Unveiling the epigenetic impact of vegan vs. omnivorous diets on aging: insights from the Twins Nutrition Study (TwiNS).

Background: Geroscience focuses on interventions to mitigate molecular changes associated with aging. Lifestyle modifications, medications, and social factors influence the aging process, yet the complex molecular mechanisms require an in-depth exploration of the epigenetic landscape. The specific epigenetic clock and predictor effects of a vegan diet, compared to an omnivorous diet, remain underexplored despite potential impacts on aging-related outcomes.

Low-field NMR with multilayer Halbach magnet and NMR selective excitation.

This study introduces a low-field NMR spectrometer (LF-NMR) featuring a multilayer Halbach magnet supported by a combined mechanical and electrical shimming system. This setup offers improved field homogeneity and sensitivity compared to spectrometers relying on typical Halbach and dipole magnets. The multilayer Halbach magnet was designed and assembled using three nested cylindrical magnets, with an additional inner Halbach layer that can be rotated for mechanical shimming.

Cardiometabolic Effects of Omnivorous vs Vegan Diets in Identical Twins: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance: Increasing evidence suggests that, compared with an omnivorous diet, a vegan diet confers potential cardiovascular benefits from improved diet quality (ie, higher consumption of vegetables, legumes, fruits, whole grains, nuts, and seeds).

Objective: To compare the effects of a healthy vegan vs healthy omnivorous diet on cardiometabolic measures during an 8-week intervention.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This single-center, population-based randomized clinical trial of 22 pairs of twins (N = 44) randomized participants to a vegan or omnivorous diet (1 twin per diet).

Antigenic diversity in malaria parasites is maintained on extrachromosomal DNA.

Sequence variation among antigenic genes enables malaria parasites to evade host immunity. Using long sequence reads from haploid clones from a mutation accumulation experiment, we detect diversity inconsistent with simple chromosomal inheritance. We discover putatively circular DNA that is strongly enriched for genes, which exist in multiple alleles per locus separated by recombination and indel events.

A microbiome-targeting fibre-enriched nutritional formula is well tolerated and improves quality of life and haemoglobin A1c in type 2 diabetes: A double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial.

Aims: To investigate a prebiotic fibre-enriched nutritional formula on health-related quality of life and metabolic control in type 2 diabetes.

Materials And Methods: This was a 12-week, double-blind, placebo-controlled study with an unblinded dietary advice only comparator arm. Participants were randomized 2:1:1 to a prebiotic fibre-enriched nutritional formula (Active), a placebo fibre-absent nutritional formula (Placebo), or non-blinded dietary advice alone (Diet).

Assessing the effectiveness of performance standards for Salmonella contamination of chicken parts.

The United States Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service implemented Salmonella performance standards for establishments producing chicken parts in 2016. The standards were chosen based on the assumption that a 30 % reduction in the occurrence of Salmonella-contaminated chicken parts samples (i.e.

Temporal changes in the proportion of outbreaks associated with 12 food commodity groups in the United States.

Using data from 20 years of foodborne outbreaks, this study investigates significant trends in the proportion of outbreaks associated with 12 broad commodity groups. Outbreak counts are demonstrated to have a stronger trend signal than outbreak illness counts. The number of outbreaks with an identified food vehicle increased significantly between 1998 and 2000.

A quantitative risk metric to support individual sanitary measure reviews in international trade.

In order for the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) to make an equivalence determination for a foreign meat, poultry or egg products inspection procedure that differs from FSIS inspection procedures (an Individual Sanitary Measure or ISM), a country must demonstrate objectively that its food safety inspection system provides the same level of public health protection as the FSIS inspection system. To evaluate microbiological testing data that such countries may submit to this end, we present a possible risk metric to inform FSIS's assessment of whether products produced under an alternative inspection system in another country pose no greater consumer risk of foodborne illness than products produced under FSIS inspection. This metric requires evaluation of prevalence estimates of pathogen occurrence in products for the foreign country and the U.

Revisiting the malaria hypothesis: accounting for polygenicity and pleiotropy.

The malaria hypothesis predicts local, balancing selection of deleterious alleles that confer strong protection from malaria. Three protective variants, recently discovered in red cell genes, are indeed more common in African than European populations. Still, up to 89% of the heritability of severe malaria is attributed to many genome-wide loci with individually small effects.

Common host variation drives malaria parasite fitness in healthy human red cells.

The replication of parasites within red blood cells (RBCs) causes severe disease in humans, especially in Africa. Deleterious alleles like hemoglobin S are well-known to confer strong resistance to malaria, but the effects of common RBC variation are largely undetermined. Here, we collected fresh blood samples from 121 healthy donors, most with African ancestry, and performed exome sequencing, detailed RBC phenotyping, and parasite fitness assays.

Historical trends and new surveillance of Plasmodium falciparum drug resistance markers in Angola.

Background: Plasmodium falciparum resistance to chloroquine (CQ) and sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP) has historically posed a major threat to malaria control throughout the world. The country of Angola officially replaced CQ with artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) as a first-line treatment in 2006, but malaria cases and deaths have recently been rising. Many classic resistance mutations are relevant for the efficacy of currently available drugs, making it important to continue monitoring their frequency in Angola.

