Monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) interaction with parenting practices on callous-unemotional traits in preschoolers

Background and Objectives: From a gene-by-environment perspective, parenting in interaction with the polymorphism in the Monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene (MAOA-uVNTR) might also be associated with increased callous-unemotional traits (CU) in preschoolers. MAOA-uVNTR results in differential enzyme activity, so that high-activity alleles (MAOA-H) are linked to reduced dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine availability in comparison to low-activity allele (MAOA-L). As MAOA-uVNTR has been previously described to moderate the relationship between childhood parental maltreatment and aggressive and antisocial behavior, it may also play a role in CU traits etiology

Maternal psychological distress in primary care and association with child behavioural outcomes at age three

Observational studies indicate children whose mothers have poor mental health are at increased risk of socio-emotional behavioural difficulties, but it is unknown whether these outcomes vary by the mothers’ mental health recognition and treatment status. To examine this question, we analysed linked longitudinal primary care and research data from 1078 women enrolled in the Born in Bradford cohort. A latent class analysis of treatment status and self-reported distress broadly categorised women as (a) not having a common mental disorder (CMD) that persisted through pregnancy and the first 2 years after delivery (N = 756, 70.1 %), (b) treated for CMD (N = 67, 6.2 %), or (c) untreated (N = 255, 23.7 %). Compared to children of mothers without CMD, 3-year-old children with mothers classified as having untreated CMD had higher standardised factor scores on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (d = 0.32), as did children with mothers classified as having treated CMD (d = 0.27). Results were only slightly attenuated in adjusted analyses. Children of mothers with CMD may be at risk for socio-emotional and behavioural difficulties. The development of effective treatments for CMD needs to be balanced by greater attempts to identify and treat women. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00787-015-0777-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Broadly sampled multigene analyses yield a well-resolved eukaryotic tree of life

Author Posting. © The Authors, 2010. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Oxford University Press for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Systematic Biology 59 (2010): 518-533, doi:10.1093/sysbio/syq037.An accurate reconstruction of the eukaryotic tree of life is essential to identify the innovations underlying the diversity of microbial and macroscopic (e.g. plants and animals) eukaryotes. Previous work has divided eukaryotic diversity into a small number of high-level ‘supergroups’, many of which receive strong support in phylogenomic analyses. However, the abundance of data in phylogenomic analyses can lead to highly supported but incorrect relationships due to systematic phylogenetic error. Further, the paucity of major eukaryotic lineages (19 or fewer) included in these genomic studies may exaggerate systematic error and reduces power to evaluate hypotheses. Here, we use a taxon-rich strategy to assess eukaryotic relationships. We show that analyses emphasizing broad taxonomic sampling (up to 451 taxa representing 72 major lineages) combined with a moderate number of genes yield a well-resolved eukaryotic tree of life. The consistency across analyses with varying numbers of taxa (88-451) and levels of missing data (17-69%) supports the accuracy of the resulting topologies. The resulting stable topology emerges without the removal of rapidly evolving genes or taxa, a practice common to phylogenomic analyses. Several major groups are stable and strongly supported in these analyses (e.g. SAR, Rhizaria, Excavata), while the proposed supergroup ‘Chromalveolata’ is rejected. Further, extensive instability among photosynthetic lineages suggests the presence of systematic biases including endosymbiotic gene transfer from symbiont (nucleus or plastid) to host. Our analyses demonstrate that stable topologies of ancient evolutionary relationships can be achieved with broad taxonomic sampling and a moderate number of genes. Finally, taxonrich analyses such as presented here provide a method for testing the accuracy of relationships that receive high bootstrap support in phylogenomic analyses and enable placement of the multitude of lineages that lack genome scale data

Prevalence and genetic characteristics of Staphylococcus aureus CC398 isolates from invasive infections in spanish hospitals, focusing on the livestock-independent CC398-MSSA clade

Background: Livestock-associated (LA)-CC398-MRSA is closely related to pigs, being unfrequently detected in human invasive infections. CC398-MSSA is emerging in human invasive infections in some countries, but genetic and epidemiological characteristics are still scarcely reported. Objectives: To determine the prevalence of Staphylococcus aureus (SA) CC398, both MRSA and MSSA, among blood cultures SA isolates recovered in Spanish hospitals located in regions with different pig-farming densities (PD) and characterize the recovered isolates. Methods: One thousand twenty-two SA isolates (761 MSSA, 261 MRSA) recovered from blood cultures during 6–12 months in 17 Spanish hospitals (2018–2019) were studied. CC398 lineage identification, detection of spa-types, and antibiotic resistance, virulence and human immune evasion cluster (IEC) genes were analyzed by PCR/sequencing. Results: Forty-four CC398-MSSA isolates (4.3% of SA; 5.8% of MSSA) and 10 CC398-MRSA isolates (1% of SA; 3.8% of MRSA) were detected. Eleven spa-types were found among the CC398-MSSA isolates with t571 and t1451 the most frequent spa-types detected (75%). Most of CC398-MSSA isolates were Immune-Evasion-Cluster (IEC)-positive (88.6%), tetracycline-susceptible (95.5%) and erythromycin/clindamycin–inducible-resistant/erm(T)-positive (75%). No statistical significance was detected when the CC398-MSSA/MSSA rate was correlated to PD (pigs/km2) (p = 0.108). On the contrary, CC398-MRSA isolates were all IEC-negative, predominately spa-t011 (70%), and the CC398-MRSA/MRSA rate was significantly associated to PD (p < 0.005). Conclusion: CC398-MSSA is an emerging clade in invasive infections in Spanish hospitals. CC398-MRSA (mostly t011) and CC398-MSSA (mostly t571 and t1451) show important differences, possibly suggesting divergent steps in host-adaptation evolutionary processes. While CC398-MRSA is livestock-associated (lacking IEC-system), CC398-MSSA seems to be mostly livestock-independent, carrying human-adaptation markers.

The ocean sampling day consortium

Ocean Sampling Day was initiated by the EU-funded Micro B3 (Marine Microbial Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Biotechnology) project to obtain a snapshot of the marine microbial biodiversity and function of the world’s oceans. It is a simultaneous global mega-sequencing campaign aiming to generate the largest standardized microbial data set in a single day. This will be achievable only through the coordinated efforts of an Ocean Sampling Day Consortium, supportive partnerships and networks between sites. This commentary outlines the establishment, function and aims of the Consortium and describes our vision for a sustainable study of marine microbial communities and their embedded functional traits

Trade-Offs Between Reducing Complex Terminology and Producing Accurate Interpretations from Environmental DNA: Comment on “Environmental DNA: What\u27s behind the term?” by Pawlowski et al., (2020)

In a recent paper, “Environmental DNA: What\u27s behind the term? Clarifying the terminology and recommendations for its future use in biomonitoring,” Pawlowski et al. argue that the term eDNA should be used to refer to the pool of DNA isolated from environmental samples, as opposed to only extra-organismal DNA from macro-organisms. We agree with this view. However, we are concerned that their proposed two-level terminology specifying sampling environment and targeted taxa is overly simplistic and might hinder rather than improve clear communication about environmental DNA and its use in biomonitoring. This terminology is based on categories that are often difficult to assign and uninformative, and it overlooks a fundamental distinction within eDNA: the type of DNA (organismal or extra-organismal) from which ecological interpretations are derived