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2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Astros Skuladottir ◽  
Gyda Bjornsdottir ◽  
Egil Ferkingstad ◽  
Gudmundur Einarsson ◽  
Lilja Stefansdottir ◽  
...  

Abstract Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) is the most common entrapment neuropathy and has a largely unknown underlying biology. In a genome-wide association study of CTS (Ncases = 48,843, Ncontrols = 1,190,837), we found 53 sequence variants at 50 loci that associate with the syndrome. The most significant association is with a missense variant (p.Glu366Lys) in SERPINA1 that protects against CTS (P = 2.9 × 10−24, OR = 0.76). Through various functional analyses, we conclude that at least 22 genes mediate CTS risk and highlight the role of 19 CTS variants in the biology of the extracellular matrix. We show that the genetic component to the risk is higher in recurrent/persistent cases than nonrecurrent/nonresistant cases. Anthropometric traits including height and BMI are genetically correlated with CTS, in addition to early hormonal-replacement therapy, osteoarthritis, and restlessness. Our findings suggest that the components of the extracellular matrix play a key role in the pathogenesis of CTS.


2022 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Franz ◽  
Lyle Whyte ◽  
Todd C. Atwood ◽  
Kristin L. Laidre ◽  
Denis Roy ◽  
...  

AbstractGut microbiomes were analyzed by 16S rRNA gene metabarcoding for polar bears (Ursus maritimus) from the southern Beaufort Sea (SB), where sea ice loss has led to increased use of land-based food resources by bears, and from East Greenland (EG), where persistent sea ice has allowed hunting of ice-associated prey nearly year-round. SB polar bears showed a higher number of total (940 vs. 742) and unique (387 vs. 189) amplicon sequence variants and higher inter-individual variation compared to EG polar bears. Gut microbiome composition differed significantly between the two subpopulations and among sex/age classes, likely driven by diet variation and ontogenetic shifts in the gut microbiome. Dietary tracer analysis using fatty acid signatures for SB polar bears showed that diet explained more intrapopulation variation in gut microbiome composition and diversity than other tested variables, i.e., sex/age class, body condition, and capture year. Substantial differences in the SB gut microbiome relative to EG polar bears, and associations between SB gut microbiome and diet, suggest that the shifting foraging habits of SB polar bears tied to sea ice loss may be altering their gut microbiome, with potential consequences for nutrition and physiology.


2022 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuqing He ◽  
Francesco Tiezzi ◽  
Jeremy Howard ◽  
Yijian Huang ◽  
Kent Gray ◽  
...  

Abstract Background The interplay between the gut microbiota and feeding behavior has consequences for host metabolism and health. The present study aimed to explore gut microbiota overall influence on feeding behavior traits and to identify specific microbes associated with the traits in three commercial swine breeds at three growth stages. Feeding behavior measures were obtained from 651 pigs of three breeds (Duroc, Landrace, and Large White) from an average 73 to 163 days of age. Seven feeding behavior traits covered the information of feed intake, feeder occupation time, feeding rate, and the number of visits to the feeder. Rectal swabs were collected from each pig at 73 ± 3, 123 ± 4, and 158 ± 4 days of age. DNA was extracted and subjected to 16 S rRNA gene sequencing. Results Differences in feeding behavior traits among breeds during each period were found. The proportion of phenotypic variances of feeding behavior explained by the gut microbial composition was small to moderate (ranged from 0.09 to 0.31). A total of 21, 10, and 35 amplicon sequence variants were found to be significantly (q-value < 0.05) associated with feeding behavior traits for Duroc, Landrace, and Large White across the three sampling time points. The identified amplicon sequence variants were annotated to five phyla, with Firmicutes being the most abundant. Those amplicon sequence variants were assigned to 28 genera, mainly including Christensenellaceae_R-7_group, Ruminococcaceae_UCG-004, Dorea, Ruminococcaceae_UCG-014, and Marvinbryantia. Conclusions This study demonstrated the importance of the gut microbial composition in interacting with the host feeding behavior and identified multiple archaea and bacteria associated with feeding behavior measures in pigs from either Duroc, Landrace, or Large White breeds at three growth stages. Our study provides insight into the interaction between gut microbiota and feeding behavior and highlights the genetic background and age effects in swine microbial studies.


2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Solange Bayard ◽  
Rachel Martini ◽  
Yalei Chen ◽  
Brittany Jenkins ◽  
Isra Elhussin ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Daniela Rosado ◽  
Marcos Pérez-Losada ◽  
Manuel Aira ◽  
Jorge Domínguez

Vermicomposting is the process of organic waste degradation through interactions between earthworms and microbes. A variety of organic wastes can be vermicomposted, producing a nutrient-rich final product that can be used as a soil biofertilizer. Giving the prolific invasive nature of the Australian silver wattle Acacia dealbata Link in Europe, it is important to find alternatives for its sustainable use. However, optimization of vermicomposting needs further comprehension of the fundamental microbial processes. Here, we characterized bacterial succession during the vermicomposting of silver wattle during 56 days using the earthworm species Eisenia andrei. We observed significant differences in α- and β-diversity between fresh silver wattle (day 0) and days 14 and 28, while the bacterial community seemed more stable between days 28 and 56. Accordingly, during the first 28 days, a higher number of taxa experienced significant changes in relative abundance. A microbiome core composed of 10 amplicon sequence variants was identified during the vermicomposting of silver wattle (days 14 to 56). Finally, predicted functional profiles of genes involved in cellulose metabolism, nitrification, and salicylic acid also changed significantly during vermicomposting. This study, hence, provides detailed insights of the bacterial succession occurring during vermicomposting of the silver wattle and the characteristics of its final product as a sustainable plant biofertilizer.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Damianos Melidis ◽  
Christian Landgraf ◽  
Anja Schoener-Heinisch ◽  
Gunnar Schmidt ◽  
Sandra von Hardenberg ◽  
...  

