High-throughput nanopore sequencing of tandem repeat genes and reveals clade-specific patterns and recapitulates global whole genome phylogeny.

Sequencing of most genomes excludes repeat regions in and the gene, encoding the acidic repeat protein (). As a first step to understanding the evolution and function of these genes and the proteins they encode, we developed a protocol to nanopore sequence and genes from 212 clinical samples collected from ten countries on six continents. Both and repeat structures recapitulate the whole genome phylogeny, with subclade-specific patterns emerging.

Treponema pallidum genome sequencing from six continents reveals variability in vaccine candidate genes and dominance of Nichols clade strains in Madagascar.

In spite of its immutable susceptibility to penicillin, Treponema pallidum (T. pallidum) subsp. pallidum continues to cause millions of cases of syphilis each year worldwide, resulting in significant morbidity and mortality and underscoring the urgency of developing an effective vaccine to curtail the spread of the infection.

Full-length TprK of Treponema pallidum subsp. pallidum in lipid nanodiscs is a monomeric porin.

TprK is a key virulence factor of Treponema pallidum subsp. pallidum (T. pallidum) due to its ability to undergo intra-strain antigenic variation through gene conversion.

MiR-223-3p inhibits rTp17-induced inflammasome activation and pyroptosis by targeting NLRP3.

The incidence of syphilis caused by Treponema pallidum subsp pallidum (T pallidum) infection is accompanied by inflammatory injuries of vascular endothelial cells. Studies have revealed that T pallidum infection could induce inflammasome activation and pyroptosis in macrophages. MicroRNA-223-3p (miR-223-3p) was reported to be a negative regulator in inflammatory diseases.

A Novel tp0548 Gene Type of Treponema pallidum Identified in Nanjing, China: Case Report and Review of Literature.

Background: The tp0548 gene, hypothesized to encode for an outer-membrane protein, was originally used in the enhanced Centers for Disease Control and Prevention typing for molecular typing of Treponema pallidum. It plays an important role in the molecular epidemiology of Treponema because it is not only an important locus of multiple typing approaches but also suitable for strain typing of multiple Treponema subspecies.

Methods: A 27-year-old Chinese man attended the Institute of Dermatology, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences Sexually Transmitted Disease Clinic in Nanjing, China, because of a genital ulcer and inguinal lymphadenopathy for 1 week.

Mining Database for the Clinical Significance and Prognostic Value of ESRP1 in Cutaneous Malignant Melanoma.

Background: Epithelial splicing regulatory protein 1 (ESRP1) has been described as an RNA-binding protein involved in cancer development. However, the expression and regulatory network of ESRP1 in cutaneous malignant melanoma (CMM) remain unclear.

Methods: From the sequencing data of 103 CMM samples in The Cancer Genome Atlas database, the expression level of ESRP1 and its correlation with the clinicopathological characteristics were analyzed using the Oncomine 4.

Exosomal miR-146a-5p from Treponema pallidum-stimulated macrophages reduces endothelial cells permeability and monocyte transendothelial migration by targeting JAM-C.

Exosomal microRNAs (miRNAs) transferred between cells have been implicated in modulating the host immune response in microbial infections. In this study, we isolated exosomes from Treponema pallidum (T. pallidum)-stimulated macrophages and detected differential exosomal miRNA expression using both microarrays, and RT-qPCR.

Microaneurysms segmentation with a U-Net based on recurrent residual convolutional neural network.

Microaneurysms (MAs) play an important role in the diagnosis of clinical diabetic retinopathy at the early stage. Annotation of MAs manually by experts is laborious and so it is essential to develop automatic segmentation methods. Automatic MA segmentation remains a challenging task mainly due to the low local contrast of the image and the small size of MAs.

Retinal image synthesis from multiple-landmarks input with generative adversarial networks.

Background: Medical datasets, especially medical images, are often imbalanced due to the different incidences of various diseases. To address this problem, many methods have been proposed to synthesize medical images using generative adversarial networks (GANs) to enlarge training datasets for facilitating medical image analysis. For instance, conventional methods such as image-to-image translation techniques are used to synthesize fundus images with their respective vessel trees in the field of fundus image.

Innate and adaptive immune response to chronic pulmonary infection of hyphae of Aspergillus fumigatus in a new murine model.

Purpose: The pathogenesis of chronic pulmonary aspergillosis (CPA) has seldom been studied due partly to a lack of animal models. Since hypha is the main morphology colonizing the airway in CPA, it's critical to study the immune reaction to chronic pulmonary infection of hyphae of Aspergillus fumigatus, which also has seldom been studied in vivo before.

Methodology: We established a novel murine model of chronic pulmonary infection of hyphae by challenging immunocompetent mice with tightly-structured hyphae balls intratracheally, and described the ensuing immunoreaction to hyphae and conidia, and the pathogenesis of CPA.