3,117 research outputs found
Extreme genomic erosion after recurrent demographic bottlenecks in the highly endangered Iberian lynx
Background: Genomic studies of endangered species provide insights into their evolution and demographic history, reveal patterns of genomic erosion that might limit their viability, and offer tools for their effective conservation. The Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus) is the most endangered felid and a unique example of a species on the brink of extinction.
Results: We generate the first annotated draft of the Iberian lynx genome and carry out genome-based analyses of lynx demography, evolution, and population genetics. We identify a series of severe population bottlenecks in the history of the Iberian lynx that predate its known demographic decline during the 20th century and have greatly impacted its genome evolution. We observe drastically reduced rates of weak-to-strong substitutions associated with GC-biased gene conversion and increased rates of fixation of transposable elements. We also find multiple signatures of genetic erosion in the two remnant Iberian lynx populations, including a high frequency of potentially deleterious variants and substitutions, as well as the lowest genome-wide genetic diversity reported so far in any species.
Conclusions: The genomic features observed in the Iberian lynx genome may hamper short- and long-term viability through reduced fitness and adaptive potential. The knowledge and resources developed in this study will boost the research on felid evolution and conservation genomics and will benefit the ongoing conservation and management of this emblematic species
Active wetting of epithelial tissues
Development, regeneration and cancer involve drastic transitions in tissue
morphology. In analogy with the behavior of inert fluids, some of these
transitions have been interpreted as wetting transitions. The validity and
scope of this analogy are unclear, however, because the active cellular forces
that drive tissue wetting have been neither measured nor theoretically
accounted for. Here we show that the transition between 2D epithelial
monolayers and 3D spheroidal aggregates can be understood as an active wetting
transition whose physics differs fundamentally from that of passive wetting
phenomena. By combining an active polar fluid model with measurements of
physical forces as a function of tissue size, contractility, cell-cell and
cell-substrate adhesion, and substrate stiffness, we show that the wetting
transition results from the competition between traction forces and contractile
intercellular stresses. This competition defines a new intrinsic lengthscale
that gives rise to a critical size for the wetting transition in tissues, a
striking feature that has no counterpart in classical wetting. Finally, we show
that active shape fluctuations are dynamically amplified during tissue
dewetting. Overall, we conclude that tissue spreading constitutes a prominent
example of active wetting --- a novel physical scenario that may explain
morphological transitions during tissue morphogenesis and tumor progression
Long-term follow-up of certolizumab pegol in uveitis due to immune-mediated inflammatory diseases: multicentre study of 80 patients
ObjectivesTo evaluate effectiveness and safety of certolizumab pegol (CZP) in uveitis due to immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMID).MethodsMulticentre study of CZP-treated patients with IMID uveitis refractory to conventional immunosuppressant. Effectiveness was assessed through the following ocular parameters: best-corrected visual acuity, anterior chamber cells, vitritis, macular thickness and retinal vasculitis. These variables were compared between the baseline, and first week, first, third, sixth months, first and second year.ResultsWe studied 80 (33 men/47 women) patients (111 affected eyes) with a mean age of 41.6 +/- 11.7 years. The IMID included were: spondyloarthritis (n=43), Behcet's disease (n=10), psoriatic arthritis (n=8), Crohn's disease (n=4), sarcoidosis (n=2), juvenile idiopathic arthritis (n=1), reactive arthritis (n=1), rheumatoid arthritis (n=1), relapsing polychondritis (n=1),ConclusionsCZP seems to be effective and safe in uveitis related to different IMID, even in patients refractory to previous biological drugs
Selecting cash management models from a multiobjective perspective
