Molecular epidemiology and clinical characteristics of respiratory syncytial virus in hospitalized children during winter 2021–2022 in Bengbu, China

ObjectiveThis study aimed to study the molecular epidemiology and clinical characteristics of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection from hospitalized children with ARTI in Bengbu.MethodsOne hundred twenty-four nasopharyngeal swab specimens and clinical data from children with ARTI cases were collected in Bengbu, China, during winter 2021–2022. The samples were detected by qPCR of 13 respiratory viruses. Phylogenetic analysis was constructed using MEGA 7.0. All analyses were performed using SAS software, version 9.4.ResultsIn winter 2021–2022, URTI, NSCAP, SCAP, and bronchiolitis accounted for 41.03%, 27.35%, 17.09%, and 14.53% of hospitalized children in Bengbu, China. The detection rates of the top three were RSV (41.94%), ADV (5.65%), and FluB (5.65%) in hospitalized children through 13 virus detection. RSV is the main pathogen of hospitalized children under 2 years old. Forty-eight sequences of G protein of RSV were obtained through PCR amplification, including RSV-A 37 strains and RSV-B 11 strains. Phylogenetic analysis showed that all RSV-A and RSV-B were ON1 and BA9 genotypes, respectively. ON1 genotypes were further divided into two clades. The majority of ON1 strains formed a unique genetic clade with T113I, V131D, N178 G, and H258Q mutations. Furthermore, RSV infection was an independent risk factor for ventilator use (OR = 9.55, 95% CI 1.87–48.64).ConclusionThere was a high incidence of RSV among hospitalized children during winter 2021–2022 in Bengbu with ON1 and BA9 being the dominant strains. This study demonstrated the molecular epidemiological characteristics of RSV in children with respiratory infections in Bengbu, China

Deception Attacks on Remote Estimation with Disclosure and Disruption Resources

The problem of deception attacks utilizing both disclosure and disruption resources in the multiple types of sensors setting against remote state estimation is investigated in this paper. A group of sensors, including reliable and unreliable ones, measure system states and transmit innovations to a remote fusion center via wireless channels, wherein a malicious attacker can modify the data packets of unreliable sensors. By virtue of disclosure resources of reliable sensors and disruption resources of unreliable ones, a stealthy linear attack strategy is given, which can deceive the anomaly detectors and degrade the estimation performance. We obtain feasible criteria under which such attack policies can bypass existing detectors. The evolution of estimation error covariance at the remote end under the attacks is analyzed. Then, a closed-form expression of the optimal linear deception attack maximizing estimation error covariance is derived. Moreover, extended results on the designed attack strategies and attackers with extra measurements are provided. Finally, two illustrative examples with stable and unstable processes are given to verify the effectiveness of proposed methods.</p

Genome-Wide Characterization of Nitrogenase Reductase (<i>nifH</i>) Genes in the Sweet Potato [<i>Ipomoea batatas</i> (L.) Lam] and Its Wild Ancestors

The sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam.) is an important and widely grown crop, and the nitrogenase reductase (nifH) gene is the most widely sequenced marker gene used to identify nitrogen-fixing bacteria and archaea. There have been many examples of the isolation of the diazotrophic endophytes in sweet potatoes, and there has been no report on whether sweet potatoes and their wild ancestors harbored nifH genes. In this study, a comprehensive analysis of nifH genes has been conducted on these species by using bioinformatics and molecular biology methods. A total of 20, 19 and 17 nifH genes were identified for the first time in sweet potatoes, I. trifida and I. triloba, respectively. Based on a phylogenetic analysis, all of the nifH genes, except for g10233.t1, itf14g14040.t1 and itb14g15470.t1, were clustered into five independent clades: I, II, III, IV and V. The nifH genes clustered in the same phylogenetic branch showed a more similar distribution of conserved motifs and exons–introns than those of the other ones. All of the identified genes were further mapped on the 15 chromosomes of the sweet potato, I. trifida and I. triloba. No segmental duplication was detected in each genome of three Ipomoea species, and 0, 8 and 7 tandemly duplicated gene pairs were detected in the genome of the sweet potato, I. trifida and I. triloba, respectively. Synteny analysis between the three Ipomoea species revealed that there were 7, 7 and 8 syntenic gene pairs of nifH genes detected between the sweet potato and I. trifida, between the sweet potato and I. triloba and between I. trifida and I. triloba, respectively. All of the duplicated and syntenic nifH genes were subjected to purifying selection inside duplicated genomic elements during speciation, except for the tandemly duplicated gene pair itf11g07340.t2_itf11g07340.t3, which was subjected to positive selection. Different expression profiles were detected in the sweet potato, I. trifida and I. triloba. According to the above results, four nifH genes of the sweet potato (g950, g16683, g27094 and g33987) were selected for quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) analysis in two sweet potato cultivars (Eshu 15 and Long 9) under nitrogen deficiency (N0) and normal (N1) conditions. All of them were upregulated in the N1 treatment and were consistent with the analysis of the RNA-seq data. We hope that these results will provide new insights into the nifH genes in the sweet potato and its wild ancestors and will contribute to the molecular breeding of sweet potatoes in the future