scholarly journals Cryptic prophages within a Streptococcus pyogenes genotype emm4 lineage

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Remmington ◽  
Samuel Haywood ◽  
Julia Edgar ◽  
Claire E. Turner
Keyword(s):  
Streptococcus Pyogenes ◽  
Gene Loss ◽  
Sequence Data ◽  
Genome Data ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Ncbi Short Read Archive ◽  
Genes Encoding ◽  
Variable Extent ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Uk

AbstractThe major human pathogen Streptococcus pyogenes shares an intimate evolutionary history with mobile genetic elements, which in many cases, carry genes encoding bacterial virulence factors. During recent whole genome sequencing of a longitudinal sample of S. pyogenes isolates in the United Kingdom, we identified a lineage within emm4 that clustered with the reference genome MEW427. Like MEW427, this lineage was characterised by substantial gene loss within all three prophage regions, compared to MGAS10750 and isolates outside of the MEW427-like lineage. Gene loss primarily affected lysogeny, replicatory and regulatory modules, and to a lesser and more variable extent, structural genes. Importantly, prophage-encoded superantigen and DNase genes were retained in all isolates. In isolates where the prophage elements were complete, like MGAS10750, they could be induced experimentally, but not in MEW427-like isolates with degraded prophages. We also found gene loss within the chromosomal island SpyCIM4 of MEW427-like isolates, although surprisingly, the SpyCIM4 element could not be experimentally induced in either MGAS10750-like or MEW427-like isolates. This did not, however, appear to abolish expression of the mismatch repair operon, within which this element resides. The inclusion of further emm4 genomes in our analyses ratified our observations and revealed an international emm4 lineage characterised by prophage degradation. Intriguingly, the USA population of emm4 S. pyogenes appeared to constitute predominantly MEW427-like isolates, whereas the UK comprised both MEW427-like and MGAS10750-like strains. The degradation and cryptic nature of these elements may have important phenotypic ramifications for emm4 S. pyogenes and the geographical distribution of this lineage raises interesting questions on the population dynamics of the genotype.Data summaryAll raw sequence data used in this study has been previously published and was obtained from NCBI short read archive. Accession numbers and citations for the genome data for each individual isolate is provided in Supplementary Table 1.

scholarly journals Cryptic prophages within a Streptococcus pyogenes genotype emm4 lineage

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Remmington ◽  
Samuel Haywood ◽  
Julia Edgar ◽  
Luke R. Green ◽  
Thushan de Silva ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Streptococcus Pyogenes ◽  
Type Species ◽  
Gene Loss ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Regulatory Modules ◽  
Link Type ◽  
Genes Encoding ◽  
Variable Extent ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Uk

The major human pathogen Streptococcus pyogenes shares an intimate evolutionary history with mobile genetic elements, which in many cases carry genes encoding bacterial virulence factors. During recent whole-genome sequencing of a longitudinal sample of S. pyogenes isolates in England, we identified a lineage within emm4 that clustered with the reference genome MEW427. Like MEW427, this lineage was characterized by substantial gene loss within all three prophage regions, compared to MGAS10750 and isolates outside of the MEW427-like lineage. Gene loss primarily affected lysogeny, replicative and regulatory modules, and to a lesser and more variable extent, structural genes. Importantly, prophage-encoded superantigen and DNase genes were retained in all isolates. In isolates where the prophage elements were complete, like MGAS10750, they could be induced experimentally, but not in MEW427-like isolates with degraded prophages. We also found gene loss within the chromosomal island SpyCIM4 of MEW427-like isolates, although surprisingly, the SpyCIM4 element could not be experimentally induced in either MGAS10750-like or MEW427-like isolates. This did not, however, appear to abolish expression of the mismatch repair operon, within which this element resides. The inclusion of further emm4 genomes in our analyses ratified our observations and revealed an international emm4 lineage characterized by prophage degradation. Intriguingly, the USA population of emm4 S. pyogenes appeared to constitute predominantly MEW427-like isolates, whereas the UK population comprised both MEW427-like and MGAS10750-like isolates. The degraded and cryptic nature of these elements may have important phenotypic and fitness ramifications for emm4 S. pyogenes , and the geographical distribution of this lineage raises interesting questions on the population dynamics of the genotype.