[EN] This paper addresses the problem of selecting cash management models under different operating conditions from a multiobjective perspective considering not only cost but also risk. A number of models have been proposed to optimize corporate cash management policies. The impact on model performance of different operating conditions becomes an important issue. Here, we provide a range of visual and quantitative tools imported from Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis. More precisely, we show the utility of ROC analysis from a triple perspective as a tool for: (1) showing model performance; (2) choosingmodels; and (3) assessing the impact of operating conditions on model performance. We illustrate the selection of cash management models by means of a numerical example.Work partially funded by projects Collectiveware TIN2015-66863-C2-1-R (MINECO/FEDER) and 2014 SGR 118.Salas-Molina, F.; Rodríguez-Aguilar, JA.; Díaz-García, P. (2018). Selecting cash management models from a multiobjective perspective. Annals of Operations Research. 261(1-2):275-288. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-017-2634-9S2752882611-2Ballestero, E. (2007). Compromise programming: A utility-based linear-quadratic composite metric from the trade-off between achievement and balanced (non-corner) solutions. European Journal of Operational Research, 182(3), 1369–1382.Ballestero, E., & Romero, C. (1998). Multiple criteria decision making and its applications to economic problems. Berlin: Springer.Bi, J., & Bennett, K. P. (2003). Regression error characteristic curves. In Proceedings of the 20th international conference on machine learning (ICML-03), pp. 43–50.Bradley, A. P. (1997). The use of the area under the roc curve in the evaluation of machine learning algorithms. Pattern Recognition, 30(7), 1145–1159.da Costa Moraes, M. B., Nagano, M. S., & Sobreiro, V. A. (2015). Stochastic cash flow management models: A literature review since the 1980s. In Decision models in engineering and management (pp. 11–28). New York: Springer.Doumpos, M., & Zopounidis, C. (2007). Model combination for credit risk assessment: A stacked generalization approach. Annals of Operations Research, 151(1), 289–306.Drummond, C., & Holte, R. C. (2000). Explicitly representing expected cost: An alternative to roc representation. In Proceedings of the sixth ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining (pp. 98–207). New York: ACM.Drummond, C., & Holte, R. C. (2006). Cost curves: An improved method for visualizing classifier performance. Machine Learning, 65(1), 95–130.Elkan, C. (2001). The foundations of cost-sensitive learning. In International joint conference on artificial intelligence (Vol. 17, pp. 973–978). Lawrence Erlbaum associates Ltd.Fawcett, T. (2006). An introduction to roc analysis. Pattern Recognition Letters, 27(8), 861–874.Flach, P. A. (2003). The geometry of roc space: understanding machine learning metrics through roc isometrics. In Proceedings of the 20th international conference on machine learning (ICML-03), pp. 194–201.Garcia-Bernabeu, A., Benito, A., Bravo, M., & Pla-Santamaria, D. (2016). Photovoltaic power plants: a multicriteria approach to investment decisions and a case study in western spain. Annals of Operations Research, 245(1–2), 163–175.Glasserman, P. (2003). Monte Carlo methods in financial engineering (Vol. 53). New York: Springer.Gregory, G. (1976). Cash flow models: a review. Omega, 4(6), 643–656.Hernández-Orallo, J. (2013). Roc curves for regression. Pattern Recognition, 46(12), 3395–3411.Hernández-Orallo, J., Flach, P., & Ferri, C. (2013). Roc curves in cost space. Machine Learning, 93(1), 71–91.Hernández-Orallo, J., Lachiche, N., & Martınez-Usó, A. (2014). Predictive models for multidimensional data when the resolution context changes. In Workshop on learning over multiple contexts at ECML, volume 2014.Metz, C. E. (1978). Basic principles of roc analysis. In Seminars in nuclear medicine (Vol. 8, pp. 283–298). Amsterdam: Elsevier.Miettinen, K. (2012). Nonlinear multiobjective optimization (Vol. 12). Berlin: Springer.Ringuest, J. L. (2012). Multiobjective optimization: Behavioral and computational considerations. Berlin: Springer.Ross, S. A., Westerfield, R., & Jordan, B. D. (2002). Fundamentals of corporate finance (sixth ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.Salas-Molina, F., Pla-Santamaria, D., & Rodriguez-Aguilar, J. A. (2016). A multi-objective approach to the cash management problem. Annals of Operations Research, pp. 1–15.Srinivasan, V., & Kim, Y. H. (1986). Deterministic cash flow management: State of the art and research directions. Omega, 14(2), 145–166.Steuer, R. E., Qi, Y., & Hirschberger, M. (2007). Suitable-portfolio investors, nondominated frontier sensitivity, and the effect of multiple objectives on standard portfolio selection. Annals of Operations Research, 152(1), 297–317.Stone, B. K. (1972). The use of forecasts and smoothing in control limit models for cash management. Financial Management, 1(1), 72.Torgo, L. (2005). Regression error characteristic surfaces. In Proceedings of the eleventh ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery in data mining (pp. 697–702). ACM.Yu, P.-L. (1985). Multiple criteria decision making: concepts, techniques and extensions. New York: Plenum Press.Zeleny, M. (1982). Multiple criteria decision making. New York: McGraw-Hill
The Genomic Signature of Crop-Wild Introgression in Maize
The evolutionary significance of hybridization and subsequent introgression
