International Society of Human and Animal Mycology (ISHAM)-ITS reference DNA barcoding database - the quality controlled standard tool for routine identification of human and animal pathogenic fungi

Human and animal fungal pathogens are a growing threat worldwide leading to emerging infections and creating new risks for established ones. There is a growing need for a rapid and accurate identification of pathogens to enable early diagnosis and targeted antifungal therapy. Morphological and biochemical identification methods are time-consuming and require trained experts. Alternatively, molecular methods, such as DNA barcoding, a powerful and easy tool for rapid monophasic identification, offer a practical approach for species identification and less demanding in terms of taxonomical expertise. However, its wide-spread use is still limited by a lack of quality-controlled reference databases and the evolving recognition and definition of new fungal species/complexes. An international consortium of medical mycology laboratories was formed aiming to establish a quality controlled ITS database under the umbrella of the ISHAM working group on "DNA barcoding of human and animal pathogenic fungi." A new database, containing 2800 ITS sequences representing 421 fungal species, providing the medical community with a freely accessible tool at http://www.isham.org and http://its.mycologylab.org/ to rapidly and reliably identify most agents of mycoses, was established. The generated sequences included in the new database were used to evaluate the variation and overall utility of the ITS region for the identification of pathogenic fungi at intra-and interspecies level. The average intraspecies variation ranged from 0 to 2.25%. This highlighted selected pathogenic fungal species, such as the dermatophytes and emerging yeast, for which additional molecular methods/genetic markers are required for their reliable identification from clinical and veterinary specimens.This study was supported by an National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (NH&MRC) grant [#APP1031952] to W Meyer, S Chen, V Robert, and D Ellis; CNPq [350338/2000-0] and FAPERJ [E-26/103.157/2011] grants to RM Zancope-Oliveira; CNPq [308011/2010-4] and FAPESP [2007/08575-1] Fundacao de Amparo Pesquisa do Estado de So Paulo (FAPESP) grants to AL Colombo; PEst-OE/BIA/UI4050/2014 from Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia (FCT) to C Pais; the Belgian Science Policy Office (Belspo) to BCCM/IHEM; the MEXBOL program of CONACyT-Mexico, [ref. number: 1228961 to ML Taylor and [122481] to C Toriello; the Institut Pasteur and Institut de Veil le Sanitaire to F Dromer and D Garcia-Hermoso; and the grants from the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico (CNPq) and the Fundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Goias (FAPEG) to CM de Almeida Soares and JA Parente Rocha. I Arthur would like to thank G Cherian, A Higgins and the staff of the Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory, Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, Path West, QEII Medial Centre. Dromer would like to thank for the technical help of the sequencing facility and specifically that of I, Diancourt, A-S Delannoy-Vieillard, J-M Thiberge (Genotyping of Pathogens and Public Health, Institut Pasteur). RM Zancope-Oliveira would like to thank the Genomic/DNA Sequencing Platform at Fundacao Oswaldo Cruz-PDTIS/FIOCRUZ [RPT01A], Brazil for the sequencing. B Robbertse and CL Schoch acknowledge support from the Intramural Research Program of the NIH, National Library of Medicine. T Sorrell's work is funded by the NH&MRC of Australia; she is a Sydney Medical School Foundation Fellow.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Recent Trends in Elpasolite Single Crystal Scintillators for Radiation Detection

Scintillation detection has attracted great interest in nuclear medicine, nuclear radiation detection, high-energy physics, and non-destructive inspection. The elpasolite crystals with Ce3+ dopants are promising for these endeavors due to their modest light yield and extremely good proportionality when excited by the gamma ray. Moreover, the 6Li and 35Cl isotopes in elpasolite crystals endow them with excellent neutron detection capability. These features allow not only a high energy resolution but also a high detection sensitivity. The elpasolite scintillators also enable the precisely dual detection of gamma/neutron signals through pulse height discrimination (PHD) or pulse shape discrimination (PSD). In this work, we review recent investigations on using the typical elpasolite scintillators, including Ce3+-doped Cs2LiYCl6 (CLYC), Cs2LiLaCl6 (CLLC), and Cs2LiLaBr6 (CLLB), for the monitoring of gamma rays and neutrons. The scintillation properties, detection mechanism, and elpasolite crystal structure are also discussed with the aim of improving high-energy ray detection ability

Upregulated PD-1 Expression Is Associated with the Development of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, but Not the PD-1.1 Allele of the PDCD1 Gene

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a multisystem autoimmune disease with complicated genetic inheritance. Programmed death 1 (PD-1), a negative T cell regulator to maintain peripheral tolerance, induces negative signals to T cells during interaction with its ligands and is therefore a candidate gene in the development of SLE. In order to examine whether expression levels of PD-1 contribute to the pathogenesis of SLE, 30 patients with SLE and 30 controls were recruited and their PD-1 expression levels in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were measured via flow cytometry and quantitative real-time-reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Also, whether PD-1 expression levels are associated with the variant of the SNP rs36084323 and the SLE Disease Activity Index (SLEDAI) was studied in this work. The PD-1 expression levels of SLE patients were significantly increased compared with those of the healthy controls. The upregulated PD-1 expression levels in SLE patients were greatly associated with SLEDAI scores. No significant difference was found between PD-1 expression levels and SNP rs36084323. The results suggest that increased expression of PD-1 may correlate with the pathogenesis of SLE, upregulated PD-1 expression may be a biomarker for SLE diagnosis, and PD-1 inhibitor may be useful to SLE treatment

Laser-induced damage threshold of single crystal ZnGeP2 at 2.1 µm: the effect of crystal lattice quality at various pulse widths and repetition rates

The ZnGeP2 crystal is a material of choice for powerful mid-IR optical parametric oscillators and amplifiers. In this paper, we present the experimental analysis of the optical damage threshold of ZnGeP2 nonlinear crystals induced by a repetitively-pulsed Ho3+:YAG laser at 2091 nm. Two types of ZnGeP2 crystals grown under different conditions were examined using the laser and holographic techniques. The laser-induced damage threshold (LIDT) determined by the pulse fluence or peak intensity was studied as a function of the pulse repetition rate (PRR) and laser exposure duration. The main crystal structure factor for a higher LIDT was found to be a reduced dislocation density of crystal lattice. The ZnGeP2 nonlinear crystals characterized by the high structural perfection with low density of dislocations and free from twinning and stacking faults were measured to have a 3.5 J/cm2 pulse fluence damage threshold and 10.5 MW/cm2 peak intensity damage threshold at 12 kHz PRR; at 40 kHz PRR the pulse fluence damage threshold increased to over 6 J/cm2, but the peak intensity damage threshold dropped to 5.5 MW/cm2