Bovine and Porcine Somatotropin

Among the more recent biological tools being proposed and studied for dairy and swine management programs is somatotropin (growth hormone or GH). Advocates claim that somatotropin improves efficiency and thus decreases the cost of production in dairy cows and growing swine. With Food and Drug Administration (F&DA) approval of bovine somatotropin (SST) expected within the year in the United States and approval of porcine somatotropin (PST) being sought, food animal veterinarians need to be knowledgeable of somatotropin and must be prepared to advise clients on the use of the product as a management tool

Toward the Understanding of Topographical and Spectral Signatures of Infant Movement Artifacts in Naturalistic EEG

Electroencephalography (EEG) is perhaps the most widely used brain-imaging technique for pediatric populations. However, EEG signals are prone to distortion by motion. Compared to adults, infants’ motion is both more frequent and less stereotypical yet motion effects on the infant EEG signal are largely undocumented. Here, we present a systematic assessment of naturalistic motion effects on the infant EEG signal. EEG recordings were performed with 14 infants (12 analyzed) who passively watched movies whilst spontaneously producing periods of bodily movement and rest. Each infant produced an average of 38.3 s (SD = 14.7 s) of rest and 18.8 s (SD = 17.9 s) of single motion segments for the final analysis. Five types of infant motions were analyzed: Jaw movements, and Limb movements of the Hand, Arm, Foot, and Leg. Significant movement-related distortions of the EEG signal were detected using cluster-based permutation analysis. This analysis revealed that, relative to resting state, infants’ Jaw and Arm movements produced significant increases in beta (∼15 Hz) power, particularly over peripheral sites. Jaw movements produced more anteriorly located effects than Arm movements, which were most pronounced over posterior parietal and occipital sites. The cluster analysis also revealed trends toward decreased power in the theta and alpha bands observed over central topographies for all motion types. However, given the very limited quantity of infant data in this study, caution is recommended in interpreting these findings before subsequent replications are conducted. Nonetheless, this work is an important first step to inform future development of methods for addressing EEG motion-related artifacts. This work also supports wider use of naturalistic paradigms in social and developmental neuroscience

A comparison of match demands using ball-in-play versus whole match data in professional soccer players of the English Championship

This is the first study to report the Whole Match, ball-in-play (BiP), ball-out-of-play (BoP), and Max BiP (worst case scenario phases of play) demands of professional soccer players competing in the English Championship. Effective playing time per soccer game is typically 90 s) providing precise peak match demands. Whole-match demands recorded were compared to BiP and Max BiP, and BiP data excluded data from all match stoppages, providing a more precise analysis of match demands. Whole-match metrics were significantly lower than BiP metrics (p 90 s. No significant differences were found between positions. Ball-in-play analysis allows an accurate representation of the game and physical demands imposed on professional soccer players. Through having a clearer understanding of maximum game demands in professional soccer, will enable practitioners to design highly specific training methods

Is the Bombali virus pathogenic in humans?

Motivation: The potential of the Bombali virus, a novel Ebolavirus, to cause disease in humans remains unknown. We have previously identified potential determinants of Ebolavirus pathogenicity in humans by analysing the amino acid positions that are differentially conserved (specificity 15 determining positions; SDPs) between human pathogenic Ebolaviruses and the non-pathogenic Reston virus. Here, we include the many Ebolavirus genome sequences that have since become available into our analysis and investigate the amino acid sequence of the Bombali virus proteins at the SDPs that discriminate between human pathogenic and non-human pathogenic Ebolaviruses. 20 Results: The use of 1408 Ebolavirus genomes (196 in the original analysis) resulted in a set of 166 SDPs (reduced from 180), 146 (88%) of which were retained from the original analysis. This indicates the robustness of our approach and refines the set of SDPs that distinguish human pathogenic Ebolaviruses from Reston virus. At SDPs, Bombali virus shared the majority of amino acids with the human pathogenic Ebolaviruses (63.25%). However, for two SDPs in VP24 (M136L, R139S) 25 that have been proposed to be critical for the lack of Reston virus human pathogenicity because they alter the VP24-karyopherin interaction, the Bombali virus amino acids match those of Reston virus. Thus, Bombali virus may not be pathogenic in humans. Supporting this, no Bombali virusassociated disease outbreaks have been reported, although Bombali virus was isolated from fruit bats cohabitating in close contact with humans, and anti-Ebolavirus antibodies that may indicate 30 contact with Bombali virus have been detected in humans

