mHealth in China and the United States: How Mobile Technology is Transforming Healthcare in the World's Two Largest Economies

In this paper, we explore ways mobile technology can help with these difficulties. Specifically, we look at avenues through which mobile devices boost productivity, aid communications, and help providers improve affordability, access, and treatment. Using data drawn from China and the United States as well as global trends, we look at recent developments andemerging opportunities in mobile health, or mHealth. We argue that mobile technology assists patients, health providers, and policymakers in several different respects. It helps patients by giving them tools to monitor their health conditions and communicate those results to physicians. It enables health providers to connect with colleagues and offers alternative sources of information for patients. It is also an important tool to inform policymakers on health delivery and medical outcomes

Comparative genomic analyses of Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae pathogenic 168 strain and its high-passaged attenuated strain

Background: Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae is the causative agent of porcine enzootic pneumonia (EP), a mild, chronic pneumonia of swine. Despite presenting with low direct mortality, EP is responsible for major economic losses in the pig industry. To identify the virulence-associated determinants of M. hyopneumoniae, we determined the whole genome sequence of M. hyopneumoniae strain 168 and its attenuated high-passage strain 168-L and carried out comparative genomic analyses. Results: We performed the first comprehensive analysis of M. hyopneumoniae strain 168 and its attenuated strain and made a preliminary survey of coding sequences (CDSs) that may be related to virulence. The 168-L genome has a highly similar gene content and order to that of 168, but is 4,483 bp smaller because there are 60 insertions and 43 deletions in 168-L. Besides these indels, 227 single nucleotide variations (SNVs) were identified. We further investigated the variants that affected CDSs, and compared them to reported virulence determinants. Notably, almost all of the reported virulence determinants are included in these variants affected CDSs. In addition to variations previously described in mycoplasma adhesins (P97, P102, P146, P159, P216, and LppT), cell envelope proteins (P95), cell surface antigens (P36), secreted proteins and chaperone protein (DnaK), mutations in genes related to metabolism and growth may also contribute to the attenuated virulence in 168-L. Furthermore, many mutations were located in the previously described repeat motif, which may be of primary importance for virulence. Conclusions: We studied the virulence attenuation mechanism of M. hyopneumoniae by comparative genomic analysis of virulent strain 168 and its attenuated high-passage strain 168-L. Our findings provide a preliminary survey of CDSs that may be related to virulence. While these include reported virulence-related genes, other novel virulence determinants were also detected. This new information will form the foundation of future investigations into the pathogenesis of M. hyopneumoniae and facilitate the design of new vaccines

Comparative Genomics of Mycoplasma: Analysis of Conserved Essential Genes and Diversity of the Pan-Genome

Mycoplasma, the smallest self-replicating organism with a minimal metabolism and little genomic redundancy, is expected to be a close approximation to the minimal set of genes needed to sustain bacterial life. This study employs comparative evolutionary analysis of twenty Mycoplasma genomes to gain an improved understanding of essential genes. By analyzing the core genome of mycoplasmas, we finally revealed the conserved essential genes set for mycoplasma survival. Further analysis showed that the core genome set has many characteristics in common with experimentally identified essential genes. Several key genes, which are related to DNA replication and repair and can be disrupted in transposon mutagenesis studies, may be critical for bacteria survival especially over long period natural selection. Phylogenomic reconstructions based on 3,355 homologous groups allowed robust estimation of phylogenetic relatedness among mycoplasma strains. To obtain deeper insight into the relative roles of molecular evolution in pathogen adaptation to their hosts, we also analyzed the positive selection pressures on particular sites and lineages. There appears to be an approximate correlation between the divergence of species and the level of positive selection detected in corresponding lineages

Complete Genome Sequence of Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae Strain 168▿

Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae strain 168, a pathogenic strain prevalent in China, was isolated in 1974. Although this strain has been widespread for a long time, the genome sequence had not been determined. Here, we announce the complete genome sequence of M. hyopneumoniae strain 168

Complete Genome Sequence of Mycoplasma hyorhinis Strain HUB-1 ▿

Mycoplasma hyorhinis is generally considered a swine pathogen yet is most commonly found infecting laboratory cell lines. An increasing body of evidence suggests that chronic infections with M. hyorhinis may cause oncogenic transformation. Here, we announce the complete genome sequence of M. hyorhinis strain HUB-1

Bacterial Strains Used in This Study.

<p>Bacterial Strains Used in This Study.</p

Similarity relationship between core and essential genes.

<p>Genes on x-axis represent the essential genes documented in <i>M. genitalium</i> G37, while genes on y-axis represent the core genome identified in this study. Both the genes on x-axis and y-axis are distributed in terms of genomic coordinates. On-diagonal, genes that are both essentials and core are indicated as a series of colored dots.</p

Phylogenetic tree of <i>Mycoplasmataceae</i>.

<p>The phylogenetic relationship was estimated and tested in one thousand bootstrap samples using TREE-PUZZLE version 5.2 with a BIONJ model (see <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0035698#s4" target="_blank">Materials and Methods</a>). This supertree shows five major distinct clades. The four lineages that were used as foreground in the branch-site model positive selection test are highlighted in red.</p

16S rRNA tree of <i>Mycoplasmataceae</i>.

<p>This consensus tree of 100 bootstrap replications was constructed based on 16S rRNA sequences using the Neighbor Joining (NJ) method implemented in MEGA 4.1. The bootstrap values are marked at the root of each branch.</p