Iodine status and supplementation in pregnancy: an overview of the evidence provided by meta-analyses

Iodine supplementation during pregnancy in areas with mild-moderate defciency is still a matter of debate. The present study aimed at systematically reviewing currently available evidences provided by meta-analyses with the aim to further clarify controversial aspects regarding the need of iodine supplementation in pregnancy as well as to provide guidance on clinical decision-making, even in areas with mild-moderate defciency. Medline, Embase and Cochrane search from 1969 to 2022 were performed. For the purpose of this review, only studies containing meta-analytic data were selected. A total of 7 meta-analyses were retrieved. Four meta-analyses evaluated the relationship between iodine status during pregnancy and neonatal and maternal outcomes suggesting the existence of a U-shaped correlation between iodine status and several maternal and neonatal consequences, especially if iodine status is evaluated at the beginning of pregnancy. Three meta-analyses evaluating the results of intervention trials failed to provide straightforward conclusions on the benefts of iodine supplementation in pregnant women in areas with mild-moderate iodine defciency. Although evidence coming from meta-analyses suggests a role of iodine status during pregnancy in determining maternal and child outcomes, results of meta-analyses of intervention trials are still controversial. Several factors including, degree of iodine defciency, and pooling studies conducted in areas with diferent iodine intake, may account for the lack of benefts reported by metaanalyses of intervention trials. More high-quality, randomized, controlled trials including information on timing, dose and regimen of iodine supplementation are needed to further elucidate this issue

A Full-Genomic Sequence-Verified Protein-Coding Gene Collection for Francisella tularensis

The rapid development of new technologies for the high throughput (HT) study of proteins has increased the demand for comprehensive plasmid clone resources that support protein expression. These clones must be full-length, sequence-verified and in a flexible format. The generation of these resources requires automated pipelines supported by software management systems. Although the availability of clone resources is growing, current collections are either not complete or not fully sequence-verified. We report an automated pipeline, supported by several software applications that enabled the construction of the first comprehensive sequence-verified plasmid clone resource for more than 96% of protein coding sequences of the genome of F. tularensis, a highly virulent human pathogen and the causative agent of tularemia. This clone resource was applied to a HT protein purification pipeline successfully producing recombinant proteins for 72% of the genes. These methods and resources represent significant technological steps towards exploiting the genomic information of F. tularensis in discovery applications

Midgut microbiota of the malaria mosquito vector Anopheles gambiae and Interactions with plasmodium falciparum Infection

The susceptibility of Anopheles mosquitoes to Plasmodium infections relies on complex interactions between the insect vector and the malaria parasite. A number of studies have shown that the mosquito innate immune responses play an important role in controlling the malaria infection and that the strength of parasite clearance is under genetic control, but little is known about the influence of environmental factors on the transmission success. We present here evidence that the composition of the vector gut microbiota is one of the major components that determine the outcome of mosquito infections. A. gambiae mosquitoes collected in natural breeding sites from Cameroon were experimentally challenged with a wild P. falciparum isolate, and their gut bacterial content was submitted for pyrosequencing analysis. The meta-taxogenomic approach revealed a broader richness of the midgut bacterial flora than previously described. Unexpectedly, the majority of bacterial species were found in only a small proportion of mosquitoes, and only 20 genera were shared by 80% of individuals. We show that observed differences in gut bacterial flora of adult mosquitoes is a result of breeding in distinct sites, suggesting that the native aquatic source where larvae were grown determines the composition of the midgut microbiota. Importantly, the abundance of Enterobacteriaceae in the mosquito midgut correlates significantly with the Plasmodium infection status. This striking relationship highlights the role of natural gut environment in parasite transmission. Deciphering microbe-pathogen interactions offers new perspectives to control disease transmission.Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement (IRD); French Agence Nationale pour la Recherche [ANR-11-BSV7-009-01]; European Community [242095, 223601]info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A Full-Genomic Sequence-Verified Protein-Coding Gene Collection for Francisella tularensis

The rapid development of new technologies for the high throughput (HT) study of proteins has increased the demand for comprehensive plasmid clone resources that support protein expression. These clones must be full-length, sequence-verified and in a flexible format. The generation of these resources requires automated pipelines supported by software management systems. Although the availability of clone resources is growing, current collections are either not complete or not fully sequence-verified. We report an automated pipeline, supported by several software applications that enabled the construction of the first comprehensive sequence-verified plasmid clone resource for more than 96% of protein coding sequences of the genome of F. tularensis, a highly virulent human pathogen and the causative agent of tularemia. This clone resource was applied to a HT protein purification pipeline successfully producing recombinant proteins for 72% of the genes. These methods and resources represent significant technological steps towards exploiting the genomic information of F. tularensis in discovery applications

