Comparative genomics analysis and characterization of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli O157:H7 strains reveal virulence genes, resistance genes, prophages and plasmids.

Escherichia coli O157:H7 is a foodborne pathogen that has been linked to global disease outbreaks. These diseases include hemorrhagic colitis and hemolytic uremic syndrome. It is vital to know the features that make this strain pathogenic to understand the development of disease outbreaks.

The Impact of SARS-CoV-2 Lineages (Variants) and COVID-19 Vaccination on the COVID-19 Epidemic in South Africa: Regression Study.

Background: Emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants have been attributed to the occurrence of secondary, tertiary, quaternary, and quinary COVID-19 epidemic waves threatening vaccine efforts owing to their immune invasiveness. Since the importation of SARS-CoV-2 in South Africa, with the first reported COVID-19 case on March 5, 2020, South Africa has observed 5 consecutive COVID-19 epidemic waves. The evolution of SARS-CoV-2 has played a major role in the resurgence of COVID-19 epidemic waves in South Africa and across the globe.

Identification of novel semen and saliva specific methylation markers and its potential application in forensic analysis.

Differential DNA methylation in human tissues has been widely used to develop markers for body fluid identification in forensics. In the present study, identification of potential tissue specific differentially methylated regions (tDMRs) was based on mining differentially expressed genes in surrogate tissues for blood, saliva, semen and vaginal fluid. Genes specifically over expressed in one of the surrogate tissues viz: blood, salivary glands, testis, prostrate, cervix, uterus and ovary were identified from genome wide expression datasets.