A genetic analysis of variable number of tandem repeats (VNTR) polymorphism in the horse

Restriction fragment length polymorphism detected with the 33.6 minisatellite probe (Jeffreys et al, 1985) was analysed in 3 horse families of paternal half-sibs and in a sample of stallions from 4 breeds. Among the bands detected on Hae III genomic DNA digests, it was found that strongly hybridizing fragments behaved as alleles at 2 different loci. These 2 loci, showing 7 and 3 detectable alleles, were not closely linked to each other nor to informative blood groups and protein markers. No neo-mutation in allele length was observed at these 2 loci ip the 3 families. In the stallion sample, 8 alleles were detected at the first locus and no differences were found between their frequencies in the 4 breeds. Heterozygosity and polymorphism information content (PIC) values estimated in the 4 breeds show that the Thoroughbred is the least variable breed and the Arab the most. In the whole population the PIC values were 0.73 and 0.70 respectively.Le polymorphisme de longueur de fragment de restriction détecté par la sonde minisatellite 33.6 (Jeffreys et al, 1985) a été analysé chez le cheval dans trois familles de demi-germains paternels et dans un échantillon d’étalons de quatre races. Parmi toutes les bandes révélées à partir d’ADN génomique digéré par Hae III, les fragments donnant un signal intense se comportent comme des allèles ségrégeant à deux locus différents. Ceux-ci, qui possèdent respectivement sept et trois allèles détectables, ne sont pas étroitement liés entre eux ni avec les locus informatifs des groupes sanguins et des protéines du sang. Aucune néo-mutation de longueur des allèles n’a été détectée dans les trois familles. Dans l’échantillon des étalons, huit allèles ont été observés au premier locus et aucune différence de fréquence n’apparaît entre les quatre races. Les valeurs d’hétérozygotie et les valeurs informatives des polymorphismes (PIC) estimées sur cet échantillon montrent que la race de Pur-sang est la moins variable à l’opposé de la race Arabe. Les valeurs estimées sur la population totale sont respectivement de 0,73 et de 0, 70

Cluster structures on quantum coordinate rings

We show that the quantum coordinate ring of the unipotent subgroup N(w) of a symmetric Kac-Moody group G associated with a Weyl group element w has the structure of a quantum cluster algebra. This quantum cluster structure arises naturally from a subcategory C_w of the module category of the corresponding preprojective algebra. An important ingredient of the proof is a system of quantum determinantal identities which can be viewed as a q-analogue of a T-system. In case G is a simple algebraic group of type A, D, E, we deduce from these results that the quantum coordinate ring of an open cell of a partial flag variety attached to G also has a cluster structure.Comment: v2: minor corrections. v3: references updated, final version to appear in Selecta Mathematic

Effects of recent minimum temperature and water deficit increases on Pinus pinaster radial growth and wood density in southern Portugal

Western Iberia has recently shown increasing frequency of drought conditions coupled with heatwave events, leading to exacerbated limiting climatic conditions for plant growth. It is not clear to what extent wood growth and density of agroforestry species have suffered from such changes or recent extreme climate events. To address this question, tree-ring width and density chronologies were built for a Pinus pinaster stand in southern Portugal and correlated with climate variables, including the minimum, mean and maximum temperatures and the number of cold days. Monthly and maximum daily precipitations were also analyzed as well as dry spells. The drought effect was assessed using the standardized precipitation-evapotranspiration (SPEI) multi-scalar drought index, between 1 to 24-months. The climate-growth/density relationships were evaluated for the period 1958-2011. We show that both wood radial growth and density highly benefit from the strong decay of cold days and the increase of minimum temperature. Yet the benefits are hindered by long-term water deficit, which results in different levels of impact on wood radial growth and density. Despite of the intensification of long-term water deficit, tree-ring width appears to benefit from the minimum temperature increase, whereas the effects of long-term droughts significantly prevail on tree-ring density. Our results further highlight the dependency of the species on deep water sources after the juvenile stage. The impact of climate changes on longterm droughts and their repercussion on the shallow groundwater table and P. pinaster’s vulnerability are also discussed. This work provides relevant information for forest management in the semi-arid area of the Alentejo region of Portugal. It should ease the elaboration of mitigation strategies to assure P. pinaster’s production capacity and quality in response to more arid conditions in the near future in the regioninfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Adverse Life Trajectories Are a Risk Factor for SARS-CoV-2 IgA Seropositivity.

