Carbon and metal(loid)s in parkland and road verge surface soils in the city of Liverpool, UK

Urban soils are at the interface between land and people and provide a wide variety of important ecosystem services to highly populous areas. The aims of this soil survey were (1) to measure the bulk density, carbon (C) storage and pH of surface soils (0-15 cm depth) from public spaces (parks and road verges) in the city of Liverpool, UK, and (2) to determine the likely impact of these master variables on heavy metal concentrations (As, Cd, Cu, Pb and Zn). The bulk densities and organic matter contents varied considerably in the predominantly sandy textured soils within the city boundary, resulting in diverse C densities from 1-10 kg C m2. Organic carbon formed the majority of the labile, water-soluble and extractable C pool in these soils, a fact not easily elucidated from their organic matter or C content alone. The copper and lead concentrations in the sampled soils were correlated with organic matter and organic carbon in water-extracts. Cadmium and zinc appeared to be dependent only on soil pH, whilst arsenic was related positively to organic matter, but negatively to pH. Interrelationships, and hence synonymous distributions, of all metal(loid)s existed, but were strongest between Cu and As, and Cu and Pb. These results suggest that the diverse bulk densities, and hence carbon storage, of the urban soils surveyed influenced the dispersal of metals and arseni

Analysis of immune-related loci identifies 48 new susceptibility variants for multiple sclerosis

Using the ImmunoChip custom genotyping array, we analyzed 14,498 subjects with multiple sclerosis and 24,091 healthy controls for 161,311 autosomal variants and identified 135 potentially associated regions (P < 1.0 × 10−4). In a replication phase, we combined these data with previous genome-wide association study (GWAS) data from an independent 14,802 subjects with multiple sclerosis and 26,703 healthy controls. In these 80,094 individuals of European ancestry, we identified 48 new susceptibility variants (P < 5.0 × 10−8), 3 of which we found after conditioning on previously identified variants. Thus, there are now 110 established multiple sclerosis risk variants at 103 discrete loci outside of the major histocompatibility complex. With high-resolution Bayesian fine mapping, we identified five regions where one variant accounted for more than 50% of the posterior probability of association. This study enhances the catalog of multiple sclerosis risk variants and illustrates the value of fine mapping in the resolution of GWAS signals