Comparison of Muscle Transcriptome between Pigs with Divergent Meat Quality Phenotypes Identifies Genes Related to Muscle Metabolism and Structure

Background: Meat quality depends on physiological processes taking place in muscle tissue, which could involve a large pattern of genes associated with both muscle structural and metabolic features. Understanding the biological phenomena underlying muscle phenotype at slaughter is necessary to uncover meat quality development. Therefore, a muscle transcriptome analysis was undertaken to compare gene expression profiles between two highly contrasted pig breeds, Large White (LW) and Basque (B), reared in two different housing systems themselves influencing meat quality. LW is the most predominant breed used in pig industry, which exhibits standard meat quality attributes. B is an indigenous breed with low lean meat and high fat contents, high meat quality characteristics, and is genetically distant from other European pig breeds. Methodology/Principal Findings: Transcriptome analysis undertaken using a custom 15 K microarray, highlighted 1233 genes differentially expressed between breeds (multiple-test adjusted P-value,0.05), out of which 635 were highly expressed in the B and 598 highly expressed in the LW pigs. No difference in gene expression was found between housing systems. Besides, expression level of 12 differentially expressed genes quantified by real-time RT-PCR validated microarray data. Functional annotation clustering emphasized four main clusters associated to transcriptome breed differences: metabolic processes, skeletal muscle structure and organization, extracellular matrix, lysosome, and proteolysis, thereb

Towards sustainable practices in urban design. The role of a software package for designing water management alternative methods

International audienceThe emergence of sustainable development has transformed and renewed urban design and architecture principles and practices. Indeed, influenced by sustainable and “green” criteria, planners and designers have included specific issues to their action: low-energy consumption, biodiversity protection, pollution control and water management. Concerning the latter, alternative methods for a sustainable rainwater management have been emerging for the last few decades. In this paper, we present a software we are currently working on for designing alternative water management structures. Issued from a collaborative work between engineers, hydrologists, urban designers and policy makers, this software aims at supporting these stakeholders in dimensioning, volumes calculation, infiltration modeling, etc. It also furnishes a 3D visualisation, thus giving new communication skills. Therefore, this software also acts as a decision support tool concerning alternative methods. Based on semi-structured interviews with urban designers (architects, landscape designers) and engineers, this paper aims at providing an understanding of the role of software on the transition of a socio-technical regime, in this case urban design. More precisely, this paper offers a view on the factors that enable or inhibit the adoption of sustainability-oriented technologies in urban design

La prophylaxie pré-exposition permet de mieux vivre sa sexualité et de guider les hommes ayant des rapports sexuels avec des hommes vers une approche responsable de leur santé : une étude qualitative phénoménologique sur les motivations principales de la PrEP.

International audienceBackground Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV is instrumental in the prevention of HIV for HIV-uninfected persons, by drastically reducing the risk of acquisition in the case of high-risk exposures. Despite its demonstrated efficacy, it remained under-prescribed in France until 2018. The principal aim of this study was to understand the motivations of Men who have Sex with Men (MSM) who started using PrEP in Montpellier, France.Methods A phenomenological study was undertaken, using semi-structured interviews with twelve participants attending the University Hospital of Montpellier for PrEP. Interviews were analysed by means of triangulation up to the point of theoretical saturation, using a semio-pragmatic method.Results Fear of HIV infection, personalised regular follow-up, and the wish to take care of one’s health were the primary motivational factors. PrEP allows for a better sexual life restoring a sense of freedom despite the risks of STI, deemed manageable by PrEPers. PrEP does not modify long-term risk-taking behaviours but helps them better live their own sexuality and guides them towards a responsible approach to sexuality. Unclear information on PrEP, delivered by their family doctor, public campaigns or the media, leads to misrepresentations or negative social representation, including within the MSM community, which may delay its implementation.Conclusions Fear of HIV infection and the benefits of regular medical follow-up to take care of one’s health were motivational factors of importance for the use of PrEP by MSM in this study. PrEP transforms all existential dimensions of their lived experience, improving sexual identity and happiness. There is a need to improve professional awareness of the effectiveness of PrEP and to develop a patient centered approach, to disseminate information more widely to the general public and among MSM to reduce stigmatisation

Evaluating family physicians’ willingness to prescribe PrEP

International audienceIntroduction: We assessed family physicians' (FP) willingness to integrate PrEP into their clinical practice in Montpellier and its surroundings.Method: We aimed to randomly assess 92 FPs.Results: Ninety-six FPs were interviewed from May to December 2018: 78% (95% CI [69; 86]) were willing to integrate PrEP, 65% to be trained, and 52% to be the first providers. Of the 65 (6%) with some knowledge of PrEP, 21 were not aware of targeted populations and 39 never talked about PrEP with their patients. Nearly all FPs declared HIV prevention as part of their job and felt at ease talking about sexuality. Considering HIV prevention as part of their job was associated with increased likelihood to integrate PrEP into their practice (P=0.015).Conclusions: Most FPs were willing to integrate and be trained on PrEP. Lack of PrEP prescription seemed related to a lack of knowledge

HPV cervical infections and serological status in vaccinated and unvaccinated women

