Publications by authors named "Somogyi B"

East-Central Europe's largest shallow lake, Balaton, experienced strong eutrophication in the 1970-80s, followed by water quality improvement and oligotrophication by 2010 CE. Recently however, repeated cyanobacterial blooms occurred and warned that internal P-recycling can act similarly to external P load, therefore we need a better understanding of past water level (WL) and trophic changes in the lake. In this study we discuss the last 500-yr trophic, WL and habitat changes of the lake using paleoecological (chironomids, pollen) and geochemical (sediment chlorophyll, TOC, TS, TN, C/H ratio, major and trace element) methods.

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Cyanobacteria play a key role in primary production in both oceans and fresh waters and hold great potential for sustainable production of a large number of commodities. During their life, cyanobacteria cells need to acclimate to a multitude of challenges, including shifts in intensity and quality of incident light. Despite our increasing understanding of metabolic regulation under various light regimes, detailed insight into fitness advantages and limitations under shifting light quality remains underexplored.

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Whole-lake microalgal biomass surveys were carried out in Lake Balaton to investigate the seasonal, spatial, and temporal changes of benthic algae, as well as to identify the drivers of the phytobenthos. Phytobenthos was controlled mainly by light: the highest benthic algal biomass was in the shallow littoral region characterized by large grain size (sand) with good light availability but lower nutrient content in the sediment. During the investigated period, phytoplankton biomass showed a significant decrease in almost the entire lake.

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In this paper, we report on the utilization of micro-technology based tools to fight viral infections. Inspired by various hemoperfusion and immune-affinity capture systems, a blood virus depletion device has been developed that offers highly efficient capture and removal of the targeted virus from the circulation, thus decreasing virus load. Single-domain antibodies against the Wuhan (VHH-72) virus strain produced by recombinant DNA technology were immobilized on the surface of glass micro-beads, which were then utilized as stationary phase.

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Background: The aim of this study (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT03233958) was to provide further evidence on the effectiveness and safety of family/systemic constellation therapy, a widely used but rarely investigated form of brief group psychotherapy.

Subjects And Methods: Altogether, 102 individuals from the general population were followed up 1- and 6 months after their participation in the 2-day intervention.

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Retrospective evaluation of past waves of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) epidemic is key for designing optimal interventions against future waves and novel pandemics. Here, we report on analysing genome sequences of SARS-CoV-2 from the first two waves of the epidemic in 2020 in Hungary, mirroring a suppression and a mitigation strategy, respectively. Our analysis reveals that the two waves markedly differed in viral diversity and transmission patterns.

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Background: The mosquito Aedes koreicus (Edwards, 1917) is a recent invader on the European continent that was introduced to several new places since its first detection in 2008. Compared to other exotic Aedes mosquitoes with public health significance that invaded Europe during the last decades, this species' biology, behavior, and dispersal patterns were poorly investigated to date.

Methodology/principal Findings: To understand the species' population relationships and dispersal patterns within Europe, a fragment of the cytochrome oxidase I (COI or COX1) gene was sequenced from 130 mosquitoes, collected from five countries where the species has been introduced and/or established.

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The extreme environmental conditions of the diverse saline inland waters (soda lakes and pans, hypersaline lakes and ponds) of the Carpathian Basin are an advantage for picophytoplankton. The abundance of picophytoplankton in these waters can be up to several orders of magnitude higher than that in freshwater shallow lakes, but differences are also found within different saline water types: higher picophytoplankton abundances were observed in hypersaline lakes compared to humic soda lakes, and their highest numbers were detected in turbid soda lakes. Moreover, their contribution to phytoplankton biomass is higher than that in shallow freshwater lakes with similar trophic states.

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Some filoviruses can be transmitted to humans by zoonotic spillover events from their natural host and filovirus outbreaks have occured with increasing frequency in the last years. The filovirus Lloviu virus (LLOV), was identified in 2002 in Schreiber's bats (Miniopterus schreibersii) in Spain and was subsequently detected in bats in Hungary. Here we isolate infectious LLOV from the blood of a live sampled Schreiber's bat in Hungary.

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We intend to assess how macrophyte cover affects planktonic microbial communities by changing the physical and chemical environment, and how macrophyte-derived DOC affects the balance between autotrophy and heterotrophy/chemoorganotrophy in a shallow lake. The structure and production of phytoplankton and bacterioplankton in the open water of a large shallow lake and in the littoral zone were compared at two sampling stations with different macrophyte cover. According to the obtained results, uncoupling between bacterioplankton and phytoplankton was observed due to the high content of organic carbon of emergent macrophyte origin.

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We identify the exact microscopic structure of the G photoluminescence center in silicon by first-principles calculations with including a self-consistent many-body perturbation method, which is a telecommunication wavelength single photon source. The defect constitutes of C_{s}C_{i} carbon impurities in its C_{s}─Si_{i}─C_{s} configuration in the neutral charge state, where s and i stand for the respective substitutional and interstitial positions in the Si lattice. We reveal that the observed fine structure of its optical signals originates from the athermal rotational reorientation of the defect.

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Article Synopsis
  • The discovery of photoautotrophic picoplankton (APP) in Lake Balaton in the early 1980s led to ongoing studies that established a long-term dataset on these microorganisms.
  • APP dynamics are influenced by factors like nutrient levels, temperature, and light, with a noted decrease in abundance over the last two decades due to reduced nutrient supply, although their contribution to total phytoplankton biomass has increased.
  • Seasonal patterns show that picocyanobacteria dominate during warmer months, while picoeukaryotes are more prevalent in winter, highlighting a diverse community made up of several freshwater genotypes.
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To explore the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in Algeria, a dataset comprising ninety-five genomes originating from SARS-CoV-2 sampled from Algeria and other countries worldwide, from 24 December 2019, through 4 March 2021, was thoroughly examined. While performing a multi-component analysis regarding the Algerian outbreak, the toolkit of phylogenetic, phylogeographic, haplotype, and genomic analysis were effectively implemented. We estimated the Time to the Most Recent Common Ancestor (TMRCA) in reference to the Algerian pandemic and highlighted the multiple introductions of the disease and the missing data depicted in the transmission loop.

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Article Synopsis
  • Photomorphogenesis is the way photosynthetic organisms adapt to different lighting conditions by changing their growth and metabolic processes, focusing on how a common cyanobacterium adjusts to various light colors.
  • The study showed that these cyanobacteria can effectively alter pigment composition, antenna size, and photosystem ratios to enhance photosynthesis, but they struggle with blue and near far-red light compared to red or orange light.
  • Interestingly, under specific conditions, weak light can induce partial decoupling of the light-harvesting antenna, a process usually triggered by strong light, suggesting that these organisms can optimize performance even in less-than-ideal light situations.
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The natural hosts of Orthohantaviruses are rodents, soricomorphs and bats, and it is well known that they may cause serious or even fatal diseases among humans worldwide. The virus is persistent among animals and it is shed via urine, saliva and feces throughout the entirety of their lives. We aim to identify the effectiveness of hantavirus detection in rodent tissue samples and urine originating from naturally infected rodents.

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Effective testing is an essential tool for controlling COVID-19. We aimed to analyse the data from first-wave PCR test results in Hungary's Southern Transdanubian region to improve testing strategies. We performed a retrospective analysis of all suspected COVID-19 cases between 17 March and 8 May 2020, collecting epidemiological, demographic, clinical and outcome data (ICU admission and mortality) with RT-qPCR test results.

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SARS-CoV-2 is a recently emerged, novel human coronavirus responsible for the currently ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Recombination is a well-known evolutionary strategy of coronaviruses, which may frequently result in significant genetic alterations, such as deletions throughout the genome. In this study we identified a co-infection with two genetically different SARS-CoV-2 viruses within a single patient sample via amplicon-based next generation sequencing in Hungary.

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Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus (CCHFV) is one of the prioritized diseases of the World Health Organization, considering its potential to create a public health emergency and, more importantly, the absence of efficacious drugs and/or vaccines for treatment. The highly pathogenic characteristic of CCHFV restricts research to BSL-4 laboratories, which complicates effective research and developmental strategies. In consideration of antiviral therapies, RNA interference can be used to suppress viral replication by targeting viral genes.

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Article Synopsis
  • Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) emerged in late 2019 in Hubei, China, leading to a global pandemic, with Europe becoming the second epicenter.
  • Researchers studied full-length SARS-CoV-2 genomes from 32 COVID-19 patients in Hungary to understand the epidemic's evolution in Central-Eastern Europe.
  • The study involved complex genetic analyses, revealing multiple initial introductions of the virus into the region and presenting visual network mappings of the global relationships among SARS-CoV-2 strains.
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Astatic soda pans of the Pannonian Steppe are unique environments with respect to their multiple extreme physical and chemical characteristics (high daily water temperature fluctuation, high turbidity, alkaline pH, salinity, polyhumic organic carbon concentration, hypertrophic state and special ionic composition). However, little is known about the seasonal dynamics of the bacterial communities inhabiting these lakes and the role of environmental factors that have the main impact on their structure. Therefore, two soda pans were sampled monthly between April 2013 and July 2014 to reveal changes in the planktonic community.

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Little is known about the detailed community composition of heterotrophic bacterioplankton in macrophyte-dominated littoral systems, where a considerable amount of dissolved organic carbon originates from aquatic macrophytes instead of phytoplankton. The aim of the present study was to reveal the effect of macrophytes on the microbial community and to elucidate their role in a macrophyte-dominated shallow soda lake, which can be characterised by a mosaic of open waters and reed marsh. Therefore, 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing, the most probable number method, cultivation of bacterial strains, EcoPlate and cultivation-based substrate utilisation techniques were applied.

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The global impact of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic is significant in terms of public health effects and its long-term socio-economic implications. Among all social groups, the elderly is by far the most affected age group regarding morbidity and mortality. In multiple countries spanning several continents, there are an increasing number of reports referencing the novel coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) spread among nursing homes.

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The West Nile virus is endemic in multiple European countries and responsible for several epidemics throughout the European region. Its evolution into local or even widespread epidemics is driven by multiple factors from genetic diversification of the virus to environmental conditions. The year of 2018 was characterized by an extraordinary increase in human and animal cases in the Central-Eastern European region, including Hungary.

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Bats are reservoirs of numerous zoonotic viruses. The Picornaviridae family comprises important pathogens which may infect both humans and animals. In this study, a bat-related picornavirus was detected from Algerian Minioptreus schreibersii bats for the first time in the country.

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