An Improved Sporozoite Seroneutralization Assay for the Identification of East Coast Fever Immune Correlates.

Background: Immune correlates of protection are ideal tools to predict treatment or vaccine efficacy. However, the accuracy of the immune correlate and the capability to robustly predict the outcome of a vaccine candidate are determined by the performance of the in vitro immunoassay used. Several sporozoite seroneutralization assays have previously been used to assess antibody functional activities; however, a common limitation has been the need for fresh material, target cells and sporozoites, and operator-to-operator bias.

Methodological framework for impact evaluation of Building-Integrated Greenery (BIG-impact).

Building-Integrated Greenery systems, i.e., green roofs, walls, and facades, are Nature-based Solutions that make possible the renaturing of cities when there is no room for traditional greenery solutions.

A Standardized Pipeline for Assembly and Annotation of African Swine Fever Virus Genome.

Obtaining a complete good-quality sequence and annotation for the long double-stranded DNA genome of the African swine fever virus (ASFV) from next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology has proven difficult, despite the increasing availability of reference genome sequences and the increasing affordability of NGS. A gap analysis conducted by the global African swine fever research alliance (GARA) partners identified that a standardized, automatic pipeline for NGS analysis was urgently needed, particularly for new outbreak strains. Whilst there are several diagnostic and research labs worldwide that collect isolates of the ASFV from outbreaks, many do not have the capability to analyze, annotate, and format NGS data from outbreaks for submission to NCBI, and some publicly available ASFV genomes have missing or incorrect annotations.

Canine circulating in a Kenyan animal shelter.

Animal shelters, especially in resource-poor countries, bring together pets from different regions and with different backgrounds. The crowding of such animals often results in infectious diseases, such as respiratory infections. This study characterized from diseased and apparently healthy dogs housed in an animal shelter in Kenya, to determine their antibiotic resistance profiles, their genetic relatedness, and the presence of dominant clones.