has long been appreciated, but evaluation of the genome-wide effects of these
phenomena has only recently become possible. Crop-wild study systems represent
ideal opportunities to examine evolution through hybridization. For example,
maize and the conspecific wild teosinte Zea mays ssp. mexicana, (hereafter,
mexicana) are known to hybridize in the fields of highland Mexico. Despite
widespread evidence of gene flow, maize and mexicana maintain distinct
morphologies and have done so in sympatry for thousands of years. Neither the
genomic extent nor the evolutionary importance of introgression between these
taxa is understood. In this study we assessed patterns of genome-wide
introgression based on 39,029 single nucleotide polymorphisms genotyped in 189
individuals from nine sympatric maize-mexicana populations and reference
allopatric populations. While portions of the maize and mexicana genomes were
particularly resistant to introgression (notably near known
cross-incompatibility and domestication loci), we detected widespread evidence
for introgression in both directions of gene flow. Through further
characterization of these regions and preliminary growth chamber experiments,
we found evidence suggestive of the incorporation of adaptive mexicana alleles
into maize during its expansion to the highlands of central Mexico. In
contrast, very little evidence was found for adaptive introgression from maize
to mexicana. The methods we have applied here can be replicated widely, and
such analyses have the potential to greatly informing our understanding of
evolution through introgressive hybridization. Crop species, due to their
exceptional genomic resources and frequent histories of spread into sympatry
with relatives, should be particularly influential in these studies
Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), cyxlooxygenase-2 selective inhibitors (coxibs) and gastrointestinal harm: review of clinical trials and clinical practice
BACKGROUND: Gastrointestinal harm, known to occur with NSAIDs, is thought to be lower with NSAID and gastroprotective agent, and with inhibitors selective to cyclooxygenase-2 (coxibs) at usual plasma concentrations. We examine competing strategies for available evidence of reduced gastrointestinal bleeding in clinical trials and combine this evidence with evidence from clinical practice on whether the strategies work in the real world, whether guidance on appropriate prescribing is followed, and whether patients adhere to the strategies. METHODS: We used a series of systematic literature searches to find full publications of relevant studies for evidence about the efficacy of these different gastroprotection strategies in clinical trials, and for evidence that they worked and were adhered to in clinical practice – whether they were effective. We chose to use good quality systematic reviews and meta-analyses when they were available. RESULTS: Evidence of efficacy of coxibs compared to NSAIDs for upper gastrointestinal bleeding was strong, with consistent reductions in events of about 50% in large randomised trials (34,460 patients), meta-analyses of randomised trials (52,474 patients), and large observational studies in clinical practice (3,093 bleeding events). Evidence on the efficacy of NSAID plus gastroprotection with acid suppressants (proton pump inhibitors, PPIs, and histamine antagonists, H2As) was based mainly on the surrogate measure of endoscopic ulcers. The limited information on damage to the bowel suggested that NSAID plus PPI was more damaging than coxibs. Eleven observational studies studied 1.6 million patients, of whom 911,000 were NSAID users, and showed that 76% (range 65% to 90%) of patients with at least one gastrointestinal risk factor received no prescription for gastroprotective agent with an NSAID. The exception was a cohort of US veterans with previous gastrointestinal bleeding, where 75% had gastroprotection with an NSAID. When gastroprotection was prescribed, it was often described as inadequate. A single study suggested that patient adherence to prescribed gastroprotection was low. CONCLUSION: Evidence for efficacy of gastroprotection strategies with NSAIDs is limited. In clinical practice few patients who need gastroprotection get it, and those who get it may not take it. For coxibs, gastroprotection is inherent, although probably not complete
Ascl1 (Mash1) Defines Cells with Long-Term Neurogenic Potential in Subgranular and Subventricular Zones in Adult Mouse Brain
Ascl1 (Mash1) is a bHLH transcription factor essential for neural differentiation
during embryogenesis but its role in adult neurogenesis is less clear. Here we
show that in the adult brain Ascl1 is dynamically expressed during neurogenesis
in the dentate gyrus subgranular zone (SGZ) and more rostral subventricular zone
(SVZ). Specifically, we find Ascl1 levels low in SGZ Type-1 cells and SVZ B
cells but increasing as the cells transition to intermediate progenitor stages.
