Hematological parameters of red tilapia (Oreochromis sp.) fed lemongrass essential oil (Cymbopogon citratus) after challenge with Streptococcus agalactiae

The study involved feeding lemongrass essential oil (LEO) supplements to red tilapia (Oreochromis sp.) at concentrations including Control - 0 mg, T1 – 200 mg, T2 – 300 mg, and T3 – 400 mg per kg of feed. The research investigated changes in hematological (HCT, Hb, RBC, WBC & thrombocytes) and erythrocyte’s morphological (major/minor axis; perimeter, and area of erythrocyte) parameters before infection, 5- and 10-days post-infection (DPI). According to analytical findings, a diet containing LEO enhanced the synthesis of both erythrocytes and leukocytes in the peripheral blood of red tilapia after 20 days of being used. Therefore, the indicators of this group of fish showed better performance than those that did not use LEO supplement five days after bacterial infection. Fish fed 200 mg/kg of LEO after being challenged with S. agalactiae for ten days showed an improved effect on red blood cell production. White blood cells decreased at all concentrations because of citral’s immunomodulatory properties

EFFECTS OF SALT STRESS ON PLANT GROWTH AND BIOMASS ALLOCATION IN SOME WETLAND GRASS SPECIES IN THE MEKONG DELTA

Salt stress causes serious damage to many cellular and physiological processes that leads to yield reduction. The study induced salt stress using Hoagland solution added NaCl to evaluate its effects on plant growth and biomass allocation of some wetland grass species in order to identify salt-tolerant species for replacing and/or supplementing rice/grass in rice-shrimp model and salt-affected area in the Mekong Delta. The study also seeks to evaluate the response of leaf chlorophyll (SPAD unit) and proline content in salt-treated plants to varying application of salinity. Typha orientalis, Lepironia articulata, Eleocharis dulcis and Scirpus littoralis were studied in hydroponics condition with four levels of NaCl of 5, 10, 15, 20‰ and the control treatment (without adding NaCl). The experiment was arranged in a completely randomized design with 3 replications. The salt-treated plants showed visually clear responses of inhibited growth under salt stress condition compared to the control plants. Among the four studied species, T. orientalis produced the highest dry shoot biomass (15.5 g DW/plant), while E. dulcis had the lowest value (2.8 g DW/plant). However, only T. orientalis showed significantly decreased in biomass as salinity increased with 9.3 and 4.6 times lower of fresh and dry biomass in plants grown at the salinity level of 20‰ compared to those grown in the control treatment. The other three plant species did not affect by salinity levels. The results indicated that S. littoralis, L. articulata and E. dulcis could tolerate at high salinity of 20‰ (eq. to the EC value in the nutrient solution of 38.0 dS/m) and could be potential candidate to grow in the rice-shrimp model or in the salt-affected soils. 

A comprehensive evaluation of polygenic score and genotype imputation performances of human SNP arrays in diverse populations

publishedVersio

Synthesis and Characterization of Silver Nanoplates by a Seed-mediated Method

Silver nanoplates (SNPs) having different size were synthesized by a seed-mediated method. The seeds -silver nanoparticles with 4 – 6 nm diameters were synthesized first by reducing silver nitrate with sodium borohydride in the present of Trisodium Citrate and Hydrogen peroxide. Then these seeds were developed by continue reducing Ag$^+$ ions with various amount of L-Ascorbic acid to form SNPs. Our analysis showed that the concentratrion of L-Ascorbic acid, a secondary reducing agent, played an important role to form SNPs. In addition, the size and in-plane dipole plasmon resonance wavelenght of silver nanoplates were increased when the concentration of added silver nitrate increased. The characterization of SNPs were studied by UV-Vis, FE-SEM, EDS and TEM methods

Efficient inference of large prokaryotic pangenomes with PanTA

Pangenome inference is an indispensable step in bacterial genomics, yet its scalability poses a challenge due to the rapid growth of genomic collections. This paper presents PanTA, a software package designed for constructing pangenomes of large bacterial datasets, showing unprecedented efficiency levels multiple times higher than existing tools. PanTA introduces a novel mechanism to construct the pangenome progressively without rebuilding the accumulated collection from scratch. The progressive mode is shown to consume orders of magnitude less computational resources than existing solutions in managing growing datasets. The software is open source and is publicly available at https://github.com/amromics/panta and at 10.6084/m9.figshare.23724705

AMRomics: a scalable workflow to analyze large microbial genome collections

Whole genome analysis for microbial genomics is critical to studying and monitoring antimicrobial resistance strains. The exponential growth of microbial sequencing data necessitates a fast and scalable computational pipeline to generate the desired outputs in a timely and cost-effective manner. Recent methods have been implemented to integrate individual genomes into large collections of specific bacterial populations and are widely employed for systematic genomic surveillance. However, they do not scale well when the population expands and turnaround time remains the main issue for this type of analysis. Here, we introduce AMRomics, an optimized microbial genomics pipeline that can work efficiently with big datasets. We use different bacterial data collections to compare AMRomics against competitive tools and show that our pipeline can generate similar results of interest but with better performance. The software is open source and is publicly available at https://github.com/amromics/amromics under an MIT license

HAEMAGGLUTINATION ACTIVITY OF THE EXTRACTS FROM SOME VIETNAM MARINE INVERTEBRATES

Aqueous extracts from 21 species of Vietnam marine invertebrates, including 11 bivalve and 10 gastropod species, were examined for haemagglutination activity using native and enzyme-treated different animal and human erythrocytes. The 8 bivalve and 10 gastropod species were found to have haemagglutinination activities toward at least one type of erythrocyte tested. A total of 86% of marine invertebrate species surveyed were active. Strong activity was detected in extracts from two bivalve species (Tridacna squamosa and Geloina coaxans) and three gastropod species (Tutufa rubeta, Pleuroploca trapezium and Tectus conus) with enzyme-treated rabbit, horse and human A, B, O erythrocytes. In a haemagglutination–inhibition test with various monosaccharides and glycoproteins, haemagglutination activities of two extracts from T. rubeta and P. trapezium had no affinity for any of the monosaccharides and glycoproteins tested, while activities of the extracts from T. squamosa and T. conus were strongly inhibited by porcine stomach mucin tested, suggesting the presence of lectins specific for O-glycans of these species. The activities of four marine invertebrate extracts were stable over a wide range ofpH and temperature. The haemagglutination activities of T. rubeta and P. trapezium extracts were independent of the presence of divalent cations, whereas the haemagglutination activity of extracts from T. squamosa and T. conus were slightly dependent on the presence of divalent cations. The results suggest that Vietnam marine invertebrates may be good sources of useful lectins for biochemical and biomedical applications

Spatiotemporal evolution of SARS-CoV-2 Alpha and Delta variants during large nationwide outbreak of COVID-19, Vietnam, 2021

We analyzed 1,303 SARS-CoV-2 whole-genome sequences from Vietnam, and found the Alpha and Delta variants were responsible for a large nationwide outbreak of COVID-19 in 2021. The Delta variant was confined to the AY.57 lineage and caused >1.7 million infections and >32,000 deaths. Viral transmission was strongly affected by nonpharmaceutical interventions

EFFECT OF CULTURE CONDITIONS FOR ANTIMICROBIAL ACTIVITY OF MARINE - DERIVED FUNGUS ASPERGILLUS FLOCCULOSUS 01NT.1.1.5

The biosynthesis of compounds with antibiotic activity produced by marine fungi, strongly depends on their growth conditions. A good understanding of the role of culture conditions in the biosynthesis of metabolites may lead to better exploitation of microbial metabolites. In this study, the influence of culture conditions including incubation period, initial pH and salinity on antimicrobial activity and secondary metabolites production of marine fungus 01NT.1.1.5 was investigated. This isolate, obtained from sponge Stylissa sp. in Nha Trang Bay, exhibited a broad spectrum of in vitro antimicrobial activity to Bacillus cereus ATCC 11778, Escherichia coli ATCC 25922, Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 25923, Listeria monocytogenes ATCC 19111, Streptococcus faecalis ATCC 19433 and Candida albicans ATCC 10231. According to morphological characteristics and sequence analysis of 28S rDNA, the fungus was identified as Aspergillus flocculosus. The results indicated that antimicrobial activity and metabolite amount were highest when the fungus was cultivated in rice medium with incubation period of 20 days. The optimum salinity of 35 g/L and initial pH of 6.0 were found for the maximum antibiotic production. The colony growth, antimicrobial activity and production of secondary metabolites of the strain A. flocculosus 01NT.1.1.5 varied depending on salt concentrations and initial pH of medium. Particularly, extract of this fungus only showed activity against C. albicans when it was cultured in medium with 30-35 g/L salinity and initial pH 4.0-8.0. The results  indicate that salinity and initial pH along with cultivation period are important factors influencing antimicrobial activity and secondary metabolites of A. flocculosus 01NT.1.1.5, and might be for other marine fungi

FIRST - Flexible interactive retrieval SysTem for visual lifelog exploration at LSC 2020

Lifelog can provide useful insights of our daily activities. It is essential to provide a flexible way for users to retrieve certain events or moments of interest, corresponding to a wide variation of query types. This motivates us to develop FIRST, a Flexible Interactive Retrieval SysTem, to help users to combine or integrate various query components in a flexible manner to handle different query scenarios, such as visual clustering data based on color histogram, visual similarity, GPS location, or scene attributes. We also employ personalized concept detection and image captioning to enhance image understanding from visual lifelog data, and develop an autoencoderlike approach for query text and image feature mapping. Furthermore, we refine the user interface of the retrieval system to better assist users in query expansion and verifying sequential events in a flexible temporal resolution to control the navigation speed through sequences of images