The genetic diversity and geographical separation study of Oncomelania hupensis populations in mainland China using microsatellite loci

© 2016 Guan et al. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. The attached file is the published version of the article.NHM Repositor

Evolutionary dynamics of avian influenza A virus in the natural reservoir

Poster Presentations: Animal Influenza EcologyAvian influenza viruses were thought to exist in a form of evolutionary stasis within their natural reservoirs, i.e. waterfowls. However, a recent study demonstrated very high evolutionary rates, with epidemic-like population growth, for individual influenza subtypes in both aquatic birds and poultry, suggesting the stasis theory may be incorrect. Yet the evolutionary dynamics of the influenza gene pool within one species of migratory waterfowl remains unclear. We therefore tested influenza virus population behavior by estimating rates of nucleotide substitution of the internal genes from different subtypes of influenza viruses exclusively from mallard ducks …postprin

H5N1 Outbreaks and Enzootic Influenza

Highly pathogenic H5N1 influenza viruses continue to evolve and increase their geographic and host range

Dating the emergence of Influenza A (H5N1) Virus

Since the first detection of highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1) virus in geese in Guangdong, China, H5N1 viruses have transmitted to poultry throughout southern China. In late 2003 the first transmission wave spread the virus to multiple Southeast Asian countries. In May 2005, the second transmission wave of H5N1 virus westwards to Europe and Africa was initiated following a major outbreak in migratory birds at Qinghai Lake, China, while a third transmission wave has been initiated since mid-2005. Those viruses are now endemic in poultry populations in some affected regions and cause repeated outbreaks in poultry and increasing human infection cases, creating persistent pandemic concerns. Genetic data from systematic surveillance of H5N1 for the past seven years in marketing poultry, along with sequence data from outbreaks throughout the region, provide us with a unique opportunity to estimate the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) and postulate the dates of introduction of H5N1 variants into different affected countries. In this study, we estimated the time of emergence of those three transmission waves …postprin

Bulk Properties of the Oxygen Reduction Catalyst SrCo_(0.9)Nb_(0.1)O_(3-δ)

The perovskite SrCo_(0.9)Nb_(0.1)O_(3−δ) (SCN) has excellent electrochemical activity toward oxygen reduction, and it is also valuable as a possible model material for other state-of-the-art perovskite catalysts based on strontium and cobalt, such as Ba_(0.5)Sr_(0.5)Co_(0.8)Fe_(0.2)O_(3−δ) (BSCF). Here we report thermogravimetric, conductivity, and diffraction measurements from SCN. We find that the thermodynamic stability limits of SCN are slightly more favorable than those reported for BSCF, although both materials exhibit a slow oxidative partial decomposition under likely operating conditions. In SCN, this decomposition is thermodynamically preferred when the average formal oxidation state of cobalt is greater than ∼3.0+, but due to sluggish kinetics, metastable SCN with higher cobalt valence can be observed. The oxygen stoichiometry 3−δ varies from 2.45 to 2.70 under the conditions studied, 500–1000 °C and 10^(–4)–1 bar O_2, which encompass both stable and metastable behavior. The electronic conductivity is p-type and thermally activated, with a value at 600 °C in air of 250 S cm^(–1), comparable to that of La_(0.8)Sr_(0.2)MnO_(3−δ). The polaron migration enthalpy decreases linearly from 0.30 to 0.05 eV as 3−δ increases from 2.52 to 2.64. Thermal and chemical expansivities are also reported

Multiple Sublineages of Influenza A Virus (H5N1), Vietnam, 2005−2007

Clade 2.3.4 viruses that are dominant in southern China have now spread to northern Vietnam

Regularity of Kobayashi metric

We review some recent results on existence and regularity of Monge-Amp\`ere exhaustions on the smoothly bounded strongly pseudoconvex domains, which admit at least one such exhaustion of sufficiently high regularity. A main consequence of our results is the fact that the Kobayashi pseudo-metric k on an appropriare open subset of each of the above domains is actually a smooth Finsler metric. The class of domains to which our result apply is very large. It includes for instance all smoothly bounded strongly pseudoconvex complete circular domains and all their sufficiently small deformations.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures - The previously announced main result had a gap. In this new version the corrected statement is given. To appear on the volume "Geometric Complex Analysis - Proceedings of KSCV 12 Symposium

Characterization of low pathogenic H5 subtype influenza viruses from Eurasia: Implications for the origin of highly pathogenic H5N1 viruses

Oral Presentations - Genetic and Antigenic EvolutionHighly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 viruses are now endemic in many Asian countries. The immediate precursor of these HPAI viruses was recognized as A/Goose/Guangdong/1/96 (Gs/Gd)-like H5N1 HPAI viruses first detected in Guangdong in 1996. However, precursors of the Gs/GD-like viruses and their subsequent reassortants have not been fully determined. Here we characterize low pathogenic avian influenza (LPAI) H5 subtype viruses isolated from poultry and migratory birds in southern China and Europe from the 1970s to the 2000s. Phylogenetic analyses revealed that Gs/GD-like virus was likely derived from an LPAI H5 virus in migratory birds. However, its variants arose from multiple reassortments between Gs/GD-like virus and viruses from migratory birds, or with those Eurasian viruses isolated in the 1970s. It is of note that unlike HPAI H5N1 viruses, those recent LPAI H5 viruses have not become established in aquatic or terrestrial poultry. Phylogenetic analyses revealed the dynamic nature of the influenza gene pool in Eurasia with repeated transmissions between the eastern and western extremities of the continent. The data also shows reassortment between influenza viruses from domestic and migratory birds in this region that has contributed to the expanded diversity of the influenza gene pool among poultry in Eurasia ...postprin

Poultry Drinking Water Used for Avian Influenza Surveillance

Samples of drinking water from poultry cages, which can be collected conveniently and noninvasively, provide higher rates of influenza (H9N2) virus isolation than do samples of fecal droppings. Studies to confirm the usefulness of poultry drinking water for detecting influenza (H5N1) should be conducted in disease-endemic areas

Distribution of amantadine-resistant H5N1 avian influenza variants in Asia

We examined the distribution of genetic mutations associated with resistance to the M2 ion channel-blocking adamantane derivatives, amantadine and rimantadine, among H5N1 viruses isolated in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and China. More than 95% of the viruses isolated in Vietnam and Thailand contained resistance mutations, but resistant mutants were less commonly isolated in Indonesia (6.3% of isolates) and China (8.9% of isolates), where human infection was recently reported. The dual mutation motif Leu26Ile-Ser31Asn (leucine→isoleucine at aa 26 and serine→asparagine at aa 31) was found almost exclusively in all resistant isolates from Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia, suggesting the biological selection of these mutations. © 2006 by the Infectious Diseases Society of America. All rights reserved.published_or_final_versio