Educational Session at the “Trends in Medical Mycology” (TIMM) 2021 Congress Teaching Medical Mycology to Students of Medicine

Medical Mycology is part of Medical Microbiology [...]

Abstracts of poster presentations at the 2021 virtual annual of the Canadian Society for Pharmaceutical Sciences.

In 2021, the Canadian Society for Pharmaceutical Sciences (CSPS) partnered with he Pharmaceutical Society of Japan (PSJ) and the Canadian Chapter of Controlled Release Society (CC-CRS) and presented its annual matting in virtual style. Keynote speakers included Professor Michael Houghton – 2020 Nobel Laureate, Director of Li Ka Shing Applied Virology Institute (LKSAVI), Professor, Department of Medical Microbiology & Immunology, University of Alberta and Professor Yoshiharu Matsuura, Director, Center for Infectious Diseases Education and Research (CIDER), Osaka University, Japan.

Ultra-resolution Metagenomics: When Enough Is Not Enough

Technological advances in community sequencing have steadily increased the taxonomic resolution at which microbes can be delineated. In high-resolution metagenomics, bacterial strains can now be resolved, enhancing medical microbiology and the description of microbial evolution in vivo .

Susceptibility Profile of Antimicrobial Agents Used Against Staphylococcus Aureus Isolated From Clinical Specimens in Abuth Zaria.

Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) is a multifaceted and vicious pathogen in humans. It has been deftly established as a clinical and epidemiological pathogen and serves as the genesis of infections in many parts of the body. This research work carried out bacteria ecosystem surveillance in S. aureus using selected antimicrobial agents and also assessed the impact of combined antimicrobial therapy.One hundred and seventy seven (177) Staphylococcal isolates were obtained from various specimens submitted to the Medical Microbiology Laboratory of Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital (ABUTH), Shika over a cumulative period of eight months. The antimicrobial susceptibility patterns were determined using ten antimicrobial discs in solid media by disc agar diffusion method. The antimicrobial discs chosen belong to five antimicrobial agents’ classes namely; Penicillins, Cephalosporins, Quinolones, Sulphonamides and Glycopeptides. The susceptibility profile in this research work showed that only 1.4% of the isolates were susceptible to all the five classes of antimicrobial agent used. This is highly suggestive of the high antibiotic selective pressure ongoing in the environment where the research was carried out. It was also discovered that conventional antimicrobial agents like Amoxi-clav were resistant to the clinical isolates when used alone. Quinolones and Sulphonamides were only marginally susceptible. However, higher percentage susceptibility were obtained when varying number of other antimicrobial agents were combined with Vancomycin.

Comethyl: A network-based methylome approach to investigate the multivariate nature of health and disease

Health outcomes are frequently shaped by difficult to dissect inter-relationships between biological, behavioral, social, and environmental factors. DNA methylation patterns reflect such multi-variate intersections, providing a rich source of novel biomarkers and insight into disease etiologies. Recent advances in whole-genome bisulfite sequencing (WGBS) enable investigation of DNA methylation over all genomic CpGs, but existing bioinformatic approaches lack accessible system-level tools. Here, we develop the R package Comethyl, for weighted gene correlation network analysis (WGCNA) of user-defined genomic regions that generates modules of comethylated regions, which are then tested for correlations with sample traits. First, regions are defined by CpG genomic location or regulatory annotation and filtered based on CpG count, sequencing depth, and variability. Next, correlation networks are used to find modules of interconnected nodes using methylation values within the selected regions. Each module containing multiple comethylated regions is reduced in complexity to a single eigennode value, which is then tested for correlations with experimental metadata. Comethyl has the ability to cover the noncoding regulatory regions of the genome with high relevance to interpretation of genome-wide association studies and integration with other types of epigenomic data. We demonstrate the utility of Comethyl on a dataset of male cord blood samples from newborns later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) versus typical development. Comethyl successfully identified an ASD-associated module containing gene regions with brain glial functions. Comethyl is expected to be useful in uncovering the multi-variate nature of health disparities for a variety of common disorders. Comethyl is available at github.com/cemordaunt/comethyl.Description of the AuthorsCharles E. Mordaunt, Ph.D. developed Comethyl while a postdoctoral fellow in the department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology at UC Davis. He is currently a Computational Biologist at GSK.Julia S. Mouat is a doctoral student in the Integrative Genetics and Genomics graduate group at UC Davis with interests in health disparities and intergenerational epigenetic risk factors for autism spectrum disorders.Rebecca J. Schmidt, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Public Health Sciences at UC Davis, with expertise in the use of epigenetics in epidemiology and neurodevelopmental disorders.Janine M. LaSalle, Ph.D. is a Professor of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, Co-Director of the Perinatal Origins of Disparities Center, and Deputy Director of the Environmental Health Sciences Center at UC Davis, with expertise in epigenomics and neurodevelopmental disorders.

Journal of Medical Microbiology: global footprint and appointment of a regional Editorial Board

The Journal of Medical Microbiology has a global presence with an international Editorial Board. Asian countries such as PR China, India and Iran are prolific in the submission of manuscripts. Overall, the acceptance rate has been highest for European countries, the USA, Canada and Australia, and lowest for African, Asian and Latin American (LATAM) countries. The creation of regional Editors to assist the authors from these countries would serve the scientific community.