Publications by authors named "Frampton D"

Background And Purpose: Cannabidiol (CBD) is used clinically as an anticonvulsant. Its precise mechanism of action has remained unclear. CBD was recently demonstrated to enhance the activity of the neuronal K 7.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The K7.4 and K7.5 subtypes of voltage-gated potassium channels play a role in important physiological processes such as sound amplification in the cochlea and adjusting vascular smooth muscle tone.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Phenotypic drug susceptibility testing (DST) for tuberculosis (TB) requires weeks to yield results. Although molecular tests rapidly detect drug resistance-associated mutations (DRMs), they are not scalable to cover the full genome and the many DRMs that can predict resistance. Whole-genome sequencing (WGS) methods are scalable, but if conducted directly on sputum, typically require a target enrichment step, such as nucleic acid amplification.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Deep sequencing could improve understanding of HIV treatment failure and viral population dynamics. However, this tool is often inaccessible in low- and middle-income countries.

Objectives: To determine the genetic patterns of resistance emerging in West African HIV-1 subtypes during first-line virological failure, and the implications for future antiretroviral options.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Recent SARS-CoV-2 variants have raised concerns about increased transmission within communities, prompting an investigation into their impact on hospital settings.
  • A study analyzed viral sequences and epidemiological data from patients in nine UK hospitals to assess the likelihood of healthcare-associated infections being caused by the Alpha variant versus community-acquired infections.
  • The results indicated no significant difference in the transmission of the Alpha variant compared to other lineages, suggesting existing infection control measures in UK hospitals are effective at containing the spread of emergent variants.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - The study investigates how well the immune response from a SARS-CoV-2 variant (B.1.1.7, or Alpha) protects against other strains and its implications for vaccine effectiveness.
  • - Researchers found that antibodies from B.1.1.7 infections were less effective at recognizing and neutralizing other variants, particularly the original strain and the South Africa variant (B.1.351, or Beta).
  • - The findings suggest that immunity against different variants of SARS-CoV-2 is inconsistent, indicating that protection may not be equally effective across all strains.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Emergence of variants with specific mutations in key epitopes in the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 raises concerns pertinent to mass vaccination campaigns and use of monoclonal antibodies. We aimed to describe the emergence of the B.1.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Voltage-gated potassium channels of the K7 family are expressed in many tissues. The physiological importance of K7 channels is evident from specific forms of disorders linked to dysfunctional K7 channels, including variants of epilepsy, cardiac arrhythmia and hearing impairment. Thus, understanding how K7 channels are regulated in the body is of great interest.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Recombination is an important feature of HIV evolution, occurring both within and between the major branches of diversity (subtypes). The Ugandan epidemic is primarily composed of two subtypes, A1 and D, that have been co-circulating for 50 years, frequently recombining in dually infected patients. Here, we investigate the frequency of recombinants in this population and the location of breakpoints along the genome.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: HIV-1 integrase inhibitors are recommended as first-line therapy by WHO, though efficacy and resistance data for non-B subtypes are limited. Two recent trials have identified the integrase L74I mutation to be associated with integrase inhibitor treatment failure in HIV-1 non-B subtypes. We sought to define the prevalence of integrase resistance mutations, including L74I, in West Africa.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Varicella zoster virus (VZV) is a skin-tropic virus that infects epidermal keratinocytes and causes chickenpox. Although common, VZV infection can be life-threatening, particularly in the immunocompromized. Therefore, understanding VZV-keratinocyte interactions is important to find new treatments beyond vaccination and antiviral drugs.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The extent of transmission of influenza in hospital settings is poorly understood. Next generation sequencing may improve this by providing information on the genetic relatedness of viral strains.

Objectives: We aimed to apply next generation sequencing to describe transmission in hospital and compare with methods based on routinely-collected data.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: TRIP (Transmission Reduction Intervention Project) was a network-based, contact tracing approach to locate and link to care, mostly people who inject drugs (PWID) with recent HIV infection.

Objective: We investigated whether sequences from HIV-infected participants with high viral load cluster together more frequently than what is expected by chance.

Methods: Paired end reads were generated for 104 samples using Illumina MiSeq next-generation sequencing.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Dolutegravir (DTG), a second-generation integrase strand-transfer inhibitor (INSTI), is equivalent or superior to current non-nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs), protease inhibitors (PIs), and first-generation INSTI-based antiretroviral regimens (ARVs). It has the potential to make big improvements in HIV control globally and within patients. This is perhaps the most "precious" HIV drug available.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Sustained observations of microbial dynamics are rare, especially in southern hemisphere waters. The Australian Marine Microbial Biodiversity Initiative (AMMBI) provides methodologically standardized, continental scale, temporal phylogenetic amplicon sequencing data describing Bacteria, Archaea and microbial Eukarya assemblages. Sequence data is linked to extensive physical, biological and chemical oceanographic contextual information.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Traditional epidemiological investigation of nosocomial transmission of influenza involves the identification of patients who have the same influenza virus type and who have overlapped in time and place. This method may misidentify transmission where it has not occurred or miss transmission when it has. We used influenza virus whole-genome sequencing (WGS) to investigate an outbreak of influenza A virus infection in a hematology/oncology ward and identified 2 separate introductions, one of which resulted in 5 additional infections and 79 bed-days lost.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The canine transmissible venereal tumor (CTVT) is a clonally transmissible cancer that regresses spontaneously or after treatment with vincristine, but we know little about the regression mechanisms. We performed global transcriptional, methylation, and functional pathway analyses on serial biopsies of vincristine-treated CTVTs and found that regression occurs in sequential steps; activation of the innate immune system and host epithelial tissue remodeling followed by immune infiltration of the tumor, arrest in the cell cycle, and repair of tissue damage. We identified CCL5 as a possible driver of CTVT regression.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background & Methods: The ICONIC project has developed an automated high-throughput pipeline to generate HIV nearly full-length genomes (NFLG, i.e. from gag to nef) from next-generation sequencing (NGS) data.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Most tissue-resident macrophages (Mφs) are believed to be derived prenatally and are assumed to maintain themselves throughout life by self-proliferation. However, in adult mice we identified a progenitor within bone marrow, early pro-B cell/fraction B, that differentiates into tissue Mφs. These Mφ precursors have non-rearranged B-cell receptor genes and coexpress myeloid (GR1, CD11b, and CD16/32) and lymphoid (B220 and CD19) lineage markers.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

We report the molecular investigations of a large influenza A(H3N2) outbreak, in a season characterised by sharp increase in influenza admissions since December 2016. Analysis of haemagglutinin (HA) sequences demonstrated co-circulation of multiple clades (3C.3a, 3C.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • * It is a global initiative that aims to generate a large and standardized data set through a coordinated effort on a single day.
  • * The commentary discusses the Consortium's goals for studying marine microbial communities and preserving their functional traits sustainably.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Early on in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) type 1 infection, gut T-helper (Th) 17 cells are massively depleted leading eventually to compromised intestinal barrier function and excessive immune activation. In contrast, the functional Th17 cell compartment of the gut is well-maintained in nonpathogenic simian immunodeficiency virus infection as well as HIV-1 long-term nonprogressors. Here, we show that dendritic cells (DCs) loaded with HIV-1 bearing high surface complement levels after incubation in plasma from HIV-infected individuals secreted significantly higher concentrations of Th17-polarizing cytokines than DCs exposed to nonopsonized HIV-1.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

To date, no immunization of humans or animals has elicited broadly neutralizing sera able to prevent HIV-1 transmission; however, elicitation of broad and potent heavy chain only antibodies (HCAb) has previously been reported in llamas. In this study, the anti-HIV immune responses in immunized llamas were studied via deep sequencing analysis using broadly neutralizing monoclonal HCAbs as a guides. Distinct neutralizing antibody lineages were identified in each animal, including two defined by novel antibodies (as variable regions called VHH) identified by robotic screening of over 6000 clones.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCLs) are commonly used in molecular genetics, supplying DNA for the HapMap and 1000 Genomes Projects, used to test chemotherapeutic agents, and informing the basis of a number of population genetics studies of gene expression. The process of transforming human B cells into LCLs requires the presence of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), a double-stranded DNA virus which through B-cell immortalisation maintains an episomal virus genome in every cell of an LCL at variable copy numbers. Previous studies have reported that EBV alters host-gene expression and EBV copy number may be under host genetic control.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Varicella zoster virus (VZV) is the etiological agent of chickenpox and shingles, diseases characterized by epidermal skin blistering. Using a calcium-induced keratinocyte differentiation model we investigated the interaction between epidermal differentiation and VZV infection. RNA-seq analysis showed that VZV infection has a profound effect on differentiating keratinocytes, altering the normal process of epidermal gene expression to generate a signature that resembles patterns of gene expression seen in both heritable and acquired skin-blistering disorders.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF