A multi-approach survey as the most reliable tool to accurately assess biodiversity: an example of thai murine rodents

Wildlife surveys rely on an accurate taxonomic framework. Identification tools used to reach this goal are not equivalent and may depend on several objectives and constraints, including sampling conservation difficulties, the invasiveness of the sampling techniques, sampling capacity, the relevance of the results, materials needed, the cost and the user time required in the field and laboratory. This article presents and discusses the advantages and limits of each identification tool used in the Ceropath (Community ecology of rodents and their pathogens in South East Asia) program to reach a fast and relevant identification of the rodents sampled. It is concluded that there needs to be a combination of the results from different methods, including the most recent ones, to achieve an improvement in taxonomic identification

Agrammatic but numerate

A central question in cognitive neuroscience concerns the extent to which language enables other higher cognitive functions. In the case of mathematics, the resources of the language faculty, both lexical and syntactic, have been claimed to be important for exact calculation, and some functional brain imaging studies have shown that calculation is associated with activation of a network of left-hemisphere language regions, such as the angular gyrus and the banks of the intraparietal sulcus. We investigate the integrity of mathematical calculations in three men with large left-hemisphere perisylvian lesions. Despite severe grammatical impairment and some difficulty in processing phonological and orthographic number words, all basic computational procedures were intact across patients. All three patients solved mathematical problems involving recursiveness and structure-dependent operations (for example, in generating solutions to bracket equations). To our knowledge, these results demonstrate for the first time the remarkable independence of mathematical calculations from language grammar in the mature cognitive system

The AJ155 antibody recognizes the Dictyostelium p23 marker by immunofluorescence

The AJ155 antibody, derived from the H194 hybridoma, detects by immunofluorescence the p23-labelled compartments from Dictyostelium discoideum

Comparison between Transcriptome Sequencing and 16S Metagenomics for Detection of Bacterial Pathogens in Wildlife

Background Rodents are major reservoirs of pathogens responsible for numerous zoonotic diseases in humans and livestock. Assessing their microbial diversity at both the individual and population level is crucial for monitoring endemic infections and revealing microbial association patterns within reservoirs. Recently, NGS approaches have been employed to characterize microbial communities of different ecosystems. Yet, their relative efficacy has not been assessed. Here, we compared two NGS approaches, RNA-Sequencing (RNA-Seq) and 16S-metagenomics, assessing their ability to survey neglected zoonotic bacteria in rodent populations.Methodology/Principal Findings : We first extracted nucleic acids from the spleens of 190 voles collected in France. RNA extracts were pooled, randomly retro-transcribed, then RNA-Seq was performed using HiSeq. Assembled bacterial sequences were assigned to the closest taxon registered in GenBank. DNA extracts were analyzed via a 16S-metagenomics approach using two sequencers: the 454 GS-FLX and the MiSeq. The V4 region of the gene coding for 16S rRNA was amplified for each sample using barcoded universal primers. Amplicons were multiplexed and processed on the distinct sequencers. The resulting datasets were de-multiplexed, and each read was processed through a pipeline to be taxonomically classified using the Ribosomal Database Project. Altogether, 45 pathogenic bacterial genera were detected. The bacteria identified by RNA-Seq were comparable to those detected by 16S-metagenomics approach processed with MiSeq (16S-MiSeq). In contrast, 21 of these pathogens went unnoticed when the 16S-metagenomics approach was processed via 454-pyrosequencing (16S-454). In addition, the 16S-metagenomics approaches revealed a high level of coinfection in bank voles. Conclusions/Significance :We concluded that RNA-Seq and 16S-MiSeq are equally sensitive in detecting bacteria. Although only the 16S-MiSeq method enabled identification of bacteria in each individual reservoir, with subsequent derivation of bacterial prevalence in host populations, and generation of intra-reservoir patterns of bacterial interactions. Lastly, the number of bacterial reads obtained with the 16S-MiSeq could be a good proxy for bacterial prevalence

The AJ514 antibody recognizes the common antigen 1 from Dictyostelium discoideum by immunofluorescence

The AJ514 antibody, derived from the 221-342-5 hybridoma, detects by immunofluorescence the common antigen 1 from Dictyostelium discoideum

The AI215 antibody recognizes an EPEA-tagged recombinant protein by immunofluorescence

The AI215 antibody against the EPEA tag recognizes an EPEA-tagged human TAC protein by immunofluorescence in paraformaldehyde-fixed HeLa cells

The AJ520 antibody recognizes the Dictyostelium vacuolar H+-ATPase subunit A by immunofluorescence

The AJ520 antibody, derived from the 221-35-2 hybridoma, detects by immunofluorescence the full-length vacuolar H+-ATPase subunit A from Dictyostelium discoideum

AF394, AF395 and AF396 antibodies recognize a GFP-tagged recombinant protein by immunofluorescence

AF394, AF395 and AF396 antibodies against the GFP protein recognize a GFP-tagged human TAC protein by immunofluorescence in paraformaldehyde-fixed HeLa cells

The AJ154 antibody recognizes the Dictyostelium p80 protein by Western blot

The AJ154 antibody, derived from the H161 hybridoma, detects by Western blot the full-length p80 protein from Dictyostelium discoideum