International audienceUnderstanding genital infections by Human papillomaviruses (HPVs) remains a major public health issue, especially in countries where vaccine uptake is low. We investigate HPV prevalence and antibody status in 150 women (ages 18 to 25) in Montpellier, France. At inclusion and one month later, cervical swabs, blood samples and questionnaires (for demographics and behavioural variables) were collected. Oncogenic, non-vaccine genotypes HPV51, HPV66, HPV53, and HPV52 were the most frequently detected viral genotypes overall. Vaccination status, which was well-balanced in the cohort, showed the strongest (protective) eect against HPV infections, with an associated odds ratio for alphapapillo-mavirus detection of 0.45 (95% condence interval: [0.22;0.58]). We also identied signicant eects of age, number of partners, body mass index, and contraception status on HPV detection and on coinfec-tions. Type-specic IgG serological status was also largely explained by the vaccination status. IgM seropositivity was best explained by HPV detection at inclusion only. Finally, we identify a strong signicant eect of vaccination on genotype prevalence, with a striking under-representation of HPV51 in vaccinated women. Variations in HPV prevalence correlate with key demographic and behavioural variables. The cross-protective eect of the vaccine against HPV51 merits further investigation

Concomitant and productive genital infections by HSV-2 and HPV in two young women: A case report

International audienceHuman papillomaviruses (HPVs), the most oncogenic virus known to humans, are often associated with Herpes Simplex Virus-2 (HSV-2) infections. The involvement of the latter in cervical cancer is controversial but its longterm infections might modulate the mucosal microenvironment in a way that favors carcinogenesis. We know little about coinfections between HSV-2 and HPVs, and studying the immunological and microbiological dynamics in the early stages of these infections may help identify or rule out potential interactions. We report two cases of concomitant productive, although asymptomatic, HSV-2 and HPV infections in young women (aged 20 and 25). The women were followed up for approximately a year, with clinical visits every two months and weekly self-samples. We performed quantitative analyses of their HSV-2 and HPV viral loads, immunological responses (IgG and IgM antibodies and local cytokines expression profiles), vaginal microbiota composition, as well as demographic and behavior data. We detect interactions between virus loads, immune response, and the vaginal microbiota, which improve our understanding of HSV-2 and HPVs' coinfections and calls for further investigation with larger cohorts

Does exposure to different menstrual products affect the vaginal environment?

International audienceThe vaginal ecosystem is a key component of women’s health. It also represents an ideal system for ecologists to investigate the consequence of perturbations on species diversity and emerging properties between organisational levels. Here, we study how exposure to different types of menstrual protection products is linked to microbial, immunological, demographic, and behavioural measurements in a cohort of young adult women who reported using more often tampons (n = 107) or menstrual cups (n = 31). We first found that cup users were older and smoked less than tampon users. When analysing health indicators, we detected potential associations between cups use reporting and fungal genital infection. A multivariate46analysis confirmed that, in our cohort, reporting using cups over tampons was associated with the higher odds ratio to report a fungal genital infection diagnosis by a medical doctor within the last 3 months. We did not detect significant differences between groups in terms of their bacterial vaginal microbiota composition and found marginal differences in the level of expression of 20 cytokines. However, a multivariate analysis of these biological data identified some level of clustering based on the type of menstrual production preferred (cups or tampons). These results suggest that exposure to different types of menstrual products could influence menstrual health. Larger studies and studies with a more powered setting are needed to assessthe robustness of these associations and identify causal mechanisms

Deep Sequoia corpus - PARSEME-FR corpus - FrSemCor

The Sequoia corpus is a set of 3,099 linguistically-annotated French sentences, originating from four sources (Europarl, European Agency Reports, French regional journal L'Est Républicain, and French wikipedia). Several types of annotations were added over the years. The current release comprises: - parts-of-speech (SEQUOIA ANR-08-EMER-013 project) - syntactic dependency trees - deep syntactic dependency graphs (Deep sequoia project) - multi-word expressions and named entities (PARSEME COST project and PARSEME-FR ANR-14-CERA-0001 project) - coarse semantic tags for nouns (FrSemCor project) See the deep sequoia page for a detailed description: https://deep-sequoia.inria.fr

Natural history, dynamics, and ecology of human papillomaviruses in genital infections of young women: protocol of the PAPCLEAR cohort study.

INTRODUCTION: Human papillomaviruses (HPVs) are responsible for one-third of all cancers caused by infections. Most HPV studies focus on chronic infections and cancers, and we know little about the early stages of the infection. Our main objective is to better understand the course and natural history of cervical HPV infections in healthy, unvaccinated and vaccinated, young women, by characterising the dynamics of various infection-related populations (virus, epithelial cells, vaginal microbiota and immune effectors). Another objective is to analyse HPV diversity within hosts, and in the study population, in relation to co-factors (lifestyle characteristics, vaccination status, vaginal microbiota, human genetics). METHODS AND ANALYSIS: The PAPCLEAR study is a single center longitudinal study following 150 women, aged 18-25 years, for up to 2 years. Visits occur every 2 or 4 months (depending on HPV status) during which several variables are measured, such as behaviours (via questionnaires), vaginal pH, HPV presence and viral load (via qPCR), local concentrations of cytokines (via MesoScale Discovery technology) and immune cells (via flow cytometry). Additional analyses are outsourced, such as titration of circulating anti-HPV antibodies, vaginal microbiota sequencing (16S and ITS1 loci) and human genotyping. To increase the statistical power of the epidemiological arm of the study, an additional 150 women are screened cross-sectionally. Finally, to maximise the resolution of the time series, participants are asked to perform weekly self-samples at home. Statistical analyses will involve classical tools in epidemiology, genomics and virus kinetics, and will be performed or coordinated by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Montpellier. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: This study has been approved by the Comite de Protection des Personnes Sud Mediterranee I (reference number 2016-A00712-49); by the Comite Consultatif sur le Traitement de l'Information en matiere de Recherche dans le domaine de la Sante (reference number 16.504); by the Commission Nationale Informatique et Libertes (reference number MMS/ABD/AR1612278, decision number DR-2016-488) and by the Agence Nationale de Securite du Medicament et des Produits de Sante (reference 20160072000007). Results will be published in preprint servers, peer-reviewed journals and disseminated through conferences. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT02946346; Pre-results