Thriving in salty environments: Aspergillus niger's halotolerance and BTEX biodegradation potential.

Benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene (BTEX) can be found in marine and estuarine waters due to accidental spills of oil and derivatives, as well as in production water and effluents discharged from petrochemical plants. Addressing the bioremediation of these compounds in saline environments and effluents with elevated salinity levels is imperative. In this study, the halotolerance of Aspergillus niger was assessed by subjecting it to a stepwise increase in salinity, achieved through progressive addition of NaCl from 2 to 30‰ (v/v).

HORNET: Tools to find genes with causal evidence and their regulatory networks using eQTLs.

Motivation: Nearly two decades of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identify thousands of disease-associated genetic variants, but very few genes with evidence of causality. Recent methodological advances demonstrate that Mendelian Randomization (MR) using expression quantitative loci (eQTLs) as instrumental variables can detect potential causal genes. However, existing MR approaches are not well suited to handle the complexity of eQTL GWAS data structure and so they are subject to bias, inflation, and incorrect inference.

Multifrequency low-level laser-assisted lipolysis outcomes. A dataset from 101 patients.

Obesity is a chronic and complex syndrome resulting from the interactions of genetic, environmental, metabolic, and psychological factors. This dataset collected clinical information from 101 patients with obesity who had undergone large-volume laser-assisted liposuction. Demographic, personal, and family history of disease were recorded, and weight and height were determined and subsequently used to calculate body mass index, % of total weight loss (%TWL), and % of excess body mass index loss (% EBMIL).

Copy Number Association with Spinal Muscular Atrophy Severity: Insights from Colombian Patients.

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a genetic neurodegenerative disease primarily affecting paediatric patients, often leading to significant morbidity and mortality. Our principal objective is to describe the sociodemographic characteristics and evaluate the association between the number of copies and SMA type in patients from the Colombian Foundation for Spinal Muscular Atrophy (FAMECOL) database. An analytical cross-sectional study was conducted on 201 patients with a genetic diagnosis of SMA.