Embryologist agreement when assessing blastocyst implantation probability: is data-driven prediction the solution to embryo assessment subjectivity?

Study Question: What is the accuracy and agreement of embryologists when assessing the implantation probability of blastocysts using time-lapse imaging (TLI), and can it be improved with a data-driven algorithm?

Summary Answer: The overall interobserver agreement of a large panel of embryologists was moderate and prediction accuracy was modest, while the purpose-built artificial intelligence model generally resulted in higher performance metrics.

What Is Known Already: Previous studies have demonstrated significant interobserver variability amongst embryologists when assessing embryo quality. However, data concerning embryologists' ability to predict implantation probability using TLI is still lacking.

Author Correction: The mid-developmental transition and the evolution of animal body plans.

An Amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Intel® RealSense™ SR300 Coded Light Depth Camera.

Intel® RealSense™ SR300 is a depth camera capable of providing a VGA-size depth map at 60 fps and 0.125mm depth resolution. In addition, it outputs an infrared VGA-resolution image and a 1080p color texture image at 30 fps.

The gene regulatory program of reveals conservation of phylum-specific expression.

The evolution of development has been studied through the lens of gene regulation by examining either closely related species or extremely distant animals of different phyla. In nematodes, detailed cell- and stage-specific expression analyses are focused on the model , in part leading to the view that the developmental expression of gene cascades in this species is archetypic for the phylum. Here, we compared two species of an intermediate evolutionary distance: the nematodes (clade V) and (clade IV).

The mid-developmental transition and the evolution of animal body plans.

Animals are grouped into ~35 'phyla' based upon the notion of distinct body plans. Morphological and molecular analyses have revealed that a stage in the middle of development--known as the phylotypic period--is conserved among species within some phyla. Although these analyses provide evidence for their existence, phyla have also been criticized as lacking an objective definition, and consequently based on arbitrary groupings of animals.

ELOPER: elongation of paired-end reads as a pre-processing tool for improved de novo genome assembly.

Motivation: Paired-end sequencing resulting in gapped short reads is commonly used for de novo genome assembly. Assembly methods use paired-end sequences in a two-step process, first treating each read-end independently, only later invoking the pairing to join the contiguous assemblies (contigs) into gapped scaffolds. Here, we present ELOPER, a pre-processing tool for pair-end sequences that produces a better read library for assembly programs.

Identifying functional links between genes by evolutionary transcriptomics.

The ability to determine gene expression profiles across distant species presents a unique opportunity to identify functional relationships between genes. In particular, transcriptome data may help to distinguish whether genes with similar expression profiles are functionally related or independent. Recent studies on the evolution of gene expression have revealed a striking amount of divergence across strains and species, a notion which has hitherto not been brought to bear on the problem of detecting functional relationships between genes.

A novel lineage of myoviruses infecting cyanobacteria is widespread in the oceans.

Viruses infecting bacteria (phages) are thought to greatly impact microbial population dynamics as well as the genome diversity and evolution of their hosts. Here we report on the discovery of a novel lineage of tailed dsDNA phages belonging to the family Myoviridae and describe its first representative, S-TIM5, that infects the ubiquitous marine cyanobacterium, Synechococcus. The genome of this phage encodes an entirely unique set of structural proteins not found in any currently known phage, indicating that it uses lineage-specific genes for virion morphogenesis and represents a previously unknown lineage of myoviruses.