Oxamniquine resistance alleles are widespread in Old World Schistosoma mansoni and predate drug deployment

Do mutations required for adaptation occur de novo, or are they segregating within populations as standing genetic variation? This question is key to understanding adaptive change in nature, and has important practical consequences for the evolution of drug resistance. We provide evidence that alleles conferring resistance to oxamniquine (OXA), an antischistosomal drug, are widespread in natural parasite populations under minimal drug pressure and predate OXA deployment. OXA has been used since the 1970s to treat Schistosoma mansoni infections in the New World where S. mansoni established during the slave trade. Recessive loss-of-function mutations within a parasite sulfotransferase (SmSULT-OR) underlie resistance, and several verified resistance mutations, including a deletion (p.E142del), have been identified in the New World. Here we investigate sequence variation in SmSULT-OR in S. mansoni from the Old World, where OXA has seen minimal usage. We sequenced exomes of 204 S. mansoni parasites from West Africa, East Africa and the Middle East, and scored variants in SmSULT-OR and flanking regions. We identified 39 non-synonymous SNPs, 4 deletions, 1 duplication and 1 premature stop codon in the SmSULT-OR coding sequence, including one confirmed resistance deletion (p.E142del). We expressed recombinant proteins and used an in vitro OXA activation assay to functionally validate the OXA-resistance phenotype for four predicted OXA-resistance mutations. Three aspects of the data are of particular interest: (i) segregating OXA-resistance alleles are widespread in Old World populations (4.29–14.91% frequency), despite minimal OXA usage, (ii) two OXA-resistance mutations (p.W120R, p.N171IfsX28) are particularly common (>5%) in East African and Middle-Eastern populations, (iii) the p.E142del allele has identical flanking SNPs in both West Africa and Puerto Rico, suggesting that parasites bearing this allele colonized the New World during the slave trade and therefore predate OXA deployment. We conclude that standing variation for OXA resistance is widespread in S. mansoni

Interactions between Natural Populations of Human and Rodent Schistosomes in the Lake Victoria Region of Kenya: A Molecular Epidemiological Approach

One of the world's most prevalent neglected diseases is schistosomiasis, which infects approximately 200 million people worldwide. Schistosoma mansoni is transmitted to humans by skin penetration by free-living larvae that develop in freshwater snails. The origin of this species is East Africa, where it coexists with its sister species, S. rodhaini. Interactions between these species potentially influence their epidemiology, ecology, and evolutionary biology, because they infect the same species of hosts and can hybridize. Over two years, we examined their distribution in Kenya to determine their degree of overlap geographically, within snail hosts, and in the water column as infective stages. Both species were spatially and temporally patchy, although S. mansoni was eight times more common than S. rodhaini. Both species overlap in the time of day they were present in the water column, which increases the potential for the species to coinfect the same host and interbreed. Peak infective time for S. mansoni was midday and dawn and dusk for S. rodhaini. Three snails were coinfected, which was more common than expected by chance. These findings indicate a lack of obvious isolating mechanisms to prevent hybridization, raising the intriguing question of how the two species retain separate identities

Structural, electrical conductivity and dielectric relaxation behavior of LiHf2(PO4)3 ceramic powders

Lithium hafnium phosphate LiHf2(PO4)3 (LHP) was synthesized via solid-state synthesis technique. The sintering behavior, structure, and phase composition of the as-prepared sample was analyzed using X-ray diffraction (XRD) characterization technique. The XRD-Rietveld refinement analysis showed that after sintering at low temperatures 500 to 1000 °C, it exhibited various secondary phases. However, a single phase was observed as the sintering temperature increases from 1100 to 1200 °C. LHP sintered at 1100 °C produced real features of sodium superionic conductor type (NASICON-type) with hexagonal crystal axis indicating R-3c space group. The electrical properties were studied using impedance spectroscopy technique. Frequency and temperature dependence behavior of conductivity (ac and dc) and dielectric permittivity were studied. The results obtained describes the conduction mechanism in the system. Electric modulus formalism was performed to investigate the relaxation behavior which showed that as measuring temperature increases, the relaxation frequency increases whereas relaxation time decreases. This behavior explains the hopping mechanism of the charge carriers in the system. Likewise, the correlated barrier hopping model elucidates the dominant hopping mechanism

Supercritical CO2 extraction of lipids contained in three different microalgae (Chlorella Nannochloropsis oculata and Dunaliella salina): study of the influence of water content and pre-treatment on the extraction kinetics and yields

International audienceno abstrac

Évolution des sporocystes de

Les transplantations microchirurgicales de sporocystes fils de Schistosoma bovis chez des Bulinus truncatus sains induisent une dédifférenciation des sporocystes transplantés et leur différenciation en sporocystes sporocystogènes producteurs d’une génération additionnelle de sporocystes fils. Ceux-ci colonisent la glande digestive dans sa totalité et produisent des cercaires infestantes.Durant toute la parasitose une fraction des sporocystes fils issus des sporocystes transplantés persiste dans la zone céphalo-pédieuse et est à son tour le siège d’une sporocystogenèse active. Les données concernant la dynamique de la production cercarienne sont au moins en partie en relation avec la dynamique intramolluscale des populations de sporocystes.Le succès des transplantations microchirurgicales de sporocystes de S. bovis autorise la perspective d’un clonage de cette espèce

Supercritical CO2 extraction of essential oil from Romarinus officinalis Juniperus communis ssp nana, Helichrysum italicum and Pistacia lentiscus; comparison of oil composition and extraction yield with hydrodistillation method

International audienceno abstrac

Microalgae : Supercritical extraction and fractionation for health and energy applications

International audienceno abstrac

Conversion of phosphogypsum to potassium sulfate and calcium carbonate in aqueous solution

The dissociation of the phosphogysum by the liquid route which is the object of our work, is most appropriate and little expensive. Indeed, it leads to materials of direct application. The present work has for objective to study the decomposition of the phosphogypsum by the soft chemistry into valuable products such as K2SO4 and CaCO3. K2SO4 is a fertilizer which is highly recommended in the field of the agriculture, while CaCO3 can be used in the fields of the industry (cement) and the environment. According to the obtained results, we notice that the decomposition of the phosphogypsum in aqueous solution is very workable, reproducible, inexpensive and it is an ecologically interesting reaction. This reaction is made at room temperature and in aqueous environment, by giving two valuable products K2SO4 and CaCO3. The reaction is total after one hour and a half