MolluscaBase – announcing a World Register of all Molluscs

Resumen de comunicación oral en congresoThe Mollusca, second largest phylum on Earth, lack a global listing of valid names or even precise figures for the number of Recent species. The launching of MolluscaBase is intended to fill this gap, expanding the contents of the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) to include all marine, freshwater and terrestrial molluscs, recent and fossil. The WoRMS database, hosted at the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) at Oostende, had more than 1,000,000 unique visitors in 2013 and provides the taxonomic backbone for initiatives such as Encyclopedia of Life, Catalogue of Life, and others. It currently contains more than 44,000 valid species names of Recent marine Mollusca, which are estimated to represent approximately 95% of all valid species. There is no similar global list of the freshwater and terrestrial Mollusca. It is estimated that there are about 23,000 species of land snails/slugs and about 5,000 freshwater gastropods and bivalves. The number of named fossil Mollusca is not known, but is in the same order of magnitude as that of Recent species. MolluscaBase is intended as an authoritative taxonomic database, relying only on published sources and built by taxonomic editors who are active malacologists and respond to feedback from users. Like in WoRMS, the contents should include Taxonomic hierarchy, Current name and synonymy, Literature sources, Distributions (using countries as the basic unit for land-based distributions), Fossil range (expressed in terms of the international chronostratigraphic chart) and other taxon attributes. This initiative is supported by LifeWatch, the E-Science European Infrastructure for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research. In a first move, MolluscaBase should build on the existing WoRMS contents incorporating the contents of existing initiatives like CLEMAM (Checklist of European MArine Molusca), FreshGEN (Freshwater Gastropods of the European Neogene) and Fauna Europaea. The long term goal of filling the gaps in non-marine and fossil components of MolluscaBase needs your support! If you are a taxonomist, specializing in any group of non-marine or extinct molluscs, and wish to become a contributor to MolluscaBase, please let us know and contact the WoRMS team at [email protected], or the corresponding author, to find your possible role in MolluscaBase!Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

First amyloid β1-42 certified reference material for re-calibrating commercial immunoassays

INTRODUCTION: Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) concentration of amyloid β peptide (Aβ42) is a key biomarker for Alzheimer’s disease (AD), reflecting brain amyloidosis. Reference materials based on human CSF were certified for the mass concentration of Aβ42. They are intended to be used by in vitro diagnostics manufacturers to calibrate their diagnostic assays for Aβ42. METHODS: The three certified reference materials (CRMs), ERM-DA480/IFCC, ERM-DA481/IFCC and ERM-DA482/IFCC, were prepared at three concentration levels and characterised using isotope dilution mass spectrometry methods. Roche, EUROIMMUN, and Fujirebio utilized the three CRMs to re-calibrate their immunoassays. RESULTS: The certified Aβ42 mass concentrations in ERM-DA480/IFCC, ERM-DA481/IFCC and ERM-DA482/IFCC are 0.45, 0.72 and 1.22 µg/L, respectively, with expanded uncertainties (k = 2) of 0.07, 0.11 and 0.18 µg/L, respectively. Before recalibration, a good correlation (Pearson’s r > 0.97), yet large biases were observed between results from different commercial assays. After re-calibration the between assay bias was reduced to < 5 %. DISCUSSION: The Aβ42 CRMs can ensure the comparability of results between methods and across platforms for the measurement of CSF Aβ42. This may serve as the basis for the introduction of uniform cut-off levels across assays.JRC.F.6-Reference Material