Sanger validation of WGS variants.

With the development of next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies it became possible to simultaneously analyze millions of variants. Despite the quality improvement, it is generally still required to confirm the variants before reporting. However, in recent years the dominant idea is that one could define the quality thresholds for "high quality" variants which do not require orthogonal validation.

Searching for sexually transmitted infections by midstream urine pooling after exclusion of urinary tract infection: A cost-effectiveness analysis.

We aimed to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of screening for sexually transmitted infections (STI), Chlamydia trachomatis, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, Mycoplasma genitalium, and Trichomonas vaginalis in patients with suspected urinary tract infection (UTI) but negative urine cultures, using a pooled sampling method. A cohort of 200 patients was analyzed. A decision tree model based on cost-effectiveness was used to evaluate the following five diagnostic strategies: (A) no screening;(B) screening only men;(C) screening only women;(D) screening men and women with high leukocyte counts (>70cells/µL);(E) screening all men and women.

Say Real-time Linguistic Guidance Supports Novices in Writing Utterances for Conversational Agent Training.

Writing utterances to train conversational agents can be a challenging and time-consuming task, and usually requires substantial expertise, meaning that novices face a steep learning curve. We investigated whether novices could be guided to produce utterances that adhere to best practices via an intervention of real-time linguistic feedback. We conducted a user study in which participants were tasked with writing training utterances for a particular topic () for a conversational agent.

Comparative evaluation of ACetic - MEthanol high salt dissociation approach for single-cell transcriptomics of frozen human tissues.

Current dissociation methods for solid tissues in scRNA-seq studies do not guarantee intact single-cell isolation, especially for sensitive and complex human endocrine tissues. Most studies rely on enzymatic dissociation of fresh samples or nuclei isolation from frozen samples. Dissociating whole intact cells from fresh-frozen samples, commonly collected by biobanks, remains a challenge.

Estimating SARS-CoV-2 Omicron XBB.1.5 Spike-Directed Functional Antibody Levels From an Anti-Receptor Binding Domain Wuhan-Hu-1-Based Commercial Immunoassay Results.

We investigated whether antibody concentrations measured in plasma using the Roche Elecsys® Anti-SARS-CoV-2 S assay (targeting the receptor binding domain, RBD) could estimate levels of Wuhan-Hu-1 and Omicron XBB.1.5 spike-directed antibodies with neutralizing ability (NtAb) or those mediating NK-cell activity.