Distinctive hospital and community resistomes in Scottish urban wastewater: Metagenomics of a paired wastewater sampling design.

The wastewater microbiome contains a multitude of resistant bacteria of human origin, presenting an opportunity for surveillance of resistance in the general population. However, wastewater microbial communities are also influenced by clinical sources, such as hospitals. Identifying signatures of the community and hospital resistome in wastewater is needed for interpretation and risk analysis.

QTL Map of Early- and Late-Stage Perennial Regrowth in .

Numerous climate change threats will necessitate a shift toward more sustainable agricultural practices during the 21st century. Conversion of annual crops to perennials that are capable of regrowing over multiple yearly growth cycles could help to facilitate this transition. Perennials can capture greater amounts of carbon and access more water and soil nutrients compared to annuals.

Maize genomes to fields (G2F): 2014-2017 field seasons: genotype, phenotype, climatic, soil, and inbred ear image datasets.

Objectives: Advanced tools and resources are needed to efficiently and sustainably produce food for an increasing world population in the context of variable environmental conditions. The maize genomes to fields (G2F) initiative is a multi-institutional initiative effort that seeks to approach this challenge by developing a flexible and distributed infrastructure addressing emerging problems. G2F has generated large-scale phenotypic, genotypic, and environmental datasets using publicly available inbred lines and hybrids evaluated through a network of collaborators that are part of the G2F's genotype-by-environment (G × E) project.

Improving HIV Surveillance Data by Using the ATra Black Box System to Assist Regional Deduplication Activities.

Background: Focused attention on Data to Care underlines the importance of high-quality HIV surveillance data. This study identified the number of total duplicate and exact duplicate HIV case records in 9 separate Enhanced HIV/AIDS Reporting System (eHARS) databases reported by 8 jurisdictions and compared this approach to traditional Routine Interstate Duplicate Review resolution.

Methods: This study used the ATra Black Box System and 6 eHARS variables for matching case records across jurisdictions: last name, first name, date of birth, sex assigned at birth (birth sex), social security number, and race/ethnicity, plus 4 system-calculated values (first name Soundex, last name Soundex, partial date of birth, and partial social security number).

Increased HIV diagnoses in West Virginia counties highly vulnerable to rapid HIV dissemination through injection drug use: a cautionary tale.

Purpose: To investigate HIV transmission potential from a cluster of HIV infections among men who have sex with men to persons who inject drugs in 15 West Virginia counties. These counties were previously identified as highly vulnerable to rapid HIV dissemination through injection drug use (IDU) associated with high levels of opioid misuse.

Methods: We interviewed persons with 2017 HIV diagnoses about past-year risk behaviors and elicited sexual, IDU, and social contacts.

Defining the Role of the MADS-Box Gene, Zea Agamous-like1, a Target of Selection During Maize Domestication.

Genomic scans for genes that show the signature of past selection have been widely applied to a number of species and have identified a large number of selection candidate genes. In cultivated maize (Zea mays ssp. mays) selection scans have identified several hundred candidate domestication genes by comparing nucleotide diversity and differentiation between maize and its progenitor, teosinte (Z.

Prediction of metabolisable energy concentrations of fresh-cut grass using digestibility data measured with non-pregnant non-lactating cows.

Pasture-based ruminant production systems are common in certain areas of the world, but energy evaluation in grazing cattle is performed with equations developed, in their majority, with sheep or cattle fed total mixed rations. The aim of the current study was to develop predictions of metabolisable energy (ME) concentrations in fresh-cut grass offered to non-pregnant non-lactating cows at maintenance energy level, which may be more suitable for grazing cattle. Data were collected from three digestibility trials performed over consecutive grazing seasons.

Defining the Role of prolamin-box binding factor1 Gene During Maize Domestication.

The prolamin-box binding factor1 (pbf1) gene encodes a transcription factor that controls the expression of seed storage protein (zein) genes in maize. Prior studies show that pbf1 underwent selection during maize domestication although how it affected trait change during domestication is unknown. To assay how pbf1 affects phenotypic differences between maize and teosinte, we compared nearly isogenic lines (NILs) that differ for a maize versus teosinte allele of pbf1 Kernel weight for the teosinte NIL (162mg) is slightly but significantly greater than that for the maize NIL (156mg).

From many, one: genetic control of prolificacy during maize domestication.

A reduction in number and an increase in size of inflorescences is a common aspect of plant domestication. When maize was domesticated from teosinte, the number and arrangement of ears changed dramatically. Teosinte has long lateral branches that bear multiple small ears at their nodes and tassels at their tips.

Genetic architecture of novel traits in the hopi sunflower.

Following domestication, crop lineages typically undergo diversification either to adapt to disparate habitats or to fill novel agricultural roles. This process has produced the numerous varieties found in modern-day crop germplasm collections. Here, we mapped quantitative trait loci (QTLs) underlying unique traits in the Hopi sunflower, a primitive, Native American domesticate.

Quantitative trait locus analysis of the early domestication of sunflower.

Genetic analyses of the domestication syndrome have revealed that domestication-related traits typically have a very similar genetic architecture across most crops, being conditioned by a small number of quantitative trait loci (QTL), each with a relatively large effect on the phenotype. To date, the domestication of sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) stands as the only counterexample to this pattern.

Chloroplast DNA variation confirms a single origin of domesticated sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.).

Although sunflower was long thought to be the product of a single domestication in what is now the east-central United States, recent archaeological and genetic evidence have suggested the possibility of an independent origin of domestication, perhaps in Mexico. We therefore used hypervariable chloroplast simple-sequence repeat markers to search for evidence of a possible Mexican origin of domestication. This work resulted in the identification of 45 chloroplast haplotypes from 26 populations across the range of wild sunflower as well as 3 haplotypes from 15 domesticated lines, representing both primitive and improved cultivars.

Chloroplast SSR polymorphisms in the Compositae and the mode of organellar inheritance in Helianthus annuus.

Because organellar genomes are often uniparentally inherited, chloroplast (cp) and mitochondrial (mt) DNA polymorphisms have become the markers of choice for investigating evolutionary issues such as sex-biased dispersal and the directionality of introgression. To the extent that organellar inheritance is strictly maternal, it has also been suggested that the insertion of transgenes into either the chloroplast or mitochondrial genomes would reduce the likelihood of gene escape via pollen flow from crop fields into wild plant populations. In this paper we describe the adaptation of chloroplast simple sequence repeats (cpSSRs) for use in the Compositae.

Functional selectivity for glycerol of the nodulin 26 subfamily of plant membrane intrinsic proteins.

The nodulin-like intrinsic protein (NIP) subfamily of water and solute channels in plants is named for nodulin 26 of legume nodules. Two NIPs, soybean nodulin 26 and Lotus japonicus LIMP2, show a distinct functional profile with a low intrinsic osmotic water permeability (P(f)) and the ability to flux uncharged polyols such as glycerol. NIPs have a conserved signature sequence within the 'aromatic/arginine' region that forms the selectivity filter for major intrinsic proteins.