Phylogeny and virulence determinant detection of Fusobacterium necrophorum strains isolated at the UK Anaerobe Reference Unit between 1982 and 2019.

Objectives: Explore the presence, or absence, of virulence genes and the phylogeny of a multi-decade UK collection of clinical and reference Fusobacterium necrophorum isolates.

Methods: Three hundred and eighty-five F. necrophorum strains (1982-2019) were recovered from storage (-80°C).

SARS-CoV-2 lineage assignments using phylogenetic placement/UShER are superior to pangoLEARN machine-learning method.

With the rapid spread and evolution of SARS-CoV-2, the ability to monitor its transmission and distinguish among viral lineages is critical for pandemic response efforts. The most commonly used software for the lineage assignment of newly isolated SARS-CoV-2 genomes is pangolin, which offers two methods of assignment, pangoLEARN and pUShER. PangoLEARN rapidly assigns lineages using a machine-learning algorithm, while pUShER performs a phylogenetic placement to identify the lineage corresponding to a newly sequenced genome.

Building a Veterinary Practice Team.

Building a successful veterinary team is foundational and a driving force to having an all-around accomplished veterinary practice, one that provides quality customer service and medical care while being financially healthy and creating an environment for team members to thrive and be happy, highly productive employees. This article focuses on new and innovative approaches to cultivating a practice personality and culture that is employee centered. This article provides a road map to assist in implementing and achieving the next big steps needed to have an employee-focused business.

Development of a robust induced pluripotent stem cell atrial cardiomyocyte differentiation protocol to model atrial arrhythmia.

Background: Atrial fibrillation is the most common arrhythmia syndrome and causes significant morbidity and mortality. Current therapeutics, however, have limited efficacy. Notably, many therapeutics shown to be efficacious in animal models have not proved effective in humans.

Action Potential Morphology Accurately Predicts Proarrhythmic Risk for Drugs With Potential to Prolong Cardiac Repolarization.

Background: Drug-induced or acquired long QT syndrome occurs as a result of the unintended disruption of cardiac repolarization due to drugs that block cardiac ion channels. These side effects have been responsible for the withdrawal of a range of drugs from market and are a common reason for termination of the development of new drugs in the preclinical stage. Existing approaches to risk prediction are expensive and overly sensitive meaning that recently there have been renewed efforts, largely driven by the comprehensive proarrhythmic assay initiative, to develop more accurate methods for allocation of proarrhythmic risk.

Health effects and known pathology associated with the use of E-cigarettes.

In recent years, new nicotine delivery methods have emerged, and many users are choosing electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) over traditional tobacco cigarettes. E-cigarette use is very popular among adolescents, with more than 3.5 million currently using these products in the US.

The prevalence of Mycoplasma genitalium (MG) and Trichomonas vaginalis (TV) at testing centers in Belgium, Germany, Spain, and the UK using the cobas TV/MG molecular assay.

Mycoplasma genitalium (MG) and Trichomonas vaginalis (TV) can lead to long-term sequelae in males and females; however, global prevalence data vary between geographical regions, as these sexually transmitted infections are not included in routine screening. The objective of this study was to use the cobas TV/MG assay to assess the point prevalence of TV and MG in specimens from men and women over a broad European geographical area. Urine, vaginal, endocervical, and rectal samples were collected from patients aged ≥ 18 years receiving Chlamydia trachomatis (CT) and/or Neisseria gonorrhoeae (NG) screening as per local standard of care at sites in Belgium, Germany, Spain, and the UK (Wales).

The 5-Hydroxymethylcytosine Landscape of Prostate Cancer.

Unlabelled: Analysis of DNA methylation is a valuable tool to understand disease progression and is increasingly being used to create diagnostic and prognostic clinical biomarkers. While conversion of cytosine to 5-methylcytosine (5mC) commonly results in transcriptional repression, further conversion to 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC) is associated with transcriptional activation. Here we perform the first study integrating whole-genome 5hmC with DNA, 5mC, and transcriptome sequencing in clinical samples of benign, localized, and advanced prostate cancer.

Network-wide analysis of the Serosep EntericBio Gastro Panel 2 for the detection of enteric pathogens in Public Health Wales microbiology laboratories.

A retrospective data analysis of 34 months (spanning 2016-2020) of 961573 diagnostic results obtained before and after nucleic acid amplification testing (NAAT) implementation, across the Public Health Wales microbiology network. This is the first network-wide analysis of the implementation of enteric NAAT in diagnostic microbiology. To assess the outcome of replacing microscopy and bacterial culture with NAAT as the primary test in the diagnosis of: spp.

Pathophysiological metabolic changes associated with disease modify the proarrhythmic risk profile of drugs with potential to prolong repolarisation.

Background And Purpose: Hydroxychloroquine, chloroquine and azithromycin are three drugs that were proposed to treat coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). While concern already existed around their proarrhythmic potential, there are little data regarding how altered physiological states encountered in patients such as febrile state, electrolyte imbalances or acidosis might change their risk profiles.