Antitrust Regulation of IT Giants` Activities: Main Trends of Foreign and Russian Legislation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
D.V. Shram ◽  
Keyword(s):  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Network Effects ◽  
The United States ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Economic Concentration ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Antitrust Regulation

The article is devoted to the antimonopoly regulation of IT giants` activities. The author presents an overview of the main trends in foreign and Russian legislation in this area. The problems the antimonopoly regulation of digital markets faces are the following: the complexity of determining the criteria for the dominant position of economic entities in the digital economy and the criteria for assessing the economic concentration in the commodity digital markets; the identification and suppression of cartels; the relationship between competition law and intellectual property rights in the digital age. Some aspects of these problems are considered through the prism of the main trends in the antimonopoly policy in the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom and Russia. The investigation findings of the USA House of Representatives Antitrust Subcommittee against Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook are presented. The author justifies the need to separate them, which requires the adoption of appropriate amendments to the antimonopoly legislation. The article analyzes the draft law of the European Commission on the regulation of digital markets – Digital Markets Act, reveals the criteria for classifying IT companies as «gatekeepers», and notes the specific approaches to antimonopoly regulation in the UK and the US. The article describes the concepts «digital platform» and «network effects», presented in the «fifth antimonopoly package of amendments», developed in 2018 by the Federal Antimonopoly Service of the Russian Federation, and gives an overview of the comments of the Ministry of Economic Development regarding these concepts wording in the text of the draft law, which formed the basis for the negative conclusion of the regulator. It is concluded that in the context of the digital markets’ globalization, there is a need for the international legal nature antitrust norms formation, since regional legislation obviously cannot cope with the monopolistic activities of IT giants.

scholarly journals The Comprehension of Tense–Aspect Morphology by Spanish Heritage Speakers in the United Kingdom

Languages ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 46
Author(s):  
James Corbet ◽  
Laura Domínguez
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Interpretation ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Imperfective Aspect ◽  
Production Studies ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Heritage Speakers Of Spanish ◽  
English Dominant ◽  
Increase In Accuracy ◽  
The Uk

Whilst heritage Spanish has been widely examined in the USA, less is known about the acquisition of Spanish in other English-dominant contexts such as the UK, and studies rarely assess the baseline grammar that heritage speakers are exposed to directly. In this study, we implemented a semantic interpretation task to 17 bilinguals in the UK to investigate child heritage speakers’ and their parents’ comprehension of the preterite–imperfect aspectual contrast in Spanish, an area of known difficulty. The results show that the parents are consistently more accurate in accepting and rejecting the appropriate morphemes than the children. Further analysis shows that children’s accuracy was best predicted by age at time of testing, suggesting that young heritage speakers of Spanish in the UK can acquire the target grammar. However, this general increase in accuracy with age was not found for the continuous reading of imperfective aspect. This finding implicates a more nuanced role of cross-linguistic influence in early heritage speakers’ grammar(s), and partially explains greater difficulty with the imperfect observed in production studies with other heritage speakers.

scholarly journals A turiasaurian sauropod dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous Wealden Supergroup of the United Kingdom

PeerJ ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. e6348
Author(s):  
Philip D. Mannion
Keyword(s):  
Early Cretaceous ◽  
Middle Jurassic ◽  
Late Jurassic ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Phylogenetic Analyses ◽  
Neural Spine ◽  
Faunal Turnover ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Uk

