Nutrient Intake among Pregnant Teenage Girls Attending Ante-Natal Clinics in Two Health Facilities in Bungoma South District, Western Kenya

Objective: To assess the adequacy of nutrient intake including proteins, energy, calcium, iron, folate and vitamin C and identify the factors associated with nutrient intake.Design: Cross sectional study.Setting: Healthy facility based. Bungoma District Hospital and Bumula Health centre.Subjects: Teenage pregnant girls attending Antenatal Clinic participated after providing written consent, with girls under 18 years being considered as emancipated minors. A standardised interviewer administered Food Frequency Questionnaire was used to asses the dietary intake. Nutrient calculator was used to determine the nutrient intake of the study participant.Results: The intakes of all selected nutrients were significantly lower than the RDA. Protein intake was significantly associated with Education (OR: 0.537; 95% CI: 0.318 – 0.907), income (OR: 0.049; 95% CI: 0.919 – 0.128) and perceived food shortage (OR: 0.617; 95% CI: 0.389 – 0.890). Energy intake was significantly associated with income (p=0.007, OR: 2.103; 95%CI: 1.225 – 3.608). Iron intake was significantly associated with perceived food shortage (OR: 2.548; 95% CI: 1.632 – 3.980). Hookworm affected calcium intake (OR: 3.074; 95% CI: 1.089 – 8.698) and malaria parasites affected folate intake (OR: 0.355; 95% CI: 0.226 – 0.557). Those with hookworm were 3 times more likely to have inadequate calcium intake as compared to those without.Conclusion: All the nutrients selected were lower than the Required Dietary Allowance. Level of education, income, Hookworm and malaria affected intake of various nutrients

One thousand plant transcriptomes and the phylogenomics of green plants

Abstract: Green plants (Viridiplantae) include around 450,000–500,000 species1, 2 of great diversity and have important roles in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Here, as part of the One Thousand Plant Transcriptomes Initiative, we sequenced the vegetative transcriptomes of 1,124 species that span the diversity of plants in a broad sense (Archaeplastida), including green plants (Viridiplantae), glaucophytes (Glaucophyta) and red algae (Rhodophyta). Our analysis provides a robust phylogenomic framework for examining the evolution of green plants. Most inferred species relationships are well supported across multiple species tree and supermatrix analyses, but discordance among plastid and nuclear gene trees at a few important nodes highlights the complexity of plant genome evolution, including polyploidy, periods of rapid speciation, and extinction. Incomplete sorting of ancestral variation, polyploidization and massive expansions of gene families punctuate the evolutionary history of green plants. Notably, we find that large expansions of gene families preceded the origins of green plants, land plants and vascular plants, whereas whole-genome duplications are inferred to have occurred repeatedly throughout the evolution of flowering plants and ferns. The increasing availability of high-quality plant genome sequences and advances in functional genomics are enabling research on genome evolution across the green tree of life