Assessment of Three Mitochondrial Genes (16S, Cytb, CO1) for Identifying Species in the Praomyini Tribe (Rodentia: Muridae)

The Praomyini tribe is one of the most diverse and abundant groups of Old World rodents. Several species are known to be involved in crop damage and in the epidemiology of several human and cattle diseases. Due to the existence of sibling species their identification is often problematic. Thus an easy, fast and accurate species identification tool is needed for non-systematicians to correctly identify Praomyini species. In this study we compare the usefulness of three genes (16S, Cytb, CO1) for identifying species of this tribe. A total of 426 specimens representing 40 species (sampled across their geographical range) were sequenced for the three genes. Nearly all of the species included in our study are monophyletic in the neighbour joining trees. The degree of intra-specific variability tends to be lower than the divergence between species, but no barcoding gap is detected. The success rate of the statistical methods of species identification is excellent (up to 99% or 100% for statistical supervised classification methods as the k-Nearest Neighbour or Random Forest). The 16S gene is 2.5 less variable than the Cytb and CO1 genes. As a result its discriminatory power is smaller. To sum up, our results suggest that using DNA markers for identifying species in the Praomyini tribe is a largely valid approach, and that the CO1 and Cytb genes are better DNA markers than the 16S gene. Our results confirm the usefulness of statistical methods such as the Random Forest and the 1-NN methods to assign a sequence to a species, even when the number of species is relatively large. Based on our NJ trees and the distribution of all intraspecific and interspecific pairwise nucleotide distances, we highlight the presence of several potentially new species within the Praomyini tribe that should be subject to corroboration assessments

MOESM1 of Development and characterization of 10 microsatellite markers in the Cape horseshoe bat, Rhinolophus capensis (Chiroptera, Rhinolophidae) and cross-amplification in southern African Rhinolophus species

Additional file 1. Geographic information of the individuals used for the cross-amplification tests

Detection of SARS‐CoV‐2 in two cats during the second wave of the COVID‐19 pandemic in France

International audienceAlthough there are several reports in the literature of SARS-CoV-2 infection in cats, few SARS-CoV-2 sequences from infected cats have been published. In this study, SARS-CoV-2 infection was evaluated in two cats by clinical observation, molecular biology (qPCR and NGS), and serology (microsphere immunoassay and seroneutralization). Following the observation of symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection in two cats, infection status was confirmed by RT-qPCR and, in one cat, serological analysis for antibodies against N-protein and S-protein, as well as neutralizing antibodies. Comparative analysis of five SARS-CoV-2 sequence fragments obtained from one of the cats showed that this infection was not with one of the three recently emerged variants of SARS-CoV-2. This study provides additional information on the clinical, molecular, and serological aspects of SARS-CoV-2 infection in cats

Mitochondrial uncoupling protein is required for efficient photosynthesis

Uncoupling proteins (UCPs) occur in the inner mitochondrial membrane and dissipate the proton gradient across this membrane that is normally used for ATP synthesis. Although the catalytic function and regulation of plant UCPs have been described, the physiological purpose of UCP in plants has not been established. Here, biochemical and physiological analyses of an insertional knockout of one of the Arabidopsis UCP genes (AtUCP1) are presented that resolve this issue. Absence of UCP1 results in localized oxidative stress but does not impair the ability of the plant to withstand a wide range of abiotic stresses. However, absence of UCP1 results in a photosynthetic phenotype. Specifically there is a restriction in photorespiration with a decrease in the rate of oxidation of photorespiratory glycine in the mitochondrion. This change leads to an associated reduced photosynthetic carbon assimilation rate. Collectively, these results suggest that the main physiological role of UCP1 in Arabidopsis leaves is related to maintaining the redox poise of the mitochondrial electron transport chain to facilitate photosynthetic metabolism

Transmission et circulation d'un recombinant SARS-CoV-2 Deltacron XD en Normandie

International audienc

Transmission et circulation d'un recombinant SARS-CoV-2 Deltacron XD en Normandie

International audienc