Survival and Spatial Ecology of the Snapping Turtle, Chelydra serpentina, on the Upper Mississippi River

We studied the survival and spatial ecology of adult Snapping Turtles (Chelydra serpentina) on Pool 8 of the Upper Mississippi River (UMR) during 1997-2001. We captured 597 Snapping Turtles 745 times (333 adult males; 238 adult females; and 26 juveniles) at two study sites; Goose Island, Wisconsin and Lawrence Lake, Minnesota. From this sample, we radio-marked 104 Snapping Turtles of legal harvest size 128 times. Annual survival ranged from 0.857 to 1.000 and averaged 0.944 with Goose Island and Lawrence Lake estimates pooled. Legal harvest was the most important cause of mortality and accounted for 57% of documented deaths. Annual home range size using the Poly-Buff (PB) method averaged 11.13 ha and ranged from 2.20 ha to 37.18 ha. Emergent and rooted-floating aquatic vegetation were used disproportionally more than their availability and 72% of all locations collected during the active period occurred within these habitat types. Overall, radio-marked Snapping Turtles selected hibernacula in the following habitat categories; marshes (38%), main/side channels (28%), backwater sloughs and small ponds (14%), spring areas (10%), small tributary streams (7%), and tertiary channels (3%). Developing conservative, consistent harvest regulations among the states that border the UMR should be a management priority

Gendered Discourse in the Political Behavior of Adolescents

The roots of adult civic and political participation originate in pre-adult experiences (Verba et al. 1995) and high school extracurricular activities offer students opportunities to develop interpersonal and leadership skills. In this research, we ask whether adolescents also learn gendered norms of political discourse through extracurricular activities. This project assessed gender differences in participation at the 1999 Model United Nations of the Southwest (MUNSW) at the University of Oklahoma. Important differences in participation were observed in the number and character of speaking turns taken by male and female delegates. We find that contextual factors, such as the sex of the committee chair, the issue areas addressed by the committee, and the timing of the session in the conference significantly influence who participates in the discourse, but the percentage of female participants surprisingly does not. The character of the political discourse suggests norms dominated by masculinity.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Deep Sequencing Analysis of HCV NS3 Resistance-Associated Variants and Mutation Linkage in Liver Transplant Recipients

Viral variants with decreased susceptibility to HCV protease inhibitors (PIs) occur naturally and preexist at low levels within HCV populations. In patients failing PI monotherapy, single and double mutants conferring intermediate to high-level resistance to PIs have been selected in vivo. The abundance, temporal dynamics and linkage of naturally occurring resistance-associated variants (RAVs), however, have not been characterized in detail. Here, using high-density pyrosequencing, we analyzed HCV NS3 gene segments from 20 subjects with chronic HCV infection, including 12 subjects before and after liver transplantation. Bioinformatics analysis revealed that Q80 substitution was a dominant variant in 40% of the subjects, whereas other RAVs circulate at low levels within quasispecies populations. Low frequency mutation linkage was detectable by Illumina paired-end sequencing in as low as 0.5% of the mock populations constructed from in vitro RNA transcripts but were uncommon in vivo. We show that naturally occurring RAVs are common and can persist long term following liver transplant at low levels not readily detectable by conventional sequencing. Our results indicate that mutation linkage at low levels could be identified using the Illumina paired-end approach. The methods described here should facilitate the analysis of low frequency HCV drug resistance, mutation linkage and evolution, which may inform future therapeutic strategies in patients undergoing direct acting antiviral therapies

Genome-wide association and functional studies identify a role for matrix Gla protein in osteoarthritis of the hand

Objective Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common form of arthritis and the leading cause of disability in the elderly. Of all the joints, genetic predisposition is strongest for OA of the hand; however, only few genetic risk loci for hand OA have been identified. Our aim was to identify novel genes associated with hand OA and examine the underlying mechanism. Methods We performed a genome-wide association study of a quantitative measure of hand OA in 12 784 individuals (discovery: 8743, replication: 4011). Genome-wide significant signals were followed up by analysing gene and allele-specific expression in a RNA sequencing dataset (n=96) of human articular cartilage. Results We found two significantly associated loci in the discovery set: at chr12 (p=3.5 × 10⁻¹⁰) near the matrix Gla protein (MGP) gene and at chr12 (p=6.1×10⁻⁹) near the CCDC91 gene. The DNA variant near the MGP gene was validated in three additional studies, which resulted in a highly significant association between the MGP variant and hand OA (rs4764133, Betameta=0.83, Pmeta=1.8*10⁻¹⁵). This variant is high linkage disequilibrium with a coding variant in MGP, a vitamin K-dependent inhibitor of cartilage calcification. Using RNA sequencing data from human primary cartilage tissue (n=96), we observed that the MGP RNA expression of the hand OA risk allele was significantly lowercompared with the MGP RNA expression of the reference allele (40.7%, p<5*10⁻¹⁶). Conclusions Our results indicate that the association between the MGP variant and increased risk for hand OA is caused by a lower expression of MGP, which may increase the burden of hand OA by decreased inhibition of cartilage calcification

