alongside more traditional ‘grey’ infrastructure in the future of urban resilience planning. This research was undertaken for the Resilience Shift initiative to shift the approach to resilience in practice for critical infrastructure sectors. The programme aims to help practitioners involved in critical infrastructure to make decisions differently, contributing to a safer and better world

Are Good Intentions Good Enough?: Informed Consent Without Trained Interpreters

OBJECTIVE: To examine the informed consent process when trained language interpreters are unavailable. BACKGROUND: Ensuring sufficient patient understanding for informed consent is especially challenging for patients with Limited English Proficiency (LEP). While US law requires provision of competent translation for LEP patients, such services are commonly unavailable. DESIGN AND PARTICIPANTS: Qualitative data was collected in 8 prenatal genetics clinics in Texas, including interviews and observations with 16 clinicians, and 30 Latina patients. Using content analysis techniques, we examined whether the basic criteria for informed consent (voluntariness, discussion of alternatives, adequate information, and competence) were evident for each of these patients, contrasting LEP patients with patients not needing an interpreter. We present case examples of difficulties related to each of these criteria, and compare informed consent scores for consultations requiring interpretation and those which did not. RESULTS: We describe multiple communication problems related to the use of untrained interpreters, or reliance on clinicians’ own limited Spanish. These LEP patients appear to be consistently disadvantaged in each of the criteria we examined, and informed consent scores were notably lower for consultations which occurred across a language barrier. CONCLUSIONS: In the absence of adequate Spanish interpretation, it was uncertain whether these LEP patients were provided the quality and content of information needed to assure that they are genuinely informed. We offer some low-cost practice suggestions that might mitigate these problems, and improve the quality of language interpretation, which is essential to assuring informed choice in health care for LEP patients

The fitness cost of mis-splicing is the main determinant of alternative splicing patterns

Background Most eukaryotic genes are subject to alternative splicing (AS), which may contribute to the production of protein variants or to the regulation of gene expression via nonsense-mediated messenger RNA (mRNA) decay (NMD). However, a fraction of splice variants might correspond to spurious transcripts and the question of the relative proportion of splicing errors to functional splice variants remains highly debated. Results We propose a test to quantify the fraction of AS events corresponding to errors. This test is based on the fact that the fitness cost of splicing errors increases with the number of introns in a gene and with expression level. We analyzed the transcriptome of the intron-rich eukaryote Paramecium tetraurelia. We show that in both normal and in NMD-deficient cells, AS rates strongly decrease with increasing expression level and with increasing number of introns. This relationship is observed for AS events that are detectable by NMD as well as for those that are not, which invalidates the hypothesis of a link with the regulation of gene expression. Our results show that in genes with a median expression level, 92–98% of observed splice variants correspond to errors. We observed the same patterns in human transcriptomes and we further show that AS rates correlate with the fitness cost of splicing errors. Conclusions These observations indicate that genes under weaker selective pressure accumulate more maladaptive substitutions and are more prone to splicing errors. Thus, to a large extent, patterns of gene expression variants simply reflect the balance between selection, mutation, and drift

p53 Amino-Terminus Region (1–125) Stabilizes and Restores Heat Denatured p53 Wild Phenotype

BACKGROUND:The intrinsically disordered N-ter domain (NTD) of p53 encompasses approximately hundred amino acids that contain a transactivation domain (1-73) and a proline-rich domain (64-92) and is responsible for transactivation function and apoptosis. It also possesses an auto-inhibitory function as its removal results in remarkable reduction in dissociation of p53 from DNA. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS/METHODOLOGY:In this report, we have discovered that p53-NTD spanning amino acid residues 1-125 (NTD125) interacted with WT p53 and stabilized its wild type conformation under physiological and elevated temperatures, both in vitro and in cellular systems. NTD125 prevented irreversible thermal aggregation of heat denatured p53, enhanced p21-5'-DBS binding and further restored DBS binding activity of heat-denatured p53, in vitro, in a dose-dependent manner. In vivo ELISA and immunoprecipitation analysis of NTD125-transfected cells revealed that NTD125 shifted equilibrium from p53 mutant to wild type under heat stress conditions. Further, NTD125 initiated nuclear translocation of cytoplasmic p53 in transcriptionally active state in order to activate p53 downstream genes such as p21, Bax, PUMA, Noxa and SUMO. CONCLUSION/SIGNIFICANCE:Here, we showed that a novel chaperone-like activity resides in p53-N-ter region. This study might have significance in understanding the role of p53-NTD in p53 stabilization, conformational activation and apoptosis under heat-stress conditions

Piezo1 integration of vascular architecture with physiological force

The mechanisms by which physical forces regulate endothelial cells to determine the complexities of vascular structure and function are enigmatic¹⁻⁵. Studies of sensory neurons have suggested Piezo proteins as subunits of Ca²⁺-permeable non-selective cationic channels for detection of noxious mechanical impact⁶⁻⁸. Here we show Piezo1 (Fam38a) channels as sensors of frictional force (shear stress) and determinants of vascular structure in both development and adult physiology. Global or endothelial-specific disruption of mouse Piezo1 profoundly disturbed the developing vasculature and was embryonic lethal within days of the heart beating. Haploinsufficiency was not lethal but endothelial abnormality was detected in mature vessels. The importance of Piezo1 channels as sensors of blood flow was shown by Piezo1 dependence of shear-stress-evoked ionic current and calcium influx in endothelial cells and the ability of exogenous Piezo1 to confer sensitivity to shear stress on otherwise resistant cells. Downstream of this calcium influx there was protease activation and spatial reorganization of endothelial cells to the polarity of the applied force. The data suggest that Piezo1 channels function as pivotal integrators in vascular biology

The Yeast Pif1 Helicase Prevents Genomic Instability Caused by G-Quadruplex-Forming CEB1 Sequences In Vivo

In budding yeast, the Pif1 DNA helicase is involved in the maintenance of both nuclear and mitochondrial genomes, but its role in these processes is still poorly understood. Here, we provide evidence for a new Pif1 function by demonstrating that its absence promotes genetic instability of alleles of the G-rich human minisatellite CEB1 inserted in the Saccharomyces cerevisiae genome, but not of other tandem repeats. Inactivation of other DNA helicases, including Sgs1, had no effect on CEB1 stability. In vitro, we show that CEB1 repeats formed stable G-quadruplex (G4) secondary structures and the Pif1 protein unwinds these structures more efficiently than regular B-DNA. Finally, synthetic CEB1 arrays in which we mutated the potential G4-forming sequences were no longer destabilized in pif1Δ cells. Hence, we conclude that CEB1 instability in pif1Δ cells depends on the potential to form G-quadruplex structures, suggesting that Pif1 could play a role in the metabolism of G4-forming sequences