Asymptomatic individuals, called "silent spreaders" spread SARS-CoV-2 efficiently and have complicated control of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. As seen in previous influenza pandemics, socioeconomic and life-trajectory factors are important in disease progression and outcome. The demographics of the asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 carriers are unknown. We used the CON-VINCE cohort of healthy, asymptomatic, and oligosymptomatic individuals that is statistically representative of the overall population of Luxembourg for age, gender, and residency to characterise this population. Gender (male), not smoking, and exposure to early-life or adult traumatic experiences increased the risk of IgA seropositivity, and the risk associated with early-life exposure was a dose-dependent metric, while some other known comorbidities of active COVID-19 do not impact it. As prior exposure to adversity is associated with negative psychobiological reactions to external stressors, we recorded psychological wellbeing during the study period. Exposure to traumatic events or concurrent autoimmune or rheumatic disease were associated with a worse evolution of anxiety and depressive symptoms throughout the lockdown period. The unique demographic profile of the "silent spreaders" highlights the role that the early-life period plays in determining our lifelong health trajectory and provides evidence that the developmental origins of health and disease is applicable to infectious diseases

T cell immunosenescence after early life adversity: association with cytomegalovirus infection.

Early life adversity (ELA) increases the risk for multiple age-related diseases, such as diabetes type 2 and cardiovascular disease. As prevalence is high, ELA poses a major and global public health problem. Immunosenescence, or aging of the immune system, has been proposed to underlie the association between ELA and long-term health consequences. However, it is unclear what drives ELA-associated immunosenescence and which cells are primarily affected. We investigated different biomarkers of immunosenescence in a healthy subset of the EpiPath cohort. Participants were either parent-reared (Ctrl, n = 59) or had experienced separation from their parents in early childhood and were subsequently adopted (ELA, n = 18). No difference was observed in telomere length or in methylation levels of age-related CpGs in whole blood, containing a heterogeneous mixture of immune cells. However, when specifically investigating T cells, we found a higher expression of senescence markers (CD57) in ELA. In addition, senescent T cells (CD57+) in ELA had an increased cytolytic potential compared to senescent cells in controls. With a mediation analysis we demonstrated that cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection, which is an important driving force of immunosenescence, largely accounted for elevated CD57 expression observed in ELA. Leukocyte telomere length may obscure cell-specific immunosenescence; here, we demonstrated that the use of cell surface markers of senescence can be more informative. Our data suggest that ELA may increase the risk of CMV infection in early childhood, thereby mediating the effect of ELA on T cell-specific immunosenescence. Thus, future studies should include CMV as a confounder or selectively investigate CMV seronegative cohorts

Caractérisation de systèmes d'endiguement à l'heure de la GEMAPI - application au territoire de l'agglomération troyenne