Antimicrobial Resistance among Campylobacter Strains, United States, 1997–2001

We summarize antimicrobial resistance surveillance data in human and chicken isolates of Campylobacter. Isolates were from a sentinel county study from 1989 through 1990 and from nine state health departments participating in National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System for enteric bacteria (NARMS) from 1997 through 2001. None of the 297 C. jejuni or C. coli isolates tested from 1989 through 1990 was ciprofloxacin-resistant. From 1997 through 2001, a total of 1,553 human Campylobacter isolates were characterized: 1,471 (95%) were C. jejuni, 63 (4%) were C. coli, and 19 (1%) were other Campylobacter species. The prevalence of ciprofloxacin-resistant Campylobacter was 13% (28 of 217) in 1997 and 19% (75 of 384) in 2001; erythromycin resistance was 2% (4 of 217) in 1997 and 2% (8 of 384) in 2001. Ciprofloxacin-resistant Campylobacter was isolated from 10% of 180 chicken products purchased from grocery stores in three states in 1999. Ciprofloxacin resistance has emerged among Campylobacter since 1990 and has increased in prevalence since 1997

Characterization of Coastal Urban Watershed Bacterial Communities Leads to Alternative Community-Based Indicators

BACKGROUND: Microbial communities in aquatic environments are spatially and temporally dynamic due to environmental fluctuations and varied external input sources. A large percentage of the urban watersheds in the United States are affected by fecal pollution, including human pathogens, thus warranting comprehensive monitoring. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Using a high-density microarray (PhyloChip), we examined water column bacterial community DNA extracted from two connecting urban watersheds, elucidating variable and stable bacterial subpopulations over a 3-day period and community composition profiles that were distinct to fecal and non-fecal sources. Two approaches were used for indication of fecal influence. The first approach utilized similarity of 503 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) common to all fecal samples analyzed in this study with the watershed samples as an index of fecal pollution. A majority of the 503 OTUs were found in the phyla Firmicutes, Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, and Actinobacteria. The second approach incorporated relative richness of 4 bacterial classes (Bacilli, Bacteroidetes, Clostridia and alpha-proteobacteria) found to have the highest variance in fecal and non-fecal samples. The ratio of these 4 classes (BBC:A) from the watershed samples demonstrated a trend where bacterial communities from gut and sewage sources had higher ratios than from sources not impacted by fecal material. This trend was also observed in the 124 bacterial communities from previously published and unpublished sequencing or PhyloChip- analyzed studies. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: This study provided a detailed characterization of bacterial community variability during dry weather across a 3-day period in two urban watersheds. The comparative analysis of watershed community composition resulted in alternative community-based indicators that could be useful for assessing ecosystem health

A large genome-wide association study of age-related macular degeneration highlights contributions of rare and common variants.

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Nature Publishing Group via http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ng.3448Advanced age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of blindness in the elderly, with limited therapeutic options. Here we report on a study of >12 million variants, including 163,714 directly genotyped, mostly rare, protein-altering variants. Analyzing 16,144 patients and 17,832 controls, we identify 52 independently associated common and rare variants (P < 5 × 10(-8)) distributed across 34 loci. Although wet and dry AMD subtypes exhibit predominantly shared genetics, we identify the first genetic association signal specific to wet AMD, near MMP9 (difference P value = 4.1 × 10(-10)). Very rare coding variants (frequency <0.1%) in CFH, CFI and TIMP3 suggest causal roles for these genes, as does a splice variant in SLC16A8. Our results support the hypothesis that rare coding variants can pinpoint causal genes within known genetic loci and illustrate that applying the approach systematically to detect new loci requires extremely large sample sizes.We thank all participants of all the studies included for enabling this research by their participation in these studies. Computer resources for this project have been provided by the high-performance computing centers of the University of Michigan and the University of Regensburg. Group-specific acknowledgments can be found in the Supplementary Note. The Center for Inherited Diseases Research (CIDR) Program contract number is HHSN268201200008I. This and the main consortium work were predominantly funded by 1X01HG006934-01 to G.R.A. and R01 EY022310 to J.L.H

Genetic correlation between amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and schizophrenia

A. Palotie on työryhmän Schizophrenia Working Grp Psychiat jäsen.We have previously shown higher-than-expected rates of schizophrenia in relatives of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), suggesting an aetiological relationship between the diseases. Here, we investigate the genetic relationship between ALS and schizophrenia using genome-wide association study data from over 100,000 unique individuals. Using linkage disequilibrium score regression, we estimate the genetic correlation between ALS and schizophrenia to be 14.3% (7.05-21.6; P = 1 x 10(-4)) with schizophrenia polygenic risk scores explaining up to 0.12% of the variance in ALS (P = 8.4 x 10(-7)). A modest increase in comorbidity of ALS and schizophrenia is expected given these findings (odds ratio 1.08-1.26) but this would require very large studies to observe epidemiologically. We identify five potential novel ALS-associated loci using conditional false discovery rate analysis. It is likely that shared neurobiological mechanisms between these two disorders will engender novel hypotheses in future preclinical and clinical studies.Peer reviewe