Diagnostic Interview for Genetic Studies: validity and reliability of the Croatian version

OBJECTIVE: To test the validity and reliability of the Diagnostic Interview for Genetic Studies (DIGS) in patients with mental illness in Croatia. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Following translation, back-translation, and pilot testing, the Croatian version of DIGS (CRO-DIGS) was administered to a total of 150 inpatients and outpatients diagnosed at the Clinical Hospital in Split with bipolar and major depressive disorder (n=56), schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder (n=62), and alcohol dependence or use disorders (n=32). Initial testing was performed independently by one interviewer and one observer blinded to the diagnosis, and a retest was performed after 8 weeks by a third examiner. RESULTS: The validity of CRO-DIGS was high (κ=0.916), with an excellent inter-rater (κ=0.824) reliability, especially for bipolar disorder (κ=0.956). Following an 8 week test-retest interval, the reliability for all diagnoses was found to be excellent (κ=0.843). CONCLUSION: Our study has shown excellent validity and reliability of the Croatian version of DIGS, making it a promising instrument to assess mental illness of patients. The development of a valid and reliable diagnostic tool such as the CRO-DIGS will considerably advance the scientific communities' ability to carry out genetic studies of psychiatric illness in the region

On the Gold Standard for Security of Universal Steganography

While symmetric-key steganography is quite well understood both in the information-theoretic and in the computational setting, many fundamental questions about its public-key counterpart resist persistent attempts to solve them. The computational model for public-key steganography was proposed by von Ahn and Hopper in EUROCRYPT 2004. At TCC 2005, Backes and Cachin gave the first universal public-key stegosystem - i.e. one that works on all channels - achieving security against replayable chosen-covertext attacks (SS-RCCA) and asked whether security against non-replayable chosen-covertext attacks (SS-CCA) is achievable. Later, Hopper (ICALP 2005) provided such a stegosystem for every efficiently sampleable channel, but did not achieve universality. He posed the question whether universality and SS-CCA-security can be achieved simultaneously. No progress on this question has been achieved since more than a decade. In our work we solve Hopper's problem in a somehow complete manner: As our main positive result we design an SS-CCA-secure stegosystem that works for every memoryless channel. On the other hand, we prove that this result is the best possible in the context of universal steganography. We provide a family of 0-memoryless channels - where the already sent documents have only marginal influence on the current distribution - and prove that no SS-CCA-secure steganography for this family exists in the standard non-look-ahead model.Comment: EUROCRYPT 2018, llncs styl

Understanding the evolution of immune genes in jawed vertebrates

Driven by co-evolution with pathogens, host immunity continuously adapts to optimize defence against pathogens within a given environment. Recent advances in genetics, genomics and transcriptomics have enabled a more detailed investigation into how immunogenetic variation shapes the diversity of immune responses seen across domestic and wild animal species. However, a deeper understanding of the diverse molecular mechanisms that shape immunity within and among species is still needed to gain insight into-and generate evolutionary hypotheses on-the ultimate drivers of immunological differences. Here, we discuss current advances in our understanding of molecular evolution underpinning jawed vertebrate immunity. First, we introduce the immunome concept, a framework for characterizing genes involved in immune defence from a comparative perspective, then we outline how immune genes of interest can be identified. Second, we focus on how different selection modes are observed acting across groups of immune genes and propose hypotheses to explain these differences. We then provide an overview of the approaches used so far to study the evolutionary heterogeneity of immune genes on macro and microevolutionary scales. Finally, we discuss some of the current evidence as to how specific pathogens affect the evolution of different groups of immune genes. This review results from the collective discussion on the current key challenges in evolutionary immunology conducted at the ESEB 2021 Online Satellite Symposium: Molecular evolution of the vertebrate immune system, from the lab to natural populations

BSA-seq mapping reveals major QTL for broomrape resistance in four sunflower lines

Broomrape (Orobanche cumana) is a parasitic weed that causes substantial yield losses in sunflower. In this study, four biparental genetic populations comprised of between 96 and 150 F-3 families were phenotyped for resistance to broomrape race G. Bulk segregant analyses (BSA) combined with genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) technology was used to verify previously identified genes and map new resistance QTLs. Resistance had a polygenic basis, and numerous QTLs were found in all mapping populations. Contributing components to resistance that were common to all populations mapped to two major QTLs on chromosome 3, which were designated or3.1 and or3.2. QTL or3.1 was positioned in a genomic region where a previous broomrape resistance gene Or5 has been mapped, while QTL or3.2 was identified for the first time in the lower region of the same chromosome. Following the identification of major QTLs for resistance using the BSA-seq approach, all plants from three F-2 populations were genotyped using newly developed CAPS markers nearest to the QTL peak for or3.2, which confirmed the association of these markers with broomrape race G resistance. The results of this study will bring us a step closer to understanding the mechanisms underlying resistance of sunflower to highly virulent broomrape races, and the molecular markers developed herein will be highly useful for sunflower breeding programs

Public-key steganography with active attacks

Abstract. A complexity-theoretic model for public-key steganography with active attacks is introduced. The notion of steganographic security against adaptive chosen-covertext attacks (SS-CCA) and a relaxation called steganographic security against publicly-detectable replayable adaptive chosen-covertext attacks (SS-PDR-CCA) are formalized. These notions are closely related to CCA-security and PDR-CCA-security for public-key cryptosystems. In particular, it is shown that any SS-(PDR-)CCA stegosystem is a (PDR-)CCA-secure public-key cryptosystem and that an SS-PDR-CCA stegosystem for any covertext distribution with sufficiently large min-entropy can be realized from any PDR-CCA-secure public-key cryptosystem with pseudorandom ciphertexts.

Understanding the evolution of immune genes in jawed vertebrates.

Driven by co-evolution with pathogens, host immunity continuously adapts to optimize defence against pathogens within a given environment. Recent advances in genetics, genomics and transcriptomics have enabled a more detailed investigation into how immunogenetic variation shapes the diversity of immune responses seen across domestic and wild animal species. However, a deeper understanding of the diverse molecular mechanisms that shape immunity within and among species is still needed to gain insight into-and generate evolutionary hypotheses on-the ultimate drivers of immunological differences. Here, we discuss current advances in our understanding of molecular evolution underpinning jawed vertebrate immunity. First, we introduce the immunome concept, a framework for characterizing genes involved in immune defence from a comparative perspective, then we outline how immune genes of interest can be identified. Second, we focus on how different selection modes are observed acting across groups of immune genes and propose hypotheses to explain these differences. We then provide an overview of the approaches used so far to study the evolutionary heterogeneity of immune genes on macro and microevolutionary scales. Finally, we discuss some of the current evidence as to how specific pathogens affect the evolution of different groups of immune genes. This review results from the collective discussion on the current key challenges in evolutionary immunology conducted at the ESEB 2021 Online Satellite Symposium: Molecular evolution of the vertebrate immune system, from the lab to natural populations