Mediterranean winter rainfall in phase with African monsoons during the past 1.36 million years

Mediterranean climates are characterized by strong seasonal contrasts between dry summers and wet winters. Changes in winter rainfall are critical for regional socioeconomic development, but are difficult to simulate accurately1 and reconstruct on Quaternary timescales. This is partly because regional hydroclimate records that cover multiple glacial–interglacial cycles2,3 with different orbital geometries, global ice volume and atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations are scarce. Moreover, the underlying mechanisms of change and their persistence remain unexplored. Here we show that, over the past 1.36 million years, wet winters in the northcentral Mediterranean tend to occur with high contrasts in local, seasonal insolation and a vigorous African summer monsoon. Our proxy time series from Lake Ohrid on the Balkan Peninsula, together with a 784,000-year transient climate model hindcast, suggest that increased sea surface temperatures amplify local cyclone development and refuel North Atlantic low-pressure systems that enter the Mediterranean during phases of low continental ice volume and high concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases. A comparison with modern reanalysis data shows that current drivers of the amount of rainfall in the Mediterranean share some similarities to those that drive the reconstructed increases in precipitation. Our data cover multiple insolation maxima and are therefore an important benchmark for testing climate model performance

American Gut: an Open Platform for Citizen Science Microbiome Research

McDonald D, Hyde E, Debelius JW, et al. American Gut: an Open Platform for Citizen Science Microbiome Research. mSystems. 2018;3(3):e00031-18

A framework for human microbiome research

A variety of microbial communities and their genes (the microbiome) exist throughout the human body, with fundamental roles in human health and disease. The National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded Human Microbiome Project Consortium has established a population-scale framework to develop metagenomic protocols, resulting in a broad range of quality-controlled resources and data including standardized methods for creating, processing and interpreting distinct types of high-throughput metagenomic data available to the scientific community. Here we present resources from a population of 242 healthy adults sampled at 15 or 18 body sites up to three times, which have generated 5,177 microbial taxonomic profiles from 16S ribosomal RNA genes and over 3.5 terabases of metagenomic sequence so far. In parallel, approximately 800 reference strains isolated from the human body have been sequenced. Collectively, these data represent the largest resource describing the abundance and variety of the human microbiome, while providing a framework for current and future studies