The Jurassic/Cretaceous (J/K) boundary, 145 million years ago, has long been recognised as an extinction event or faunal turnover for sauropod dinosaurs, with many ‘basal’ lineages disappearing. However, recently, a number of ‘extinct’ groups have been recognised in the Early Cretaceous, including diplodocids in Gondwana, and non-titanosauriform macronarians in Laurasia. Turiasauria, a clade of non-neosauropod eusauropods, was originally thought to have been restricted to the Late Jurassic of western Europe. However, its distribution has recently been extended to the Late Jurassic of Tanzania (Tendaguria tanzaniensis), as well as to the Early Cretaceous of the USA (Mierasaurus bobyoungi and Moabosaurus utahensis), demonstrating the survival of another ‘basal’ clade across the J/K boundary. Teeth from the Middle Jurassic–Early Cretaceous of western Europe and North Africa have also tentatively been attributed to turiasaurs, whilst recent phylogenetic analyses recovered Late Jurassic taxa from Argentina and China as further members of Turiasauria. Here, an anterior dorsal centrum and neural arch (both NHMUK 1871) from the Early Cretaceous Wealden Supergroup of the UK are described for the first time. NHMUK 1871 shares several synapomorphies with Turiasauria, especially the turiasaurs Moabosaurus and Tendaguria, including: (1) a strongly dorsoventrally compressed centrum; (2) the retention of prominent epipophyses; and (3) an extremely low, non-bifid neural spine. NHMUK 1871 therefore represents the first postcranial evidence for Turiasauria from European deposits of Early Cretaceous age. Although turiasaurs show clear heterodont dentition, only broad, characteristically ‘heart’-shaped teeth can currently be attributed to Turiasauria with confidence. As such, several putative turiasaur occurrences based on isolated teeth from Europe, as well as the Middle Jurassic and Early Cretaceous of Africa, cannot be confidently referred to Turiasauria. Unequivocal evidence for turiasaurs is therefore restricted to the late Middle Jurassic–Early Cretaceous of western Europe, the Late Jurassic of Tanzania, and the late Early Cretaceous of the USA, although remains from elsewhere might ultimately demonstrate that the group had a near-global distribution.

scholarly journals Molecular analysis and new records of the invasive polychaete Boccardia proboscidea (Annelida: Spionidae)

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
VASILY I. RADASHEVSKY ◽  
VICTORIA V. PANKOVA ◽  
VASILY V. MALYAR ◽  
TATYANA V. NERETINA ◽  
ROBIN S. WILSON ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
16S Rdna ◽  
Sequence Data ◽  
Haplotype Diversity ◽  
The North ◽  
Rdna Sequences ◽  
The World ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Asian Pacific ◽  
The Uk

The spionid polychaete Boccardia proboscidea Hartman, 1940 is a tube-dweller and shell/stone-borer widely occurring in temperate waters across the world and considered invasive in many areas. It was originally described from California, USA, and later reported from Pacific Canada, the Asian Pacific, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, South Africa, and northern Europe. The Bayesian inference analysis of sequence data of three gene fragments (836 bp in total) of the mitochondrial 16S rDNA, nuclear 28S rDNA, and Histone 3 has shown that individuals from the Pacific coasts of Canada and the USA, Argentina, Australia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and Mediterranean France were genetically very similar (maximal average p-distance value, 0.49%, was between 16S rDNA sequences). We consider these individuals to be conspecific and report the earliest records of B. proboscidea from the UK and a possible first Mediterranean record in the Gulf of Lion. The high 16S haplotype diversity of B. proboscidea detected in the north-eastern Pacific suggests a native distribution for the species in the northern Pacific and subsequent introductions through human activities to other parts of the world. The histories of these introductions are reviewed and the hypotheses about times and places of introductions are updated.

scholarly journals Host’s Specific SARS-CoV-2 Mutations: Insertion of the Phenylalanine in the NSP6 Linked to the United Kingdom and Premature Termination of the ORF-8 Associated with the European and the United States of America Derived Samples

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Khalid ◽  
Yousef Al-ebini ◽  
David Murphy ◽  
Maryam Shoai
Keyword(s):  
Mutation Rate ◽  
Geographical Location ◽  
The United States ◽  
Genome Sequences ◽  
Dna Viruses ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Geographical Locations

