Superspreading driven by individual variation in transmissibility shapes novel pathogen emergence and the effectiveness of control measures. Current approaches to estimating superspreading typically rely on cluster size distributions informed by contact tracing or genomic data, limited by data availability and potential sampling bias. Here, we examined the impact of superspreading on the early spatial spread […]

ABSTRACT Background In low-income settings, WHO recommended a booster-dose of DTP (DTP4) and OPV (OPV4) at 18 months of age. Previous studies found DTP after MV to be associated with higher female mortality. We conducted a randomised trial (RCTs) in Guinea-Bissau, in which children from 18 months of age were randomised to receive DTP4+OPV4 vs […]

Objectives: Paleoanthropologists often utilize geometric morphometrics and principal components analysis (PCA) to interpret shape variation within the hominin fossil record. It is common practice to interpret proximity in principal components (PC) space among taxa as indicative of not just morphological, but also phylogenetic affinity. This interpretation, however, has not been directly evaluated for hominins. Materials […]

Evolutionary studies of vertebrate vision have mainly focused on the light-sensitive opsins neglecting the downstream phototransduction cascade. Here, we investigate patterns of gene loss and expression across jawed vertebrates, providing clarity on the evolution of phototransduction. We next focus on an ecologically diverse sample of frogs represented by whole-eye transcriptomes and genomes from 113 species. […]

Mutations in the chromatin reader and tumor suppressor ZMYND11 are the cause of ZMYND11-related syndromic intellectual disability (ZRSID), a disorder characterized by symptoms such as language and motor delay, behavioral disruptions, and seizures. We find that neuronal deletion of ZMYND11 in mice causes aberrant upregulation of non-neuronal gene programs, leading to reduced dendritic branching and […]

Pancreas organogenesis relies on sequential interactions between the pancreatic epithelium and surrounding mesodermal cell types that initiate epithelial budding and branching to form a complex ductal network with terminal acini. Despite recent advances with pluripotent stem cell-based approaches, there are no models that robustly recapitulate pancreas morphogenesis or the spatial organization of ductal, exocrine, endocrine […]

Circulating hormones, that mediate communications across organs to maintain physiological balance, are commonly detected and quantified using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs). However, while ELISA is well-suited for organisms where sample blood can be readily obtained, its application is considerably more challenging in smaller organisms, particularly Drosophila, which has gained widespread use in recent years for […]

Non-coding regulatory regions are essential to the determination of gene expression and plant phenotypes. In this work, we investigated the cis-regulatory landscape of a winter type rapeseed, Express617, across multiple sample types. Combining chromatin accessibility, DNA methylation and gene expression, we annotated thousands of novel regulatory elements in the Brassica napus genome. Among those regions, […]

Plants encounter diverse pathogens and have evolved a two-layered innate immune system to detect pathogen molecules and activate defense mechanisms that restrict infection. Most cloned plant Resistance (R) genes encode NLR immune receptors. NLR genes are often found in clusters of paralogs with sequence and copy number variation; whether these NLR clusters evolve in response […]

Cachexia is a complex muscle wasting syndrome that affects majority of hospitalized cancer patients receiving chemotherapy. It is often unresponsive to nutritional interventions, including provision of branched-chain amino acids (BCAA: leucine, isoleucine and valine). BCAA are anabolic for skeletal muscle. We wondered whether their ineffectiveness in managing cachexia might be related to altered metabolism of […]