Search results for "Multidisciplinary"
showing 10 items of 4640 documents
Composition and geographic variation of the bacterial microbiota associated with the coelomic fluid of the sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus
2020
AbstractIn the present work, culture-based and culture-independent investigations were performed to determine the microbiota structure of the coelomic fluid of Mediterranean sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus individuals collected from two distinct geographical sites neighboring a high-density population bay and a nature reserve, respectively. Next Generation Sequencing analysis of 16S rRNA gene (rDNA) showed that members of the Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes and Fusobacteria phyla, which have been previously reported to be commonly retrieved from marine invertebrates, dominate the overall population of microorganisms colonizing this liquid tissue, with minority bacterial genera exhibiting rem…
A Twin Protection Effect? Explaining Twin Survival Advantages with a Two-Process Mortality Model
2016
Twin studies that focus on the correlation in age-at-death between twin pairs have yielded important insights into the heritability and role of genetic factors in determining lifespan, but less attention is paid to the biological and social role of zygosity itself in determining survival across the entire life course. Using data from the Danish Twin Registry and the Human Mortality Database, we show that monozygotic twins have greater cumulative survival proportions at nearly every age compared to dizygotic twins and the Danish general population. We examine this survival advantage by fitting these data with a two-process mortality model that partitions survivorship patterns into extrinsic …
Contribution of allelic imbalance to colorectal cancer
2018
Point mutations in cancer have been extensively studied but chromosomal gains and losses have been more challenging to interpret due to their unspecific nature. Here we examine high-resolution allelic imbalance (AI) landscape in 1699 colorectal cancers, 256 of which have been whole-genome sequenced (WGSed). The imbalances pinpoint 38 genes as plausible AI targets based on previous knowledge. Unbiased CRISPR-Cas9 knockout and activation screens identified in total 79 genes within AI peaks regulating cell growth. Genetic and functional data implicate loss of TP53 as a sufficient driver of AI. The WGS highlights an influence of copy number aberrations on the rate of detected somatic point muta…
Longitudinal Investigation into Genetics in the Conservation of Metabolic Phenotypes in Danish and Chinese Twins
2016
Longitudinal twin studies on long term conservation of individual metabolic phenotypes can help to explore the genetic and environmental basis in maintaining metabolic homeostasis and metabolic health. We performed a longitudinal twin study on 12 metabolic phenotypes from Danish twins followed up for 12 years and Chinese twins traced for 7 years. The study covered a relatively large sample of 502 pairs of Danish adult twins with a mean age at intake of 38 years and a total of 181 Chinese adult twin pairs with a mean baseline age of 39.5 years. Bivariate twin models were fitted to the longitudinal measurements taken at two time points (at baseline and follow-up) to estimate the genetic and e…
First muography of Stromboli volcano
2019
AbstractMuography consists in observing the differential absorption of muons – elementary particles produced through cosmic-ray interactions in the Earth atmosphere – going through the volcano and can attain a spatial resolution of tens of meters. We present here the first experiment of nuclear emulsion muography at the Stromboli volcano. Muons have been recorded during a period of five months by a detector of 0.96 m2 area. The emulsion films were prepared at the Gran Sasso underground laboratory and were analyzed at Napoli, Salerno and Tokyo scanning laboratories. Our results highlight a significant low-density zone at the summit of the volcano with density contrast of 30–40% with respect …
Traits and risk factors of post-disaster infectious disease outbreaks: a systematic review.
2021
AbstractInfectious disease outbreaks are increasingly recognised as events that exacerbate impacts or prolong recovery following disasters. Yet, our understanding of the frequency, geography, characteristics and risk factors of post-disaster disease outbreaks globally is lacking. This limits the extent to which disease outbreak risks can be prepared for, monitored and responded to following disasters. Here, we conducted a global systematic review of post-disaster outbreaks and found that outbreaks linked to conflicts and hydrological events were most frequently reported, and most often caused by bacterial and water-borne agents. Lack of adequate WASH facilities and poor housing were commonl…
A deeper look into natural sciences with physics-based and data-driven measures
2021
Summary With the development of machine learning in recent years, it is possible to glean much more information from an experimental data set to study matter. In this perspective, we discuss some state-of-the-art data-driven tools to analyze latent effects in data and explain their applicability in natural science, focusing on two recently introduced, physics-motivated computationally cheap tools—latent entropy and latent dimension. We exemplify their capabilities by applying them on several examples in the natural sciences and show that they reveal so far unobserved features such as, for example, a gradient in a magnetic measurement and a latent network of glymphatic channels from the mous…
Early ERK1/2 activation promotes DRP1-dependent mitochondrial fission necessary for cell reprogramming.
2016
During the process of reprogramming to induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, somatic cells switch from oxidative to glycolytic metabolism, a transition associated with profound mitochondrial reorganization. Neither the importance of mitochondrial remodelling for cell reprogramming, nor the molecular mechanisms controlling this process are well understood. Here, we show that an early wave of mitochondrial fragmentation occurs upon expression of reprogramming factors. Reprogramming-induced mitochondrial fission is associated with a minor decrease in mitochondrial mass but not with mitophagy. The pro-fission factor Drp1 is phosphorylated early in reprogramming, and its knockdown and inhibition…
Inferring causation from time series in earth system sciences
2019
The heart of the scientific enterprise is a rational effort to understand the causes behind the phenomena we observe. In large-scale complex dynamical systems such as the Earth system, real experiments are rarely feasible. However, a rapidly increasing amount of observational and simulated data opens up the use of novel data-driven causal methods beyond the commonly adopted correlation techniques. Here, we give an overview of causal inference frameworks and identify promising generic application cases common in Earth system sciences and beyond. We discuss challenges and initiate the benchmark platform causeme.net to close the gap between method users and developers.
Mixed topological semimetals driven by orbital complexity in two-dimensional ferromagnets
2018
The concepts of Weyl fermions and topological semimetals emerging in three-dimensional momentum space are extensively explored owing to the vast variety of exotic properties that they give rise to. On the other hand, very little is known about semimetallic states emerging in two-dimensional magnetic materials, which present the foundation for both present and future information technology. Here, we demonstrate that including the magnetization direction into the topological analysis allows for a natural classification of topological semimetallic states that manifest in two-dimensional ferromagnets as a result of the interplay between spin-orbit and exchange interactions. We explore the emerg…