[Departement_IRSTEA]Eaux [TR1_IRSTEA]RIVAGE [ADD1_IRSTEA]Hydrosystèmes et risques naturelsInternational audienceIn 2016, Cerema (Centre for studies and expertise on Risks, Environment, Mobility and Urban and Country Planning) and Irstea (National Research Institute of Science and Technology for Environment and Agriculture), launched partnerships with local authorities, to provide assistance in carrying out their new missions in flood prevention and aquatic environment management. Nine of them applied as they needed technical support with the implementation of these new competences from January 1st, 2018. A few years before, in 2015, the regulation framework on hydraulic works had been reinforced. Local authorities now have to reach specific objectives on identification and supervision of flood defence systems. The new regulation framework on flood defence systems leads local authorities in charge of flood prevention to reconsider how their territories are protected, and how hydraulic structures take part into flood protection. Local authorities have thus to identify where flood defence systems are relevant and with which structures. They have to determine the level of protection and the limits of the protected areas. They also have to organize the surveillance and maintenance of the flood defence systems as well as fulfilling compulsory documents, such as risk analysis. This paper describes one example of methodology which has been developed to help a local authority in the identification of flood defence systems. It provides tools to characterize the protection with reference to the new regulation framework. It also highlights issues that are to be faced when applied on a complex territory, such as Troyes agglomeration.En 2016, le Cerema (Centre d'Études et d'Expertise sur les Risques, l'Environnement, la Mobilité et l'Aménagement) et l'Irstea (Institut national de Recherche en Sciences et Technologies pour l'Environnement et l'Agriculture) ont lancé un appel à partenariat visant à accompagner les collectivités dans la prise de compétence GEMAPI (GEstion des Milieux Aquatiques et Prévention des Inondations). Plusieurs intercommunalités se sont portées candidates avec des questionnements très concrets liés à la mise en oeuvre de la compétence au 1er janvier 2018. Dans un contexte d'évolution récente de la réglementation sur les ouvrages hydrauliques, des besoins d'accompagnement dans l'identification des systèmes de protection contre les inondations sont très vite ressortis. La nouvelle réglementation sur les systèmes d'endiguement amène en effet le responsable de la prévention des inondations à repenser le mode de protection de son territoire et le rôle des nombreux ouvrages hydrauliques présents dans l'environnement du réseau hydrographique. Avec la prise de compétence GEMAPI, les collectivités sont confrontées à des problématiques liées à l'identification physique des systèmes d'endiguement, au niveau de protection apporté, à la définition de la zone protégée, à l'organisation de la surveillance à mettre en place, et à la réalisation des études réglementaires associées, notamment les études de dangers. Cet article décrit une méthodologie proposée pour accompagner une collectivité dans l'identification des systèmes de protection contre les inondations. Des outils sont proposés, qui permettent de caractériser la protection au regard des nouveaux objectifs réglementaires. Sont également exposés quelques questionnements soulevés dans le cas de la mise en oeuvre sur le territoire de l'agglomération troyenne

Analysis of a large fMRI cohort: Statistical and methodological issues for group analyses

The aim of group fMRI studies is to relate contrasts of tasks or stimuli to regional brain activity increases. These studies typically involve 10 to 16 subjects. The average regional activity statistical significance is assessed using the subject to subject variability of the effect (random effects analyses). Because of the relatively small number of subjects included, the sensitivity and reliability of these analyses is questionable and hard to investigate. In this work, we use a very large number of subject (more than 80) to investigate this issue. We take advantage of this large cohort to study the statistical properties of the inter-subject activity and focus on the notion of reproducibility by bootstrapping. We asked simple but important methodological questions: Is there, from the point of view of reliability, an optimal statistical threshold for activity maps? How many subjects should be included in group studies? What method should be preferred for inference? Our results suggest that i) optimal thresholds can indeed be found, and are rather lower than usual corrected for multiple comparison thresholds, ii) 20 subjects or more should be included in functional neuroimaging studies in order to have sufficient reliability, iii) non-parametric significance assessment should be preferred to parametric methods, iv) cluster-level thresholding is more reliable than voxel-based thresholding, and v) mixed effects tests are much more reliable than random effects tests. Moreover, our study shows that inter-subject variability plays a prominent role in the relatively low sensitivity and reliability of group studies. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Conception d'une alarme cycliste par radio-opportunité

International audienceCette communication présente une stratégie de détection d'un véhicule de type bus par un cycliste dans le contexte d'une cohabitation bus-vélo en milieu ur-bain. Nous présentons ici le prototype de réalisation d'un module embarqué sur un vélo pouvant détecter les bus aux alentours en interceptant les signaux radioélectriques émis par ces bus. La stratégie choisie est le développe-ment d'un analyseur de spectre basé sur une clé RTL-SDR couplée avec une carte Raspberry pi 3. Sur cette carte, est embarqué un algorithme de traitement du signal as-surant la fonction d'analyse spectrale des signaux reçus par la clé RTL-SDR. Le choix est fait de scruter le spectre des signaux émis dans le cadre de la liaison TETRA entre le bus et le poste de commande. L'ensemble de ce travail se situe dans le contexte du projet CYCLOPE (protection électronique pour cyclistes), labellisé par l'ANR en juillet 2014 et qui vise à renforcer la sécurité des cyclistes dans un contexte urbain. Ce projet multidisciplinaire rassemble des compétences scientifiques et techniques avec des ap-proches de type sciences humaines et sociales pour traiter des comportements des usagers face à une information de présence du vélo (pour un conducteur de bus) et du bus (pour un cycliste). Ce travail présente donc le volet de dé-tection de présence d'un bus