Structure, function and diversity of the healthy human microbiome

Author Posting. © The Authors, 2012. This article is posted here by permission of Nature Publishing Group. The definitive version was published in Nature 486 (2012): 207-214, doi:10.1038/nature11234.Studies of the human microbiome have revealed that even healthy individuals differ remarkably in the microbes that occupy habitats such as the gut, skin and vagina. Much of this diversity remains unexplained, although diet, environment, host genetics and early microbial exposure have all been implicated. Accordingly, to characterize the ecology of human-associated microbial communities, the Human Microbiome Project has analysed the largest cohort and set of distinct, clinically relevant body habitats so far. We found the diversity and abundance of each habitat’s signature microbes to vary widely even among healthy subjects, with strong niche specialization both within and among individuals. The project encountered an estimated 81–99% of the genera, enzyme families and community configurations occupied by the healthy Western microbiome. Metagenomic carriage of metabolic pathways was stable among individuals despite variation in community structure, and ethnic/racial background proved to be one of the strongest associations of both pathways and microbes with clinical metadata. These results thus delineate the range of structural and functional configurations normal in the microbial communities of a healthy population, enabling future characterization of the epidemiology, ecology and translational applications of the human microbiome.This research was supported in part by National Institutes of Health grants U54HG004969 to B.W.B.; U54HG003273 to R.A.G.; U54HG004973 to R.A.G., S.K.H. and J.F.P.; U54HG003067 to E.S.Lander; U54AI084844 to K.E.N.; N01AI30071 to R.L.Strausberg; U54HG004968 to G.M.W.; U01HG004866 to O.R.W.; U54HG003079 to R.K.W.; R01HG005969 to C.H.; R01HG004872 to R.K.; R01HG004885 to M.P.; R01HG005975 to P.D.S.; R01HG004908 to Y.Y.; R01HG004900 to M.K.Cho and P. Sankar; R01HG005171 to D.E.H.; R01HG004853 to A.L.M.; R01HG004856 to R.R.; R01HG004877 to R.R.S. and R.F.; R01HG005172 to P. Spicer.; R01HG004857 to M.P.; R01HG004906 to T.M.S.; R21HG005811 to E.A.V.; M.J.B. was supported by UH2AR057506; G.A.B. was supported by UH2AI083263 and UH3AI083263 (G.A.B., C. N. Cornelissen, L. K. Eaves and J. F. Strauss); S.M.H. was supported by UH3DK083993 (V. B. Young, E. B. Chang, F. Meyer, T. M. S., M. L. Sogin, J. M. Tiedje); K.P.R. was supported by UH2DK083990 (J. V.); J.A.S. and H.H.K. were supported by UH2AR057504 and UH3AR057504 (J.A.S.); DP2OD001500 to K.M.A.; N01HG62088 to the Coriell Institute for Medical Research; U01DE016937 to F.E.D.; S.K.H. was supported by RC1DE0202098 and R01DE021574 (S.K.H. and H. Li); J.I. was supported by R21CA139193 (J.I. and D. S. Michaud); K.P.L. was supported by P30DE020751 (D. J. Smith); Army Research Office grant W911NF-11-1-0473 to C.H.; National Science Foundation grants NSF DBI-1053486 to C.H. and NSF IIS-0812111 to M.P.; The Office of Science of the US Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231 for P.S. C.; LANL Laboratory-Directed Research and Development grant 20100034DR and the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency grants B104153I and B084531I to P.S.C.; Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO) grant to K.F. and J.Raes; R.K. is an HHMI Early Career Scientist; Gordon&BettyMoore Foundation funding and institutional funding fromthe J. David Gladstone Institutes to K.S.P.; A.M.S. was supported by fellowships provided by the Rackham Graduate School and the NIH Molecular Mechanisms in Microbial Pathogenesis Training Grant T32AI007528; a Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of Canada Grant in Aid of Research to E.A.V.; 2010 IBM Faculty Award to K.C.W.; analysis of the HMPdata was performed using National Energy Research Scientific Computing resources, the BluBioU Computational Resource at Rice University

Eruptive dynamics during violent strombolian Vesuvius 1906 eruption

About 600,000 people live around Mt. Vesuvius, where the risk associated with an explosive eruption is very high. Violent strombolian events have occurred in the most recent history of the volcano and this kind of events is considered to have a high probability of occurrence in the next future. Combining new volcanological analyses with historical observations, we reconstructed the eruptive dynamics during the violent strombolian 1906 event.PublishedUniversità di PARMA5V. Processi eruttivi e post-eruttiv

Vitamin D Reduces Thyroid Cancer Cells Migration Independently From the Modulation of CCL2 and CXCL8 Chemokines Secretion

BackgroundVitamin D3 is largely involved in the regulation of calcium homeostasis. More recently, it was demonstrated that vitamin D exerts several beneficial effects against cancer progression through several mechanisms, including the reduction of cancer cells proliferation and migration. CXCL8 and CCL2 are two chemokines secreted by thyroid tumor cells. In the thyroid tumor microenvironment, these chemokines exert several pro-tumorigenic effects including the one to increase the metastatic potential. The aim of the present study was to investigate if vitamin D could modulate both thyroid cancer cell migration and their ability to secrete CCL2 and CXCL8. MethodsTPC-1 (RET/PTC rearranged) and 8505C (BRAFV600e mutated) thyroid cancer cell lines were treated with increasing concentrations of 1,25-OH-vitamin D3 (0-1,000 nM). Cell viability was assessed by WST-1 assay, cell migration was evaluated by transwell-migration chamber system, and CCL2 and CXCL8 levels were measured in the cell culture supernatants by ELISA. ResultsVitamin D did not affect cell viability but reduced, in a dose-dependent and significant manner, thyroid cancer cell migration (ANOVAs p < 0.05 for both TPC-1 and 8505C). Vitamin D differently modulated the secretion of CCL2 and CXCL8, by significantly inhibiting the secretion of CCL2 in both thyroid cancer cell lines and inhibiting the secretion of CXCL8 only in TPC-1 (ANOVAs p < 0.05). ConclusionsVitamin D treatment of thyroid cancer cell lines reduces cell migration independently from the inhibition of the secretion of pro-tumorigenic chemokines. Future studies specifically designed at clarifying the pathways involved in the different inhibitory effects of vitamin D on CCL2 and CXCL8 in thyroid cancer cells appear worthwhile