Generation of cryopreserved macrophages from normal and genetically engineered human pluripotent stem cells for disease modelling.

Macrophages are innate immune cells that play critical roles in tissue homeostasis, inflammation, and immune oncology. Macrophages differentiated from human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) overcome many limitations of using peripheral blood derived macrophages. The ability to scale up and cryopreserve a large amount of end stage macrophages from single clonal iPSCs from normal and disease specific donors offers a unique opportunity for genomic analysis and drug screening.

Development of polymorphic markers in the immune gene complex loci of cattle.

The addition of cattle health and immunity traits to genomic selection indices holds promise to increase individual animal longevity and productivity, and decrease economic losses from disease. However, highly variable genomic loci that contain multiple immune-related genes were poorly assembled in the first iterations of the cattle reference genome assembly and underrepresented during the development of most commercial genotyping platforms. As a consequence, there is a paucity of genetic markers within these loci that may track haplotypes related to disease susceptibility.

Assignment of virus and antimicrobial resistance genes to microbial hosts in a complex microbial community by combined long-read assembly and proximity ligation.

We describe a method that adds long-read sequencing to a mix of technologies used to assemble a highly complex cattle rumen microbial community, and provide a comparison to short read-based methods. Long-read alignments and Hi-C linkage between contigs support the identification of 188 novel virus-host associations and the determination of phage life cycle states in the rumen microbial community. The long-read assembly also identifies 94 antimicrobial resistance genes, compared to only seven alleles in the short-read assembly.

Rare coding TTN variants are associated with electrocardiographic QT interval in the general population.

We have shown previously that noncoding variants mapping around a specific set of 170 genes encoding cardiomyocyte intercalated disc (ID) proteins are more enriched for associations with QT interval than observed for genome-wide comparisons. At a false discovery rate (FDR) of 5%, we had identified 28 such ID protein-encoding genes. Here, we assessed whether coding variants at these 28 genes affect QT interval in the general population as well.

Biochemical characterization of Alr1529, a novel SGNH hydrolase variant from Anabaena sp. PCC 7120.

Alr1529, a serine hydrolase from the cyanobacteria Anabaena sp. strain PCC 7120 is a member of the SGNH hydrolase superfamily. Biochemical characterization of the purified enzyme revealed that the protein is a dimer in solution and is specific for aryl esters of short chain carboxylic acids.