COVID-19 Healthcare Demand Projections: Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land MSA, Texas

To support healthcare planning, we analyzed the Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land MSA module of our US COVID-19 Pandemic Model to project the number of cases, healthcare requirements and deaths under different scenarios. Note that the results presented herein are based on multiple assumptions about the transmission rate and age-specific severity of COVID-19. There is still much we do not understand about the transmission dynamics of this virus, including the extent of asymptomatic infection and transmission. These results do not represent the full range of uncertainty. Rather, they are meant to serve as plausible scenarios for gauging the likely impacts of control measures in the Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land MSA. We have updated our model inputs based on the daily number of COVID-19 hospitalizations in Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land between April 2, 2020 and April 20, 2020, provided by the Southeast Texas Regional Advisory Council (SETRAC). The projections assume that schools were closed on March 19, 2020 (start of state mandated school closures) and extensive social distancing began on March 24, 2020 with Houston and Harris County's Stay Home Work Safe order [1]. The data suggest that recent social distancing has reduced transmission by anywhere between 80% and 100% relative to the period prior to March 19th. We make projections for five different scenarios. The first three 80%, 95% and 100% reductions in transmission fall within this range of current estimates; the other two-0% and 50% reductions in transmission-provide more pessimistic projections that could occur with extreme relaxation of social distancing measures. For each of the scenarios, the graphs project COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, patients requiring ICU care, patients requiring ventilation and deaths. We are posting these results prior to peer review to provide intuition for both policy makers and the public regarding both the immediate threat of COVID-19 and the extent to which continued social distancing, transmission-reducing precautions such as keeping physical distance and wearing cloth face coverings, can mitigate that threat.Integrative Biolog

COVID-19 Healthcare Demand Projections: Beaumont-Port Arthur MSA, Texas

To support healthcare planning, we analyzed the Beaumont-Port Arthur MSA module of our US COVID-19 Pandemic Model to project the number of cases, healthcare requirements and deaths under different scenarios. Note that the results presented herein are based on multiple assumptions about the transmission rate and age-specific severity of COVID-19. There is still much we do not understand about the transmission dynamics of this virus, including the extent of asymptomatic infection and transmission. These results do not represent the full range of uncertainty. Rather, they are meant to serve as plausible scenarios for gauging the likely impacts of control measures in the Beaumont-Port Arthur MSA. We have updated our model inputs based on the daily number of COVID-19 hospitalizations in Beaumont-Port Arthur between April 2, 2020 and April 20, 2020, provided by the Southeast Texas Regional Advisory Council (SETRAC). The projections assume that schools were closed on March 19, 2020 (start of state mandated school closures) and extensive social distancing began on March 28, 2020 with the Jefferson County Stay at Home order [1]. The data suggest that recent social distancing has reduced transmission by anywhere between 70% and 100% relative to the period prior to March 19th. We make projections for six different scenarios. The first four-70%, 80%, 95% and 100% reductions in transmission fall within this range of current estimates; the other two-0% and 50% reductions in transmission provide more pessimistic projections that could occur with extreme relaxation of social distancing measures. For each of the scenarios, the graphs project COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, patients requiring ICU care, patients requiring ventilation and deaths. We are posting these results prior to peer review to provide intuition for both policy makers and the public regarding both the immediate threat of COVID-19 and the extent to which continued social distancing, transmission-reducing precautions such as keeping physical distance and wearing cloth face coverings, can mitigate that threat.Integrative Biolog

Early COVID-19 Pandemic Modeling: Three Compartmental Model Case Studies From Texas, USA

The novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) emerged in late 2019 and spread globally in early 2020. Initial reports suggested the associated disease, COVID-19, produced rapid epidemic growth and caused high mortality. As the virus sparked local epidemics in new communities, health systems and policy makers were forced to make decisions with limited information about the spread of the disease. We developed a compartmental model to project COVID-19 healthcare demands that combined information regarding SARS-CoV-2 transmission dynamics from international reports with local COVID-19 hospital census data to support response efforts in three metropolitan statistical areas in Texas, USA: Austin-Round Rock, Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, and Beaumont-Port Arthur. Our model projects that strict stay-home orders and other social distancing measures could suppress the spread of the pandemic. Our capacity to provide rapid decision-support in response to emerging threats depends on access to data, validated modeling approaches, careful uncertainty quantification, and adequate computational resources.This work was supported by CDC Contract CDC contract 75D-301-19-C-05930, NIH Grant 3R01AI151176-01S1, and Tito's Handmade Vodka.Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC)Integrative BiologyOperations Research and Industrial EngineeringCenter for Space Researc

Oil Biosynthesis in a Basal Angiosperm: Transcriptome Analysis of Persea Americana Mesocarp

The mechanism by which plants synthesize and store high amounts of triacylglycerols (TAG) in tissues other than seeds is not well understood. The comprehension of controls for carbon partitioning and oil accumulation in nonseed tissues is essential to generate oil-rich biomass in perennial bioenergy crops. Persea americana (avocado), a basal angiosperm with unique features that are ancestral to most flowering plants, stores ~ 70 % TAG per dry weight in its mesocarp, a nonseed tissue. Transcriptome analyses of select pathways, from generation of pyruvate and leading up to TAG accumulation, in mesocarp tissues of avocado was conducted and compared with that of oil-rich monocot (oil palm) and dicot (rapeseed and castor) tissues to identify tissue- and species-specific regulation and biosynthesis of TAG in plants

Supplemental Material for Anderson et al., 2018

Supplemental tables and figures for G3/2018/20028

TableS2.xlsx

<p>Table S2 from "Subtle perturbations of the maize methylome reveal genes and transposons silenced by CHROMOMETHYLASE or RNA-directed DNA methylation pathways" </p><p><br></p><p>Contains expression values, differential expression calls, list assignments, and DMR calls for all genes.</p

Communities of Practice

Correlation (R2) of lipid content in avocado mesocarp with that of total fruit weight during development. (TIFF 14823 kb

Additional file 5: Figure S3. of Oil biosynthesis in a basal angiosperm: transcriptome analysis of Persea Americana mesocarp

Transcript levels for genes associated with carbon metabolism. (a) sucrose degradation, (b) transport of glycolysis intermediates and (c) starch and mannoheptulose metabolism. The RPKM values for subunits of a protein and for multiple isoforms were summed. Protein abbreviations are provided in Additional file 1: Table S3. (TIFF 14823 kb

Additional file 2: of Oil biosynthesis in a basal angiosperm: transcriptome analysis of Persea Americana mesocarp

Data S1. The sequence information for contigs represented by at least 10 reads per kilobase per million mapped reads (RPKM) and their annotation in relation to Arabidopsis proteins. (TXT 13061 kb