Since next-generation sequencing (NGS) has become widely available, large gene panels containing up to several hundred genes can be sequenced cost-efficiently. However, the interpretation of the often large numbers of sequence variants detected when using NGS is laborious, prone to errors and often not comparable across laboratories. To overcome this challenge, the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics and the Association for Molecular Pathology (ACMG/AMP) introduced standards and guidelines for the interpretation of sequencing variants. Further gene- and disease-specific refinements regarding hereditary hearing loss have been developed since then. With more than 200 genes associated with hearing disorders, the manual inspection of possible causative variants is especially difficult and time consuming. We developed an open-source bioinformatics tool GenOtoScope, which automates all ACMG/AMP criteria that can be assessed without further individual patient information or human curator investigation, including the refined loss of function criterion (“PVS1”). Two types of interfaces are provided: (i) a command line application to classify sequence variants in batches for a set of patients and (ii) a user-friendly website to classify single variants. We compared the performance of our tool with two other variant classification tools using two hearing loss data sets, which were manually annotated either by the ClinGen Hearing Loss Gene Curation Expert Panel or the diagnostics unit of our human genetics department. GenOtoScope achieved the best average accuracy and precision for both data sets. Compared to the second-best tool, GenOtoScope improved accuracy metric by 25.75% and 4.57% and precision metric by 52.11% and 12.13% on the two data sets respectively. The web interface is freely accessible. The command line application along with all source code, documentation and example outputs can be found via the project GitHub page.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marty G. Yang ◽  
Emi Ling ◽  
Christopher J. Cowley ◽  
Michael E. Greenberg ◽  
Thomas Vierbuchen

Sequence variation in enhancers, a class of cis-regulatory elements that control cell type-specific gene transcription, contributes significantly to phenotypic variation within human populations. Enhancers are short DNA sequences (~200 bp) composed of multiple binding sites (4-10 bp) for transcription factors (TFs). The transcriptional regulatory activity of an enhancer is encoded by the type, number, and distribution of TF binding sites that it contains. However, the sequence determinants of TF binding to enhancers and the relationship between TF binding and enhancer activity are complex, and thus it remains difficult to predict the effect of any given sequence variant on enhancer function. Here, we generate allele-specific maps of TF binding and enhancer activity in fibroblasts from a panel of F1 hybrid mice that have a high frequency of sequence variants. We identified thousands of enhancers that exhibit differences in TF binding and/or activity between alleles and use these data to define features of sequence variants that are most likely to impact enhancer function. Our data demonstrate a critical role for AP-1 TFs at many fibroblast enhancers, reveal a hierarchical relationship between AP-1 and TEAD TF binding at enhancers, and delineate the nature of sequence variants that contribute to AP-1 TF binding. These data represent one of the most comprehensive assessments to date of the impact of sequence variation on enhancer function in chromatin, with implications for identifying functional cis-regulatory variation in human populations.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenta Shirasawa ◽  
Saki Ueta ◽  
Kyoko Murakami ◽  
Mostafa Abdelrahman ◽  
Akira Kanno ◽  
...  

Asparagus kiusianus is a disease-resistant dioecious plant species and a wild relative of garden asparagus (A. officinalis). To enhance A. kiusianus genomic resources, advance plant science, and facilitate asparagus breeding, we determined the genome sequences of the male and female lines of A. kiusianus. Genome sequence reads obtained with a linked-read technology were assembled into four haplotype-phased contig sequences (~1.6 Gb each) for the male and female lines. The contig sequences were aligned onto the chromosome sequences of garden asparagus to construct pseudomolecule sequences. Approximately 55,000 potential protein-encoding genes were predicted in each genome assembly, and ~70% of the genome sequence was annotated as repetitive. Comparative analysis of the genomes of the two species revealed structural and sequence variants between the two species as well as between the male and female lines of each species. Genes with high sequence similarity with the male-specific sex determinant gene in A. officinalis, MSE1/AoMYB35/AspTDF1, were presented in the genomes of the male line but absent from the female genome assemblies. Overall, the genome sequence assemblies, gene sequences, and structural and sequence variants determined in this study will reveal the genetic mechanisms underlying sexual differentiation in plants, and will accelerate disease-resistance breeding in garden asparagus.


2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (51) ◽  
pp. e2104429118
Author(s):  
Alexander T. Neu ◽  
Eric E. Allen ◽  
Kaustuv Roy

The term “core microbiome” has become widely used in microbial ecology over the last decade. Broadly, the core microbiome refers to any set of microbial taxa, or the genomic and functional attributes associated with those taxa, that are characteristic of a host or environment of interest. Most commonly, core microbiomes are measured as the microbial taxa shared among two or more samples from a particular host or environment. Despite the popularity of this term and its growing use, there is little consensus about how a core microbiome should be quantified in practice. Here, we present a brief history of the core microbiome concept and use a representative sample of the literature to review the different metrics commonly used for quantifying the core. Empirical analyses have used a wide range of metrics for quantifying the core microbiome, including arbitrary occurrence and abundance cutoff values, with the focal taxonomic level of the core ranging from phyla to amplicon sequence variants. However, many of these metrics are susceptible to sampling and other biases. Developing a standardized set of metrics for quantifying the core that accounts for such biases is necessary for testing specific hypotheses about the functional and ecological roles of core microbiomes.


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