Product Liability in Maryland: Traditional and Emerging Theories of Recovery and Defense

In recent years, product liability law in Maryland and across the country has placed greater responsibility on the manufacturers of products causing injury. In this article, the authors review the traditional theories of manufacturer liability and discuss the novel theories being advanced to expand that liability. Also considered are the defenses available to manufacturers, both traditional and emerging. The authors conclude with the prognosis that because the pendulum has swung so far in the direction of placing greater responsibility on manufacturers, further expansion of manufacturer liability is both unlikely and inappropriate

Proteogenomics produces comprehensive and highly accurate protein-coding gene annotation in a complete genome assembly of Malassezia sympodialis

Complete and accurate genome assembly and annotation is a crucial foundation for comparative and functional genomics. Despite this, few complete eukaryotic genomes are available, and genome annotation remains a major challenge. Here, we present a complete genome assembly of the skin commensal yeast Malassezia sympodialis and demonstrate how proteogenomics can substantially improve gene an-notation. Through long-read DNA sequencing, we obtained a gap-free genome assembly for M. sympodi-alis (ATCC 42132), comprising eight nuclear and one mitochondrial chromosome. We also sequenced and assembled four M. sympodialis clinical isolates, and showed their value for understanding Malassezia reproduction by confirming four alternative allele combinations at the two mating-type loci. Importantly, we demonstrated how proteomics data could be readily integrated with transcriptomics data in standard annotation tools. This increased the number of annotated protein-coding genes by 14% (from 3612 to 4113), compared to using transcriptomics evidence alone. Manual curation further increased the number of protein-coding genes by 9% (to 4493). All of these genes have RNA-seq evidence and 87% were confirmed by proteomics. The M. sympodialis genome assembly and annotation presented here is at a quality yet achieved only for a few eukaryotic organisms, and constitutes an important reference for future host-microbe interaction studies