Finding Data Should be Easier than Finding Oil

The competitiveness of modern enterprises heavily depends on their ability to make the right business decisions by relying on efficient and timely analysis of the right business critical data. In large and data intensive companies such as Equinor, a Norwegian multinational oil and gas company with more than 20,000 employees, gathering such data is not a trivial task due to the growing size and complexity of corporate information sources. As a result, the data gathering task is often the most time-consuming part of the decision making process, in particular when it comes to the work processes of Equinor's exploration geologists that should find in a timely manner new exploitable accumulations of oil or gas in given areas by analysing data about these areas. In this work we present our experience in addressing this data challenge tast at Equinor. We have developed and deployed at Equinor a semantic data access system that relies on the Ontology Based Data Access (OBDA) approach. Our system is based on our solid theoretical contributions and has been extensively evaluated at Equinor

Fibroblasts Express Immune Relevant Genes and Are Important Sentinel Cells during Tissue Damage in Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss)

Fibroblasts have shown to be an immune competent cell type in mammals. However, little is known about the immunological functions of this cell-type in lower vertebrates. A rainbow trout hypodermal fibroblast cell-line (RTHDF) was shown to be responsive to PAMPs and DAMPs after stimulation with LPS from E. coli, supernatant and debris from sonicated RTHDF cells. LPS was overall the strongest inducer of IL-1β, IL-8, IL-10, TLR-3 and TLR-9. IL-1β and IL-8 were already highly up regulated after 1 hour of LPS stimulation. Supernatant stimuli significantly increased the expression of IL-1β, TLR-3 and TLR-9, whereas the debris stimuli only increased expression of IL-1β. Consequently, an in vivo experiment was further set up. By mechanically damaging the muscle tissue of rainbow trout, it was shown that fibroblasts in the muscle tissue of rainbow trout contribute to electing a highly local inflammatory response following tissue injury. The damaged muscle tissue showed a strong increase in the expression of the immune genes IL-1β, IL-8 and TGF-β already 4 hours post injury at the site of injury while the expression in non-damaged muscle tissue was not influenced. A weaker, but significant response was also seen for TLR-9 and TLR-22. Rainbow trout fibroblasts were found to be highly immune competent with a significant ability to express cytokines and immune receptors. Thus fish fibroblasts are believed to contribute significantly to local inflammatory reactions in concert with the traditional immune cells

Antiviral Activity of Salmonid Gamma Interferon against Infectious Pancreatic Necrosis Virus and Salmonid Alphavirus and Its Dependency on Type I Interferon▿

We investigated the antiviral activity and gene induction properties of interferon gamma (IFN-γ) compared to type I IFN (IFNa1) in Atlantic salmon. IFN-γ protected salmon cells against infectious pancreatic necrosis virus (IPNV)-induced cytopathic effect (CPE), reduced virus titers, and inhibited the synthesis of the viral structural protein VP3. Moreover, IFN-γ showed potent antiviral activity against salmonid alphavirus 3 (SAV3) measured as a reduction in virus nsP1 transcripts. IFN-γ (a type II IFN) had less specific antiviral activity against IPNV than IFNa1, showing a half-maximal effective concentration of 1.6 ng/ml versus 31 pg/ml determined in the CPE reduction assay. Compared to IFNa1, IFN-γ was a more effective inducer of the antiviral protein GBP, several interferon regulatory transcription factors (IRFs), and the chemokine IP-10. The antiviral activity of IFN-γ may also in part be ascribed to upregulation of Mx, ISG15, and viperin. These are typical type I IFN-induced genes in mammals and were also more strongly induced by IFNa1 than by IFN-γ in salmon cells. Fish and mammalian IFN-γ thus show strikingly similar gene induction properties. Interestingly, the antiviral activity of IFN-γ against IPNV and SAV3 and its ability to induce Mx and ISG15 markedly decreased in the presence of neutralizing antiserum against IFNa1. In contrast, antiIFNa1 had no effect on the induction of IRF-1 and IP-10 by IFN-γ. This suggests that the antiviral activity of IFN-γ is partially dependent on IFNa induction. However, because antiIFNa1 could not abolish the IFN-γ-mediated induction of Mx and ISG15 completely, IFN-γ may possibly also induce such genes directly

Expression and Functional Characterization of the RIG-I-Like Receptors MDA5 and LGP2 in Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) ▿ †

The retinoic acid-inducible gene I (RIG-I)-like receptors (RLR) comprise three homologues: RIG-I, melanoma differentiation-associated gene 5 (MDA5), and laboratory of genetics and physiology 2 (LGP2). They activate the host interferon (IFN) system upon recognition of viral RNA pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) in the cytoplasm. Bioinformatic analysis of the sequenced vertebrate genomes suggests that the cytosolic surveillance system is conserved in lower vertebrates, and recent functional studies have confirmed that RIG-I is important to fish antiviral immunity. In this study, we have identified MDA5 and LGP2 homologues from rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss and an additional LGP2 variant with an incomplete C-terminal domain of RIG-I. Trout MDA5 and LGP2 were constitutively produced in fibroblast and macrophage cell lines and upregulated by poly(I:C), recombinant IFN, or infection by RNA viruses (viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus and salmon alphavirus) with a single-stranded positive or negative genome. Overexpression of MDA5 and LGP2 but not of the LGP2 variant resulted in significant accumulation of Mx transcripts in cultured cells, which correlated with a marked enhancement of protection against viral infection. These results demonstrate that both MDA5 and LGP2 are important RLRs in host surveillance against infection of both negative and positive viruses and that the LGP2 variant with a deletion of 54 amino acids at the C terminus acts as a negative regulator for LGP2-elicited antiviral signaling by competing for the viral RNA PAMPs. Interestingly, MDA5 expression was not affected by overexpressed LGP2 in transfected cells and vice versa, suggesting that they likely act in parallel as positive regulators for IFN production