The ability of contemporary cardiologists to judge the ischemic impact of a coronary lesion visually

Background: Landmark trials showed that invasive pressure measurement (Fractional Flow Reserve, FFR) was a better guide to coronary stenting than visual assessment. However, present-day interventionists have benefited from extensive research and personal experience of mapping anatomy to hemodynamics. Aims: To determine if visual assessment of the angiogram performs as well as invasive measurement of coronary physiology. Methods: 25 interventional cardiologists independently visually assessed the single vessel coronary disease of 200 randomized participants in The Objective Randomized Blinded Investigation with optimal medical Therapy of Angioplasty in stable angina trial (ORBITA). They gave a visual prediction of the FFR and Instantaneous Wave-free Ratio (iFR), denoted vFFR and viFR respectively. Each judged each lesion on 2 occasions, so that every lesion had 50 vFFR, and 50 viFR assessments. The group consensus visual estimates (vFFR-group and viFR-group) and individual cardiologists' visual estimates (vFFR-individual and viFR-individual) were tested alongside invasively measured FFR and iFR for their ability to predict the placebo-controlled reduction in stress echo ischemia with stenting. Results: Placebo-controlled ischemia improvement with stenting was predicted by vFFR-group (p < 0.0001) and viFR-group (p < 0.0001), vFFR-individual (p < 0.0001) and viFR-individual (p < 0.0001). There were no significant differences between the predictive performance of the group visual estimates and their invasive counterparts: p = 0.53 for vFFR vs FFR and p = 0.56 for viFR vs iFR. Conclusion: Visual assessment of the angiogram by contemporary experts, provides significant additional information on the amount of ischaemia which can be relieved by placebo-controlled stenting in single vessel coronary artery disease

Sample_Kakusan4

DNA sequence files from previously published papers and selection results of models for molecular evolution by Kakusan4. The specified options are able to find in the paper

Sample_Aminosan

Amino-acid sequence files from previously published papers and selection results of models for molecular evolution by Aminosan. The specified options are able to find in the paper

Two New Computational Methods for Universal DNA Barcoding: A Benchmark Using Barcode Sequences of Bacteria, Archaea, Animals, Fungi, and Land Plants

あらゆる生物の名前をDNAに基づいて特定する「DNAバーコーディング」の理論的枠組みを確立. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2013-10-19.Taxonomic identification of biological specimens based on DNA sequence information (a.k.a. DNA barcoding) is becoming increasingly common in biodiversity science. Although several methods have been proposed, many of them are not universally applicable due to the need for prerequisite phylogenetic/machine-learning analyses, the need for huge computational resources, or the lack of a firm theoretical background. Here, we propose two new computational methods of DNA barcoding and show a benchmark for bacterial/archeal 16S, animal COX1, fungal internal transcribed spacer, and three plant chloroplast (rbcL, matK, and trnH-psbA) barcode loci that can be used to compare the performance of existing and new methods. The benchmark was performed under two alternative situations: query sequences were available in the corresponding reference sequence databases in one, but were not available in the other. In the former situation, the commonly used “1-nearest-neighbor” (1-NN) method, which assigns the taxonomic information of the most similar sequences in a reference database (i.e., BLAST-top-hit reference sequence) to a query, displays the highest rate and highest precision of successful taxonomic identification. However, in the latter situation, the 1-NN method produced extremely high rates of misidentification for all the barcode loci examined. In contrast, one of our new methods, the query-centric auto-k-nearest-neighbor (QCauto) method, consistently produced low rates of misidentification for all the loci examined in both situations. These results indicate that the 1-NN method is most suitable if the reference sequences of all potentially observable species are available in databases; otherwise, the QCauto method returns the most reliable identification results. The benchmark results also indicated that the taxon coverage of reference sequences is far from complete for genus or species level identification in all the barcode loci examined. Therefore, we need to accelerate the registration of reference barcode sequences to apply high-throughput DNA barcoding to genus or species level identification in biodiversity research

Data from: Kakusan4 and Aminosan: two programs for comparing nonpartitioned, proportional, and separate models for combined molecular phylogenetic analyses of multilocus sequence data