Experimental Approach: Potency of human ether-à-go-go related gene (hERG) block was measured using high-throughput electrophysiology in the presence of variable environmental factors.

UK Bacteroides species surveillance survey: Change in antimicrobial resistance over 16 years (2000-2016).

Objectives: To assess the differences in antimicrobial susceptibility of UK Bacteroides species across two distinct cohorts from 2000 to 2016.

Methods: Strain identification was performed using matrix-assisted laser-desorption ionisation time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) or by partial 16S rRNA sequencing. Minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) were determined using agar dilution, following CLSI guidelines (CLSI, 2012; 2017).

Prognosis Associated With Luminal and Basal Subtypes of Metastatic Prostate Cancer.

Importance: Luminal and basal subtypes of primary prostate cancer have been shown to be molecularly distinct and clinically important in predicting response to therapy. These subtypes have not been described in metastatic prostate cancer.

Objectives: To identify clinical and molecular correlates of luminal and basal subtypes in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) and investigate differences in survival, particularly after treatment with androgen-signaling inhibitors (ASIs).

Heterozygous variant phenotyping using Flp-In HEK293 and high-throughput automated patch clamp electrophysiology.

is one of the 59 medically actionable genes recommended by the American College of Medical Genetics for reporting of incidental findings from clinical genomic sequencing. However, half of the reported variants in the ClinVar database are classified as variants of uncertain significance. In the absence of strong clinical phenotypes, there is a need for functional phenotyping to help decipher the significance of variants identified incidentally.

Impact of the introduction of nucleic acid amplification testing on Clostridioides difficile detection and ribotype distribution in Wales.

Objectives: To determine the impact of the 2018 introduction of nucleic acid amplification tests (NAATs) for C. difficile detection on the laboratory diagnosis of C. difficile infection (CDI), and the distribution of C.

Framework for quality assessment of whole genome cancer sequences.

Bringing together cancer genomes from different projects increases power and allows the investigation of pan-cancer, molecular mechanisms. However, working with whole genomes sequenced over several years in different sequencing centres requires a framework to compare the quality of these sequences. We used the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes cohort as a test case to construct such a framework.

Co-expression of calcium and hERG potassium channels reduces the incidence of proarrhythmic events.

Aims: Cardiac electrical activity is extraordinarily robust. However, when it goes wrong it can have fatal consequences. Electrical activity in the heart is controlled by the carefully orchestrated activity of more than a dozen different ion conductances.

Using Students' Concept-building Tendencies to Better Characterize Average-Performing Student Learning and Problem-Solving Approaches in General Chemistry.

We previously reported that students' concept-building approaches, identified a priori using a cognitive psychology laboratory task, extend to learning complex science, technology, engineering, and mathematics topics. This prior study examined student performance in both general and organic chemistry at a select research institution, after accounting for preparation. We found that abstraction learners (defined cognitively as learning the theory underlying related examples) performed higher on course exams than exemplar learners (defined cognitively as learning by memorizing examples).

Biallelic Mutation of and Additional Likely "In Cis" Sequence Change in Ataxia with Oculomotor Apraxia Type 2.

Ataxia with oculomotor apraxia type 2 (AOA2) is a slowly progressive, autosomal recessive disease characterized by the triad of ataxia, oculomotor apraxia, and sensorimotor neuropathy. The genetic basis of AOA2 is biallelic mutation of the gene, resulting in reduced or absent senataxin, a DNA/RNA repair protein essential for genomic stability. In this case report, we described a case of AOA2 with two clear pathogenic mutations, one of which is novel.

The DNA methylation landscape of advanced prostate cancer.

Although DNA methylation is a key regulator of gene expression, the comprehensive methylation landscape of metastatic cancer has never been defined. Through whole-genome bisulfite sequencing paired with deep whole-genome and transcriptome sequencing of 100 castration-resistant prostate metastases, we discovered alterations affecting driver genes that were detectable only with integrated whole-genome approaches. Notably, we observed that 22% of tumors exhibited a novel epigenomic subtype associated with hypermethylation and somatic mutations in TET2, DNMT3B, IDH1 and BRAF.

COVID-19: A primer for Neuroradiologists.

The potential for central nervous system (CNS) involvement in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a matter of grave concern and there is a relevant body of evidence in the basic sciences to support this possibility. A neuroradiologist should be aware of the potential mechanisms involved in the neuropathogenesis of this virus, as we begin to see cases with abnormal brain scans emerging from all parts of the world.

Genomic basis for RNA alterations in cancer.

Transcript alterations often result from somatic changes in cancer genomes. Various forms of RNA alterations have been described in cancer, including overexpression, altered splicing and gene fusions; however, it is difficult to attribute these to underlying genomic changes owing to heterogeneity among patients and tumour types, and the relatively small cohorts of patients for whom samples have been analysed by both transcriptome and whole-genome sequencing. Here we present, to our knowledge, the most comprehensive catalogue of cancer-associated gene alterations to date, obtained by characterizing tumour transcriptomes from 1,188 donors of the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA).