AMIS, The Article Minimum Information Standard

The curation process is significantly slowed down by missing information in the articles analyzed (for example, the identity of the clones used to generate ISH probes, the precise sequences tested in reporter assays, etc..). To help authors ensure in the future that necessary information is present in their article, we defined the Article Minimum Information Standard (AMIS) guidelines. This standard describes for each experiment the mandatory information that should be mentioned in literature articles to facilitate the curation process. These guidelines extend the minimal information defined by the MISFISHIE format (Deutsch at al. 2008, _Nature Biotechnology_). This standard was deduced from the ANISEED curation pipeline (Tassy, Dauga, Daian, Sobral et al. 2010, _Genome Research_). ANISEED is a generic infrastructure for the creation, maintenance and integration of molecular and anatomical information on ascidians.

Thanks to the ANISEED curation pipeline, the capture of published information was streamlined by the creation of the “Article Card” concept. Each Article Card summarizes in a standardized and structured format the content of the text and figures of an article. It lists, and links to the corresponding experimental evidences, all features studied (genes, cell fates, etc...). This curation strategy allowed pointing out missing information essential to transform the “biological interpretability” of the data into their “computability”. AMIS was defined to obviate this problem.

The MISFISHIE format doesn’t include the minimal information necessary to describe cis-regulatory elements. In ANISEED, a sophisticated representation of the structure of cis-regulatory elements and their upstream regulators was designed. AMIS details the minimal information to describe a regulatory region. To facilitate regulatory region data transfer between databases, a document type definition (DTD) was developed, following the AMIS rules

Curation of NISEED, an integrative framework for the digital representation of embryonic development

NISEED (Network for In situ Expression and Embryological Data) is a generic infrastructure for the creation, maintenance and integration of molecular and anatomical information on model organisms. We applied it to ascidians which are marine invertebrate chordates. These animals constitute model organisms of choice for developmental biology because their embryos develop with a small number of cells and an invariant lineage, allowing their study with a cellular level of resolution. In ANISEED (Ascidian NISEED), embryogenesis of ascidian is represented at the level of the genome via functional gene annotations, cis-regulatory elements or gene expression data, at the level of the cell by representing its morphology, fates, lineage, and relations with its neighbors, or at the level of the whole embryo by representing its anatomy and morphogenesis at successive developmental stages. The system provides also tool and standard to enter, annotate, curate and manage data. All results can be accessed through the ANISEED website at "http://aniseed-ibdm.univ-mrs.fr":http://aniseed-ibdm.univ-mrs.fr
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FAIR, ethical, and coordinated data sharing for COVID-19 response: a scoping review and cross-sectional survey of COVID-19 data sharing platforms and registries

Data sharing is central to the rapid translation of research into advances in clinical medicine and public health practice. In the context of COVID-19, there has been a rush to share data marked by an explosion of population-specific and discipline-specific resources for collecting, curating, and disseminating participant-level data. We conducted a scoping review and cross-sectional survey to identify and describe COVID-19-related platforms and registries that harmonise and share participant-level clinical, omics (eg, genomic and metabolomic data), imaging data, and metadata. We assess how these initiatives map to the best practices for the ethical and equitable management of data and the findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) principles for data resources. We review gaps and redundancies in COVID-19 data-sharing efforts and provide recommendations to build on existing synergies that align with frameworks for effective and equitable data reuse. We identified 44 COVID-19-related registries and 20 platforms from the scoping review. Data-sharing resources were concentrated in high-income countries and siloed by comorbidity, body system, and data type. Resources for harmonising and sharing clinical data were less likely to implement FAIR principles than those sharing omics or imaging data. Our findings are that more data sharing does not equate to better data sharing, and the semantic and technical interoperability of platforms and registries harmonising and sharing COVID-19-related participant-level data needs to improve to facilitate the global collaboration required to address the COVID-19 crisis

Rapid identification of bacteria associated with Acute Oak Decline by high-resolution melt analysis

© 2016 The Society for Applied Microbiology Two Gram-negative Enterobacteriaceae, Gibbsiella quercinecans and Brenneria goodwinii, are frequently isolated from oak suffering from Acute Oak Decline. These two species are difficult to identify based on colony morphology, carbohydrate utilization or 16S rRNA gene sequence, and identification using gyrB gene sequencing is time-consuming and laborious. A rapid identification technique, based on high-resolution melt analysis of the atpD gene, was designed to efficiently process numerous isolates from an increasing number of affected woodlands and parks. Principal component analysis of the resulting melt curves from strains of G.quercinecans, B.goodwinii and their close phylogenetic relatives allowed differentiation into distinct clusters based on species or subspecies identity. Significance and Impact of the Study: Acute Oak Decline is an increasing threat to Britain's native oak population. Two novel bacterial species both belonging to the family Enterobacteriaceae, Gibbsiella quercinecans and Brenneria goodwinii, are thought to play an important role in symptom development. Here, we describe a rapid identification technique using high-resolution melt analysis of the atpD gene able to assign isolates to either G.quercinecans or B.goodwinii in a single assay, greatly reducing the time taken to identify if either or both of these species are present in symptomatic oak

Genetic and Transmission Analysis of Helicobacter pylori Strains within a Family1

Point mutations, intragenic recombination, and introduction of foreign alleles enhanced strain diversity within the family

Halogenase Genes in Nonribosomal Peptide Synthetase Gene Clusters of Microcystis (Cyanobacteria): Sporadic Distribution and Evolution

Cyanobacteria of the genus Microcystis are known to produce secondary metabolites of large structural diversity by nonribosomal peptide synthetase (NRPS) pathways. For a number of such compounds, halogenated congeners have been reported along with nonhalogenated ones. In the present study, chlorinated cyanopeptolin- and/or aeruginosin-type peptides were detected by mass spectrometry in 17 out of 28 axenic strains of Microcystis. In these strains, a halogenase gene was identified between 2 genes coding for NRPS modules in respective gene clusters, whereas it was consistently absent when the strains produced only nonchlorinated corresponding congeners. Nucleotide sequences were obtained for 12 complete halogenase genes and 14 intermodule regions of gene clusters lacking a halogenase gene or containing only fragments of it. When a halogenase gene was found absent, a specific, identical excision pattern was observed for both synthetase gene clusters in most strains. A phylogenetic analysis including other bacterial halogenases showed that the NRPS-related halogenases of Microcystis form a monophyletic group divided into 2 subgroups, corresponding to either the cyanopeptolin or the aeruginosin peptide synthetases. The distribution of these peptide synthetase gene clusters, among the tested Microcystis strains, was found in relative agreement with their phylogeny reconstructed from 16S–23S rDNA intergenic spacer sequences, whereas the distribution of the associated halogenase genes appears to be sporadic. The presented data suggest that in cyanobacteria these prevalent halogenase genes originated from an ancient horizontal gene transfer followed by duplication in the cyanobacterial lineage. We propose an evolutionary scenario implying repeated gene losses to explain the distribution of halogenase genes in 2 NRPS gene clusters that subsequently defines the seemingly erratic production of halogenated and nonhalogenated aeruginosins and cyanopeptolins among Microcystis strains

Zika vector competence data reveals risks of outbreaks: the contribution of the European ZIKAlliance project

First identified in 1947, Zika virus took roughly 70 years to cause a pandemic unusually associated with virus-induced brain damage in newborns. Zika virus is transmitted by mosquitoes, mainly Aedes aegypti, and secondarily, Aedes albopictus, both colonizing a large strip encompassing tropical and temperate regions. As part of the international project ZIKAlliance initiated in 2016, 50 mosquito populations from six species collected in 12 countries were experimentally infected with different Zika viruses. Here, we show that Ae. aegypti is mainly responsible for Zika virus transmission having the highest susceptibility to viral infections. Other species play a secondary role in transmission while Culex mosquitoes are largely non-susceptible. Zika strain is expected to significantly modulate transmission efficiency with African strains being more likely to cause an outbreak. As the distribution of Ae. aegypti will doubtless expand with climate change and without new marketed vaccines, all the ingredients are in place to relive a new pandemic of Zika.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Zika vector competence data reveals risks of outbreaks: the contribution of the European ZIKAlliance project

First identified in 1947, Zika virus took roughly 70 years to cause a pandemic unusually associated with virus-induced brain damage in newborns. Zika virus is transmitted by mosquitoes, mainly Aedes aegypti, and secondarily, Aedes albopictus, both colonizing a large strip encompassing tropical and temperate regions. As part of the international project ZIKAlliance initiated in 2016, 50 mosquito populations from six species collected in 12 countries were experimentally infected with different Zika viruses. Here, we show that Ae. aegypti is mainly responsible for Zika virus transmission having the highest susceptibility to viral infections. Other species play a secondary role in transmission while Culex mosquitoes are largely non-susceptible. Zika strain is expected to significantly modulate transmission efficiency with African strains being more likely to cause an outbreak. As the distribution of Ae. aegypti will doubtless expand with climate change and without new marketed vaccines, all the ingredients are in place to relive a new pandemic of Zika

Using Macro-Arrays to Study Routes of Infection of Helicobacter pylori in Three Families

allowed tracing the spread of infection through populations on different continents but transmission pathways between individual humans have not been clearly described.To investigate person-to-person transmission, we studied three families each including one child with persistence of symptoms after antibiotic treatment. Ten isolates from the antrum and corpus of stomach of each family member were analyzed both by sequencing of two housekeeping genes and macroarray tests. from outside the family appeared to be probable in the transmission pathways. infection may be acquired by more diverse routes than previously expected