Publications by authors named "B Shapiro"
Cholera is a diarrhoeal disease caused by . It remains a major public health challenge in the endemic region around the Bay of Bengal. Over decadal time scales, one lineage typically dominates the others and spreads in global pandemic waves.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMountain lions, Puma concolor, are widespread and adaptable carnivores. However, due to their large home ranges and long distance dispersals, they are strongly impacted by habitat fragmentation, which results in small and isolated populations. Genomic analyses play an important role in understanding and predicting the impacts of increased isolation of populations, such as decreased genetic diversity and increased levels of inbreeding.
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- The COVID-19 pandemic spurred global efforts to sequence SARS-CoV-2 genomes to monitor its evolution and guide public health decisions, resulting in millions of genome sequences being shared worldwide.
- The Canadian COVID-19 Genomics Network (CanCOGeN - VirusSeq) launched the Canadian VirusSeq Data Portal to provide open access to genomic sequences and standardized contextual data while adhering to FAIR standards.
- The portal emphasizes data quality, privacy compliance, and security, and is used alongside tools like Viral AI and the CoVaRR-Net to facilitate ongoing research and analysis of SARS-CoV-2 variants in Canada.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater was used to track the evolution and emergence of variant lineages and gauge infection levels in the community, informing appropriate public health responses without relying solely on clinical testing. As more sublineages were discovered, it increased the difficulty in identifying distinct variants in a mixed population sample, particularly those without a known lineage. Here, we compare the sequencing technology from Illumina and from Oxford Nanopore Technologies, in order to determine their efficacy at detecting variants of differing abundance, using 248 wastewater samples from various Quebec and Ontario cities.
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- The horse family (equids) has a rich fossil record showing significant evolutionary changes over the last 55 million years, with a wealth of ancient genomes sequenced to understand their domestication history.
- This study generated genome-wide data from 25 ancient equid specimens spanning 44,000 years in regions like Anatolia and Mongolia, revealing the presence of extinct species and new insights into their survival.
- The research also identified genetic differences among Asian wild asses and a common genetic signature in wild asses across continents, raising questions about the role of specific genetic changes in the extinction of certain equid species.