Simple models of the chemical field around swimming plankton

Background. Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women, and we recently reported human leukocyte antigen (HLA) alleles showing strong associations with cervical neoplasia risk and protection. HLA ligands are recognized by killer immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIRs) expressed on a range of immune cell subsets, governing their proinflammatory activity. We hypothesized that the inheritance of particular HLA-KIR combinations would increase cervical neoplasia risk. Methods. Here, we used HLA and KIR dosages imputed from single-nucleotide polymorphism genotype data from 2143 cervical neoplasia cases and 13 858 healthy controls of European decent. Results. The following 4 novel HLA alleles were identified in association with cervical neoplasia, owing to their linkage disequilibrium with known cervical neoplasia-associated HLA-DRB1 alleles: HLA-DRB3*9901 (odds ratio [OR], 1.24; P = 2.49 × 10−9), HLA-DRB5*0101 (OR, 1.29; P = 2.26 × 10−8), HLA-DRB5*9901 (OR, 0.77; P = 1.90 × 10−9), and HLA-DRB3*0301 (OR, 0.63; P = 4.06 × 10−5). We also found that homozygosity of HLA-C1 group alleles is a protective factor for human papillomavirus type 16 (HPV16)-related cervical neoplasia (C1/C1; OR, 0.79; P = .005). This protective association was restricted to carriers of either KIR2DL2 (OR, 0.67; P = .00045) or KIR2DS2 (OR, 0.69; P = .0006). Conclusions. Our findings suggest that HLA-C1 group alleles play a role in protecting against HPV16-related cervical neoplasia, mainly through a KIR-mediated mechanism

Defining the genetic susceptibility to cervical neoplasia - a genome-wide association study

Funding: MAB was funded by a National Health and Medical Research Council (Australia) Senior Principal Research Fellowship. Support was also received from the Australian Cancer Research Foundation. JL holds a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Human Genome Epidemiology. The Seattle study was supported by the following grants: NIH, National Cancer Institute grants P01CA042792 and R01CA112512. Cervical Health Study (from which the NSW component was obtained) was funded by NHMRC Grant 387701, and CCNSW core grant. The Montreal study was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (grant MOP-42532) and sample processing was funded by the Reseau FRQS SIDA-MI. The Swedish Research Council, the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research, the ALF/LUA research grant in Gothenburg and Umeå, the Lundberg Foundation, the Torsten and Ragnar Soderberg’s Foundation, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, and the European Commission grant HEALTH-F2-2008-201865-GEFOS, BBMRI.se, the Swedish Society of Medicine, the KempeFoundation (JCK-1021), the Medical Faculty of Umeå University, the County Council of Vasterbotten (Spjutspetsanslag VLL:159:33-2007). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscriptPeer reviewedPublisher PDFPublisher PD

Dispersal Routes and Habitat Utilization of Juvenile Atlantic Bluefin Tuna, Thunnus thynnus, Tracked with Mini PSAT and Archival Tags

Between 2005 and 2009, we deployed 58 miniature pop-up satellite archival tags (PSAT) and 132 implanted archival tags on juvenile Atlantic bluefin tuna (age 2–5) in the northwest Atlantic Ocean. Data returned from these efforts (n = 26 PSATs, 1 archival tag) revealed their dispersal routes, horizontal and vertical movements and habitat utilization. All of the tagged bluefin tuna remained in the northwest Atlantic for the duration observed, and in summer months exhibited core-use of coastal seas extending from Maryland to Cape Cod, MA, (USA) out to the shelf break. Their winter distributions were more spatially disaggregated, ranging south to the South Atlantic Bight, northern Bahamas and Gulf Stream. Vertical habitat patterns showed that juvenile bluefin tuna mainly occupied shallow depths (mean  = 5–12 m, sd  = 15–23.7 m) and relatively warm water masses in summer (mean  = 17.9–20.9°C, sd  = 4.2–2.6°C) and had deeper and more variable depth patterns in winter (mean  = 41–58 m, sd  = 48.9–62.2 m). Our tagging results reveal annual dispersal patterns, behavior and oceanographic associations of juvenile Atlantic bluefin tuna that were only surmised in earlier studies. Fishery independent profiling from electronic tagging also provide spatially and temporally explicit information for evaluating dispersals rates, population structure and fisheries catch patterns