Proportional and separate models able to apply different combination of substitution rate matrix and among-site rate variation model to each locus are frequently used in phylogenetic studies of multilocus data. However, the selection from among nonpartitioned (i.e., a common combination of models is applied to all-loci concatenated sequences), proportional, and separate models is usually based on the researcher's preference rather than on any information criteria. The present study describes two programs, "Kakusan4" (for DNA sequences) and "Aminosan" (for amino-acid sequences), that allow the selection of evolutionary models based on several types of information criteria. The programs can handle both multilocus and single-locus data, in addition to providing an easy-to-use wizard interface and a non-interactive command line interface. In the case of multilocus data, substitution rate matrices and among-site rate variation models are compared at each locus and at all-loci concatenated sequences, after which nonpartitioned, proportional, and separate models are compared based on information criteria. The programs also provide model configuration files for MrBayes, PAUP*, PHYML, RAxML, and Treefinder to support further phylogenetic analysis using a selected model. The best-fit models were found to differ depending on the data set. Furthermore, differences in the information criteria among nonpartitioned, proportional, and separate models were much larger than those among the nonpartitioned models. These findings suggest that selecting from nonpartitioned, proportional, and separate models results in a better phylogenetic tree. Kakusan4 and Aminosan are available at http://www.fifthdimension.jp/. They are licensed under GNU GPL Ver.2, and are able to run on Windows, MacOS X, and Linux

Sharing of Diverse Mycorrhizal and Root-Endophytic Fungi among Plant Species in an Oak-Dominated Cool-Temperate Forest.

Most terrestrial plants interact with diverse clades of mycorrhizal and root-endophytic fungi in their roots. Through belowground plant-fungal interactions, dominant plants can benefit by interacting with host-specific mutualistic fungi and proliferate in a community based on positive plant-mutualistic fungal feedback. On the other hand, subordinate plant species may persist in the community by sharing other sets (functional groups) of fungal symbionts with each other. Therefore, revealing how diverse clades of root-associated fungi are differentially hosted by dominant and subordinate plant species is essential for understanding plant community structure and dynamics. Based on 454-pyrosequencing, we determined the community composition of root-associated fungi on 36 co-occurring plant species in an oak-dominated forest in northern Japan and statistically evaluated the host preference phenotypes of diverse mycorrhizal and root-endophytic fungi. An analysis of 278 fungal taxa indicated that an ectomycorrhizal basidiomycete fungus in the genus Lactarius and a possibly endophytic ascomycete fungus in the order Helotiales significantly favored the dominant oak (Quercus) species. In contrast, arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi were generally shared among subordinate plant species. Although fungi with host preferences contributed to the compartmentalization of belowground plant-fungal associations, diverse clades of ectomycorrhizal fungi and possible root endophytes were associated not only with the dominant Quercus but also with the remaining plant species. Our findings suggest that dominant-ectomycorrhizal and subordinate plant species can host different subsets of root-associated fungi, and diverse clades of generalist fungi can counterbalance the compartmentalization of plant-fungal associations. Such insights into the overall structure of belowground plant-fungal associations will help us understand the mechanisms that facilitate the coexistence of plant species in natural communities

High-coverage ITS primers for the DNA-based identification of ascomycetes and basidiomycetes in environmental samples.

The kingdom Fungi is estimated to include 1.5 million or more species, playing key roles as decomposers, mutualists, and parasites in every biome on the earth. To comprehensively understand the diversity and ecology of this huge kingdom, DNA barcoding targeting the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region of the nuclear ribosomal repeat has been regarded as a prerequisite procedure. By extensively surveying ITS sequences in public databases, we designed new ITS primers with improved coverage across diverse taxonomic groups of fungi compared to existing primers. An in silico analysis based on public sequence databases indicated that the newly designed primers matched 99% of ascomycete and basidiomycete ITS taxa (species, subspecies or varieties), causing little taxonomic bias toward either fungal group. Two of the newly designed primers could inhibit the amplification of plant sequences and would enable the selective investigation of fungal communities in mycorrhizal associations, soil, and other types of environmental samples. Optimal PCR conditions for the primers were explored in an in vitro investigation. The new primers developed in this study will provide a basis for ecological studies on the diversity and community structures of fungi in the era of massive DNA sequencing

Sample_Kakusan4

DNA sequence files from previously published papers and selection results of models for molecular evolution by Kakusan4. The specified options are able to find in the paper

Sample_Aminosan

Amino-acid sequence files from previously published papers and selection results of models for molecular evolution by Aminosan. The specified options are able to find in the paper