In vivo genetic lineage tracing with a tamoxifen (TAM) inducible
Ascl1CreERT2 knock-in mouse strain shows
that Ascl1 lineage cells continuously generate new neurons over extended periods
of time. There is a regionally-specific difference in neuron generation, with
mice given TAM at postnatal day 50 showing new dentate gyrus neurons through 30
days post-TAM, but showing new olfactory bulb neurons even 180 days post-TAM.
These results show that Ascl1 is not restricted to transit amplifying
populations but is also found in a subset of neural stem cells with long-term
neurogenic potential in the adult brain
The role of Prenatal Care and Social Risk Factors in the relationship between immigrant status and neonatal morbidity: A retrospective cohort study
Background and Aim Literature evaluating association between neonatal morbidity and immigrant status presents contradictory results. Poorer compliance with prenatal care and greater social risk factors among immigrants could play roles as major confounding variables, thus explaining contradictions. We examined whether prenatal care and social risk factors are confounding variables in the relationship between immigrant status and neonatal morbidity. Methods Retrospective cohort study: 231 pregnant African immigrant women were recruited from 2007–2010 in northern Spain. A Spanish population sample was obtained by simple random sampling at 1:3 ratio. Immigrant status (Spanish, Sub-Saharan and Northern African), prenatal care (Kessner Index adequate, intermediate or inadequate), and social risk factors were treated as independent variables. Low birth weight (LBW < 2500 grams) and preterm birth (< 37 weeks) were collected as neonatal morbidity variables. Crude and adjusted odds ratios (OR) were estimated by unconditional logistic regression with 95% confidence intervals (95% CI). Results Positive associations between immigrant women and higher risk of neonatal morbidity were obtained. Crude OR for preterm births in Northern Africans with respect to nonimmigrants was 2.28 (95% CI: 1.04–5.00), and crude OR for LBW was 1.77 (95% CI: 0.74–4.22). However, after adjusting for prenatal care and social risk factors, associations became protective: adjusted OR for preterm birth = 0.42 (95% CI: 0.14–1.32); LBW = 0.48 (95% CI: 0.15–1.52). Poor compliance with prenatal care was the main independent risk factor associated with both preterm birth (adjusted OR inadequate care = 17.05; 95% CI: 3.92–74.24) and LBW (adjusted OR inadequate care = 6.25; 95% CI: 1.28–30.46). Social risk was an important independent risk factor associated with LBW (adjusted OR = 5.42; 95% CI: 1.58– 18.62). Conclusions Prenatal care and social risk factors were major confounding variables in the relationship between immigrant status and neonatal morbidity
Oral fosfomycin for treatment of urinary tract infection: a retrospective cohort study
BACKGROUND: Fosfomycin is increasingly called upon for the treatment of multi drug-resistant (MDR) organisms causing urinary tract infection (UTI). We reviewed oral fosfomycin use for UTI treatment in a large UK hospital. The primary goal was to audit our clinical practice against current national guidelines. Secondary aims were to identify factors associated with treatment failure, and to investigate the potential for using fosfomycin in patients with co-morbidities. METHODS: We retrospectively studied 75 adult patients with UTI who received 151 episodes of treatment with fosfomycin from March 2013 to June 2015. We collected clinical data from our electronic patient record, and microbiology data pre- and post- fosfomycin treatment. We recorded additional data for patients receiving prolonged courses in order to make a preliminary assessment of safety and efficacy. We also reviewed >18,000 urinary tract isolates of Escherichia coli and Klebsiella spp. processed by our laboratory over the final year of our study period to determine the prevalence of fosfomycin resistance. RESULTS: There was a significant increase in fosfomycin treatment episodes over the course of the study period. Co-morbidities were present in 71 % of patients. The majority had E. coli infection (69 %), of which 59 % were extended spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL)-producers. Klebsiella infections were more likely than E. coli to fail treatment, and more likely to be reported as fosfomycin resistant in cases of relapse following treatment. There were no adverse events in five patients treated with prolonged fosfomycin. Among all urinary isolates collected over a year, fosfomycin resistance was documented in 1 % of E. coli vs. 19 % of Klebsiella spp. (p < 0.0001). CONCLUSIONS: We report an important role for oral fosfomycin for MDR UTI treatment in a UK hospital population, and based on the findings from this study, we present our own local guidelines for its use. We present preliminary data suggesting that fosfomycin is safe and effective for use in patients with complex comorbidities and over prolonged time periods, but may be less effective against Klebsiella than E. coli
Remote ischemic preconditioning preserves Connexin 43 phosphorylation in the rat heart in vivo
- …