Comparative history of Campylobacter contamination on chicken meat and campylobacteriosis cases in the United States: 1994-2018.

In many countries campylobacteriosis ranks as one of the most frequently reported foodborne illnesses and poultry is the commodity that is most often associated with these illnesses. Nevertheless, efforts to reduce the occurrence of pathogen contamination on poultry are often more focused on Salmonella. While some control measures are pathogen specific, such as pre-harvest vaccination for Salmonella, improvements in sanitary dressing and interventions applied during the slaughter process can be effective against all forms of microbial contamination.

A common polymorphism in the mechanosensitive ion channel is associated with protection from severe malaria in humans.

Malaria caused by the apicomplexan parasite has served as a strong evolutionary force throughout human history, selecting for red blood cell polymorphisms that confer innate protection against severe disease. Recently, gain-of-function mutations in the mechanosensitive ion channel were shown to ameliorate parasite growth, blood-brain barrier dysfunction, and mortality in a mouse model of malaria. In humans, the gain-of-function allele E756del is highly prevalent and enriched in Africans, raising the possibility that it is under positive selection due to malaria.

Impacts of Fungicide Treatment and Conventional Fertilization Management on the Potato Metabolome ( L.) Evaluated with UPLC-IMS-QToF.

Two field trials were conducted to investigate the influence of fungicide and fertilization management on the potato tubers' metabolome ( L.). Thereby, fungicides and conventional fertilizers were varied in terms of quantities, number and date of applications, physical state, and product composition.

Adoption of Neutralizing Buffered Peptone Water Coincides with Changes in Apparent Prevalence of Salmonella and Campylobacter of Broiler Rinse Samples.

Buffered peptone water is the rinsate commonly used for chicken rinse sampling. A new formulation of buffered peptone water was developed to address concerns about the transfer of antimicrobials, used during poultry slaughter and processing, into the rinsate. This new formulation contains additives to neutralize the antimicrobials, and this neutralizing buffered peptone water replaced the original formulation for all chicken carcass and chicken part sampling programs run by the Food Safety and Inspection Service beginning in July 2016.

Updating a 2-class attributes sampling plan to account for changes in laboratory methods.

Advances in microbiological testing methods have led to faster and less expensive assays. Given these advances, it is logical to employ these assays for use in the sampling plan of an existing microbiological criterion. A change in the performance characteristics of the assay can affect the intended effect of the microbiological criterion.

High rate of adaptation of mammalian proteins that interact with Plasmodium and related parasites.

Plasmodium parasites, along with their Piroplasm relatives, have caused malaria-like illnesses in terrestrial mammals for millions of years. Several Plasmodium-protective alleles have recently evolved in human populations, but little is known about host adaptation to blood parasites over deeper evolutionary timescales. In this work, we analyze mammalian adaptation in ~500 Plasmodium- or Piroplasm- interacting proteins (PPIPs) manually curated from the scientific literature.

Estimating correlation of prevalence at two locations in the farm-to-table continuum using qualitative test data.

The presence or absence of contaminants in food samples changes as a commodity moves along the farm-to-table continuum. Interest lies in the degree to which the prevalence (i.e.

Development of a Comprehensive Genotype-to-Fitness Map of Adaptation-Driving Mutations in Yeast.

Adaptive evolution plays a large role in generating the phenotypic diversity observed in nature, yet current methods are impractical for characterizing the molecular basis and fitness effects of large numbers of individual adaptive mutations. Here, we used a DNA barcoding approach to generate the genotype-to-fitness map for adaptation-driving mutations from a Saccharomyces cerevisiae population experimentally evolved by serial transfer under limiting glucose. We isolated and measured the fitness of thousands of independent adaptive clones and sequenced the genomes of hundreds of clones.

Comparing Characteristics of Sporadic and Outbreak-Associated Foodborne Illnesses, United States, 2004-2011.

Outbreak data have been used to estimate the proportion of illnesses attributable to different foods. Applying outbreak-based attribution estimates to nonoutbreak foodborne illnesses requires an assumption of similar exposure pathways for outbreak and sporadic illnesses. This assumption cannot be tested, but other comparisons can assess its veracity.

Bayesian techniques for comparison of the test performance of PCR and culture for the identification of Campylobacter in enriched comminuted chicken samples.

Aims: Using Bayesian methods that do not require the definition of a gold standard, the diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of a real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay are compared to those of an enriched culture assay for detection of Campylobacter in enriched comminuted chicken samples.

Methods And Results: Food Safety and Inspection Service comminuted chicken samples were collected from production facilities across the United States. Enriched samples were examined using a commercial real-time PCR kit and plated for culture.

Intrinsic differences between males and females determine sex-specific consequences of inbreeding.

Background: Inbreeding increases homozygosity and exposes deleterious recessive alleles, generally decreasing the fitness of inbred individuals. Interestingly, males and females are usually affected differently by inbreeding, though the more vulnerable sex depends on the species and trait measured.

Results: We used the soil-dwelling nematode Caenorhabditis remanei to examine sex-specific inbreeding depression across nine lineages, five levels of inbreeding, and hundreds of thousands of progeny.