Desenvolvimento de procedências de erva-mate em duas regiões de Santa Catarina.

Dois testes combinados de procedências e progênies de erva-mate (Ilex paraguariensis St. Hil.) foram plantados, no mês de julho de 1997, em duas regiões ecologicamente distintas de Santa Catarina (Chapecó e Três Barras) com o objetivo de identificar indivíduos geneticamente superiores para a implantação de pomares de sementes por mudas e clonais. O material genético consiste de 137 progênies de meios-irmãos provenientes de oito procedências. O delineamento experimental empregado nos dois locais foi o de blocos ao acaso com cinco repetições de seis plantas por parcela, no espaçamento de 3,0 x 1,5 m (4,5 m2 por planta). A poda de formação foi efetuada em agosto de 1999. As podas de produção foram efetuadas em agosto/setembro de 2001 e janeiro/fevereiro de 2003, por volta de quatro anos e aos cinco anos e seis meses após o plantio, respectivamente. Os resultados apresentados nesse trabalho referem-se ao peso fresco de massa foliar obtido por ocasião da primeira e da segunda poda de produção. Tanto em Chapecó como em Três Barras as procedências mais produtivas foram as de Ivai, Cascavel, Quedas do Iguaçu e Barão de Cotegipe. O caracter peso de massa foliar está sob controle genético de média magnitude. Ganhos expressivos podem ser obtidos com a transformação dos testes combinados de procedência e progênie de erva-mate em pomares de sementes por mudas. Contudo, a estratégia de clonar os 50 indivíduos mais produtivos para um pomar de sementes clonal consiste na alternativa mais viável em virtude dos altos ganhos genéticos estimados para a produção de massa foliar.Secão: Conservação, Melhoramento e Multiplicação. Feira do Agronegócio da Erva-mate, 1., 2003, Chapecó. Integrar para promover o agronegócio da erva-mate

Multi-parallel qPCR provides increased sensitivity and diagnostic breadth for gastrointestinal parasites of humans: field-based inferences on the impact of mass deworming

BACKGROUND: Although chronic morbidity in humans from soil transmitted helminth (STH) infections can be reduced by anthelmintic treatment, inconsistent diagnostic tools make it difficult to reliably measure the impact of deworming programs and often miss light helminth infections. METHODS: Cryopreserved stool samples from 796 people (aged 2-81 years) in four villages in Bungoma County, western Kenya, were assessed using multi-parallel qPCR for 8 parasites and compared to point-of-contact assessments of the same stools by the 2-stool 2-slide Kato-Katz (KK) method. All subjects were treated with albendazole and all Ascaris lumbricoides expelled post-treatment were collected. Three months later, samples from 633 of these people were re-assessed by both qPCR and KK, re-treated with albendazole and the expelled worms collected. RESULTS: Baseline prevalence by qPCR (n = 796) was 17 % for A. lumbricoides, 18 % for Necator americanus, 41 % for Giardia lamblia and 15% for Entamoeba histolytica. The prevalence was <1% for Trichuris trichiura, Ancylostoma duodenale, Strongyloides stercoralis and Cryptosporidium parvum. The sensitivity of qPCR was 98% for A. lumbricoides and N. americanus, whereas KK sensitivity was 70% and 32%, respectively. Furthermore, qPCR detected infections with T. trichiura and S. stercoralis that were missed by KK, and infections with G. lamblia and E. histolytica that cannot be detected by KK. Infection intensities measured by qPCR and by KK were correlated for A. lumbricoides (r = 0.83, p < 0.0001) and N. americanus (r = 0.55, p < 0.0001). The number of A. lumbricoides worms expelled was correlated (p < 0.0001) with both the KK (r = 0.63) and qPCR intensity measurements (r = 0.60). CONCLUSIONS: KK may be an inadequate tool for stool-based surveillance in areas where hookworm or Strongyloides are common or where intensity of helminth infection is low after repeated rounds of chemotherapy. Because deworming programs need to distinguish between populations where parasitic infection is controlled and those where further treatment is required, multi-parallel qPCR (or similar high throughput molecular diagnostics) may provide new and important diagnostic information

Deriving a mutation index of carcinogenicity using protein structure and protein interfaces

With the advent of Next Generation Sequencing the identification of mutations in the genomes of healthy and diseased tissues has become commonplace. While much progress has been made to elucidate the aetiology of disease processes in cancer, the contributions to disease that many individual mutations make remain to be characterised and their downstream consequences on cancer phenotypes remain to be understood. Missense mutations commonly occur in cancers and their consequences remain challenging to predict. However, this knowledge is becoming more vital, for both assessing disease progression and for stratifying drug treatment regimes. Coupled with structural data, comprehensive genomic databases of mutations such as the 1000 Genomes project and COSMIC give an opportunity to investigate general principles of how cancer mutations disrupt proteins and their interactions at the molecular and network level. We describe a comprehensive comparison of cancer and neutral missense mutations; by combining features derived from structural and interface properties we have developed a carcinogenicity predictor, InCa (Index of Carcinogenicity). Upon comparison with other methods, we observe that InCa can predict mutations that might not be detected by other methods. We also discuss general limitations shared by all predictors that attempt to predict driver mutations and discuss how this could impact high-throughput predictions. A web interface to a server implementation is publicly available at http://inca.icr.ac.uk/

Constraints on the χ_(c1) versus χ_(c2) polarizations in proton-proton collisions at √s = 8 TeV

The polarizations of promptly produced χ_(c1) and χ_(c2) mesons are studied using data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC, in proton-proton collisions at √s=8  TeV. The χ_c states are reconstructed via their radiative decays χ_c → J/ψγ, with the photons being measured through conversions to e⁺e⁻, which allows the two states to be well resolved. The polarizations are measured in the helicity frame, through the analysis of the χ_(c2) to χ_(c1) yield ratio as a function of the polar or azimuthal angle of the positive muon emitted in the J/ψ → μ⁺μ⁻ decay, in three bins of J/ψ transverse momentum. While no differences are seen between the two states in terms of azimuthal decay angle distributions, they are observed to have significantly different polar anisotropies. The measurement favors a scenario where at least one of the two states is strongly polarized along the helicity quantization axis, in agreement with nonrelativistic quantum chromodynamics predictions. This is the first measurement of significantly polarized quarkonia produced at high transverse momentum