Fresh-blood-free diet for rearing malaria mosquito vectors

Mosquito breeding depends on the supply of fresh vertebrate blood, a major bottleneck for large-scale production of Anopheles spp. Feeding alternatives to fresh blood are thus a priority for research, outdoor large-cage trials and control interventions. Several artificial meal compositions were tested and Anopheles oogenesis, egg laying and development into the next generation of adult mosquitoes were followed. We identified blood-substitute-diets that supported ovarian development, egg maturation and fertility as well as, low progeny larval mortality, and normal development of offspring into adult mosquitoes. The formulated diet is an effective artificial meal, free of fresh blood that mimics a vertebrate blood meal and represents an important advance for the sustainability of Anopheles mosquito rearing in captivity.Agência financiadora / Número do subsídio Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation OPP1138841 Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia GHTM - UID/Multi/04413/201 CCMAR - UID/Multi/04326/2013 UID/Multi/04326/2013 RF SFRH/BPD/89811/2012 FAPEAM, Brazil 19716.UNI472.2459.20022014info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Metabolic Reconstruction for Metagenomic Data and Its Application to the Human Microbiome

Microbial communities carry out the majority of the biochemical activity on the planet, and they play integral roles in processes including metabolism and immune homeostasis in the human microbiome. Shotgun sequencing of such communities' metagenomes provides information complementary to organismal abundances from taxonomic markers, but the resulting data typically comprise short reads from hundreds of different organisms and are at best challenging to assemble comparably to single-organism genomes. Here, we describe an alternative approach to infer the functional and metabolic potential of a microbial community metagenome. We determined the gene families and pathways present or absent within a community, as well as their relative abundances, directly from short sequence reads. We validated this methodology using a collection of synthetic metagenomes, recovering the presence and abundance both of large pathways and of small functional modules with high accuracy. We subsequently applied this method, HUMAnN, to the microbial communities of 649 metagenomes drawn from seven primary body sites on 102 individuals as part of the Human Microbiome Project (HMP). This provided a means to compare functional diversity and organismal ecology in the human microbiome, and we determined a core of 24 ubiquitously present modules. Core pathways were often implemented by different enzyme families within different body sites, and 168 functional modules and 196 metabolic pathways varied in metagenomic abundance specifically to one or more niches within the microbiome. These included glycosaminoglycan degradation in the gut, as well as phosphate and amino acid transport linked to host phenotype (vaginal pH) in the posterior fornix. An implementation of our methodology is available at http://huttenhower.sph.harvard.edu/human​n. This provides a means to accurately and efficiently characterize microbial metabolic pathways and functional modules directly from high-throughput sequencing reads, enabling the determination of community roles in the HMP cohort and in future metagenomic studies.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (U54HG004968

Enteral arginine does not increase superior mesenteric arterial blood flow but induces mucosal growth in neonatal pigs

Arginine is an essential amino acid in neonates synthesized by gut epithelial cells and a precursor for NO that regulates vasodilatation and blood flow. Arginine supplementation has been shown to improve intestinal integrity in ischemia-reperfusion models and low plasma levels are associated with necrotizing enterocolitis. We hypothesized that enteral arginine is a specific stimulus for neonatal intestinal blood flow and mucosal growth under conditions of total parenteral nutrition (TPN) or partial enteral nutrition (PEN). We first tested the dose dependence and specificity of acute (3 h) enteral arginine infusion on superior mesenteric artery (SMA) blood flow in pigs fed TPN or PEN. We then determined whether chronic (4 d) arginine supplementation of PEN increases mucosal growth and if this was affected by treatment with the NO synthase inhibitor, N(G)-nitro-l-arginine methyl ester (L-NAME). Acute enteral arginine infusion increased plasma arginine dose dependently in both TPN and PEN groups, but the plasma response was markedly higher (100–250%) in the PEN group than in the TPN group at the 2 highest arginine doses. Baseline SMA blood flow was 90% higher in the PEN (2.37 ± 0.32 L⋅kg(−1)⋅h(−1)) pigs than in the TPN pigs (1.23 ± 0.17 L⋅kg(−1)⋅h(−1)), but was not affected by acute infusion individually of arginine, citrulline, or other major gut fuels. Chronic dietary arginine supplementation in PEN pigs induced mucosal growth in the intestine, but this effect was not prevented by treatment with L-NAME. Intestinal crypt cell proliferation, protein synthesis, and phosphorylation of mammalian target of rapamycin and p70S6 kinase were not affected by dietary arginine. We conclude that partial enteral feeding, but not acute enteral arginine, increases SMA blood flow in the neonatal pig. Furthermore, supplementing arginine in partial enteral feeding modestly increases intestinal mucosal growth and was NO independent