Galactic cosmic-ray energy spectra and expected solar events at the time of future space missions

none8sìAccepted for publicationopenGrimani, Catia; Araujo, H. M.; Fabi, M.; Lobo, A.; Mateos, I.; Shaul, D. N. A.; Sumner, T. J.; Wass, P.Grimani, Catia; Araujo, H. M.; Fabi, M.; Lobo, A.; Mateos, I.; Shaul, D. N. A.; Sumner, T. J.; Wass, P

VarMod: modelling the functional effects of non-synonymous variants.

Unravelling the genotype–phenotype relationship in humans remains a challenging task in genomics studies. Recent advances in sequencing technologies mean there are now thousands of sequenced human genomes, revealing millions of single nucleotide variants (SNVs). For non-synonymous SNVs present in proteins the difficulties of the problem lie in first identifying those nsSNVs that result in a functional change in the protein among the many non-functional variants and in turn linking this functional change to phenotype. Here we present VarMod (Variant Modeller) a method that utilises both protein sequence and structural features to predict nsSNVs that alter protein function. VarMod develops recent observations that functional nsSNVs are enriched at protein–protein interfaces and protein–ligand binding sites and uses these characteristics to make predictions. In benchmarking on a set of nearly 3000 nsSNVs VarMod performance is comparable to an existing state of the art method. The VarMod web server provides extensive resources to investigate the sequence and structural features associated with the predictions including visualisation of protein models and complexes via an interactive JSmol molecular viewer. VarMod is available for use at http://www.wasslab.org/varmod

The Phyre2 web portal for protein modeling, prediction and analysis

Phyre2 is a suite of tools available on the web to predict and analyze protein structure, function and mutations. The focus of Phyre2 is to provide biologists with a simple and intuitive interface to state-of-the-art protein bioinformatics tools. Phyre2 replaces Phyre, the original version of the server for which we previously published a paper in Nature Protocols. In this updated protocol, we describe Phyre2, which uses advanced remote homology detection methods to build 3D models, predict ligand binding sites and analyze the effect of amino acid variants (e.g., nonsynonymous SNPs (nsSNPs)) for a user's protein sequence. Users are guided through results by a simple interface at a level of detail they determine. This protocol will guide users from submitting a protein sequence to interpreting the secondary and tertiary structure of their models, their domain composition and model quality. A range of additional available tools is described to find a protein structure in a genome, to submit large number of sequences at once and to automatically run weekly searches for proteins that are difficult to model. The server is available at http://www.sbg.bio.ic.ac.uk/phyre2. A typical structure prediction will be returned between 30 min and 2 h after submission

Form-function relationship in the amplitude and frequency modulations of infant - directed speech: A predictive processing perspective

Infants prefer infant-directed speech (IDS) over adult-directed speech (ADS). IDS is thought to serve specific functions compared to ADS: - Attracting infant attention to the speech signal - Conveying clear opportunities for easier word segmentation. Two independent domains of complexity that are embedded in the speech stream: - Amplitude complexity: Lower amplitude complexity associates with greater ease in identifying word boundaries ​ - ​Frequency complexity: Higher fre q uency complexity associates with more attention eliciting speech attention by inducing uncertaint

Proteomic analysis of Plasmodium in the mosquito: progress and pitfalls

Here we discuss proteomic analyses of whole cell preparations of the mosquito stages of malaria parasite development (i.e. gametocytes, microgamete, ookinete, oocyst and sporozoite) of Plasmodium berghei. We also include critiques of the proteomes of two cell fractions from the purified ookinete, namely the micronemes and cell surface. Whereas we summarise key biological interpretations of the data, we also try to identify key methodological constraints we have met, only some of which we were able to resolve. Recognising the need to translate the potential of current genome sequencing into functional understanding, we report our efforts to develop more powerful combinations of methods for the in silico prediction of protein function and location. We have applied this analysis to the proteome of the male gamete, a cell whose very simple structural organisation facilitated interpretation of data. Some of the in silico predictions made have now been supported by ongoing protein tagging and genetic knockout studies. We hope this discussion may assist future studie