AbstractThe coronavirus belongs to the order Nidovirales, which is known for the longest RNA genome virus. The polymerase enzyme of SARS-CoV-2 has proofreading functions, but still, the RNA viruses have a higher mutation rate than DNA viruses. The mutations in the viral genome provide a replication advantage in any population/geographical location and that may have profound consequences in the outcome and pathogenesis, diagnosis and patient management of the viral infection. In the present study, we have analysed full-length SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences, derived from symptomatic/asymptomatic COVID-19 patients from all six continents to investigate the common mutations globally. Our results revealed that SARS-CoV-2 is mutating independently, we identified total 313 mutations and some (21 mutations) of them are prevailing over time irrespective of geographical location. Another important finding, we are reporting here is, the mutation rate of the virus varies in different geographical locations suggesting the virus is adapting different strategies in the infected populations, having different genetic backgrounds across the globe. We have identified 11085TTT insertion (insertion of the Phenylalanine in NSP6 at position 38) mutation, which is mainly linked to the UK derived SARS-CoV-2 samples, we have also discovered non-sense mutation in ORF-8 after 17 amino acid is linked to the European and the USA derived SARS-CoV-2 samples.

‘A splendid innovation, these English titles!’ The invention of subtitling in the USA and the UK

2019 ◽  
pp. 267-290
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
The United States ◽  
Silent Films ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
The Uk

This chapter offers the first account of the beginning of subtitling in the United Kingdom and in the United States. The release of foreign-language films with superimposed English titles began in both countries in the course of 1931, and became generalised in 1932. The chapter discusses early experiments in titling, including the use of interpolated titles after the fashion of silent films. It also raises a number of methodological problems, including the difficulty of interpretation of press data. This difficulty means that as yet we have only a provisional picture of early subtitling practices in the UK and USA, and for several of these early subtitled versions the nature and extent of the titling is not known. The chapter also discusses the question of survival of the material artefacts of these subtitled versions.

Retail Restructuring and the Strategic Significance of Food Retailers' Own-Labels: A UK—USA Comparison

1996 ◽  
Vol 28 (12) ◽  
pp. 2201-2226 ◽  
Author(s):  
A Hughes
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Strategic Action ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Food Retailers ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Competitive Behaviour ◽  
The Uk

Recognising the use of food retailers' own-labels as a particular form of competitive strategy, I seek to show how such a strategy is embedded within the very different retailing environments of the United Kingdom and USA. It is argued that power relations in the production—consumption chain, which have been influenced by regulation, have favoured the retailers in the United Kingdom more than they have in the USA. This appears to have allowed the UK food retailers to execute own-label strategic action which has ‘creatively destroyed’ the preexisting configuration of power, competitive behaviour, and cultural relations in the production—consumption chain. The US retailers, in contrast, have been restricted to quantitatively lower levels of own-label trading and strategy which has been qualitatively more rigid and conservative. It is suggested, then, that power relations produced in different national contexts can either constrain or enable retailers in their ability to formulate and execute own-label strategies which are a part of the complex logic of capital which characterises retailing. Therefore, given a continued period of deregulation in the USA, and an erosion of manufacturer power, retail capital is likely to develop more along the lines of the UK system and generate own-label strategies with similar economic and cultural significance to those in the United Kingdom.

British and US Anticommunism Between the World Wars

2016 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Olmsted
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
The United States ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Union Activists ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Cold War

This article examines the espionage and propaganda networks established by former professional spies and other anticommunist activists in the interwar period in the United States of America and the United Kingdom. In both countries, conservatives responded to the growing power of labor in politics by creating and funding private groups to coordinate spying operations on union activists and political radicals. These British and US spies drew upon the resources of the government while evading democratic controls. The anti-labor groups also spread anti-radical propaganda, but the counter-subversive texts in the UK tended to highlight the economic threats posed by radicalism, while those in the USA appealed to more visceral fears. The leaders of these anti-labur networks established a transnational alliance with their fellow anticommunists across the Atlantic decades before the beginning of the Cold War.

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