Simple one-pot preparation of water-soluble, cysteine-reactive cyanine and merocyanine dyes for biological imaging

A simple one-pot-procedure for preparation of protein-reactive, water-soluble merocyanine and cyanine dyes has been developed. The 1-(3-ammoniopropyl)-2,3,3-trimethyl-3H-indolium-5-sulfonate bromide (1) was used as a common starting intermediate. The method allows easy preparation of dyes with chloro- and iodoacetamide side chains for covalent attachment to cysteine. By placing a sulfonato group directly on the dye fluorophore system, dyes with high fluorescence quantum yields in water were generated. Both iodo- and chloroacetamido derivatives were shown to be useful in protein labeling. Less reactive chloroacetamides will be preferential for selective labeling of the most reactive cysteines.     

Indirect Effects of Antibiotics in the Aquatic Environment: A Laboratory Study on Detritivore Food Selection Behavior

With regard to possible detrimental effects of human and veterinary antibiotics in the aquatic environment, most research in this field assesses direct impacts of pharmaceuticals on vertebrate or invertebrate test organisms. Another related area of concern is the possible development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria by introducing antimicrobials into the aquatic compartment. However, indirect effects of antibacterials on the trophic cascade have rarely been investigated. This study contributes with an example of how indirect effects of antibiotics on leaf litter decay can be measured and to what extent shredder organisms might be affected. Results from food-selection experiments using Gammarus pulex (Amphipoda) demonstrated clear preferences for leaves conditioned in the absence versus those conditioned in the presence of two antibiotics, oxytetracycline and sulfadiazine. Although this result suggested that microbial and fungal colonisation during leaf litter conditioning might be adversely affected in the antibiotic-treated groups, analyses of total carbon and nitrogen content of conditioned leaf discs did not reveal differences among the treatments.     

Clinicopathological and Radiological Features of Chronic Rhinosinusitis with Eosinophilic Mucin in Chungcheong Province of Korea

Background

Chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) with eosinophilic mucin is considered rare in Korea. The object of this study was to categorize CRS patients with eosinophilic mucin into several groups and compared the groups based on their clinicopathological and radiological features.

Methods

In total, 105 CRS patients with eosinophilic mucin from four tertiary medical centers which are located at Chungcheong province of Korea were included for this study. The patients were divided into four groups for analysis, based on the presence or absence of an allergy (A) to a fungus or fungal element (F) in the mucin. The following were the four groups: allergic fungal rhinosinusitis (AFRS, A+F+), AFRS-like sinusitis (A+F?), eosinophilic fungal rhinosinusitis (EFRS, A?F+), and eosinophilic mucin rhinosinusitis (EMRS, A?F?). Their clinical manifestation, the presence of associated disease, radiological finding, treatment, and treatment outcome were reviewed and compared.

Results

There were no patients in the AFRS-like sinusitis group, 47 patients were assigned to the AFRS group, 27 to the EFRS group, and 41 to the EMRS group. Patients of AFRS group showed a significantly higher association with allergic rhinitis than did the other groups. The mean total serum IgE level in the AFRS patients was significantly higher than in the EFRS and EMRS patients. In the AFRS group and EFRS group, 67.6% and 74.1% had unilateral disease, respectively, in contrast to the EMRS group (4.9%). The mean Hounsfield unit values of the area of high attenuation in the AFRS patients were significantly higher than those in the other groups.

Conclusions

Significant clinicopathological differences existed among the subgroups of CRS with eosinophilic mucin. AFRS tends to be an allergic response to colonizing fungi in atopic individuals. In EFRS, local allergies to fungi might play a role in the disease. EMRS is thought to be unconnected with fungal allergies, and it showed different form compared with the AFRS and EFRS groups.

     

Epidemiological profile of patients hospitalized with candiduria in the Central-Western region of Brazil

BackgroundCandida yeasts are considered the main agents of nosocomial fungal infections.AimsThis study aimed to establish the epidemiological profile of patients with candiduria hospitalized in the capital of the State of Mato Grosso, in the Central-Western region of Brazil.MethodsPatients from three private hospitals and a public hospital participated in the study. This was an observational and cross-sectional study including analysis of patients mortality. It was carried out from March to August 2015.ResultsA total of 93 patients with candiduria were evaluated. Candida tropicalis was found most commonly (37.6%; n = 35), followed by Candida albicans (36.6%; n = 34), Candida glabrata (19.3%; n = 18), psilosis complex (4.3%; n = 4), Candida lusitaniae (1.1%; n = 1) and Candida krusei (1.1%; n = 1). Antibiotic therapy (100%) and the use of an indwelling urinary catheter (89.2%; n = 83) were the most frequent predisposing factors. Antifungal treatment was given to 65.6% of the patients, and anidulafungin was the most used antifungal. Mortality rates were 48% higher among patients with candiduria who had renal failure. Micafungin was the antifungal most prescribed among the patients who died. Candidemia concomitant with candiduria occurred in eight (8.6%; n = 8) cases. Considering the species recovered in the blood and urine, only one patient had genetically distinct clinical isolates.ConclusionsNon-C. albicans Candida species were predominant, with C. tropicalis being the most responsible for most cases of candiduria.     

Soft Shoulders Ahead: Spurious Signatures of Soft and Partial Selective Sweeps Result from Linked Hard Sweeps

Characterizing the nature of the adaptive process at the genetic level is a central goal for population genetics. In particular, we know little about the sources of adaptive substitution or about the number of adaptive variants currently segregating in nature. Historically, population geneticists have focused attention on the hard-sweep model of adaptation in which a de novo beneficial mutation arises and rapidly fixes in a population. Recently more attention has been given to soft-sweep models, in which alleles that were previously neutral, or nearly so, drift until such a time as the environment shifts and their selection coefficient changes to become beneficial. It remains an active and difficult problem, however, to tease apart the telltale signatures of hard vs. soft sweeps in genomic polymorphism data. Through extensive simulations of hard- and soft-sweep models, here we show that indeed the two might not be separable through the use of simple summary statistics. In particular, it seems that recombination in regions linked to, but distant from, sites of hard sweeps can create patterns of polymorphism that closely mirror what is expected to be found near soft sweeps. We find that a very similar situation arises when using haplotype-based statistics that are aimed at detecting partial or ongoing selective sweeps, such that it is difficult to distinguish the shoulder of a hard sweep from the center of a partial sweep. While knowing the location of the selected site mitigates this problem slightly, we show that stochasticity in signatures of natural selection will frequently cause the signal to reach its zenith far from this site and that this effect is more severe for soft sweeps; thus inferences of the target as well as the mode of positive selection may be inaccurate. In addition, both the time since a sweep ends and biologically realistic levels of allelic gene conversion lead to errors in the classification and identification of selective sweeps. This general problem of “soft shoulders” underscores the difficulty in differentiating soft and partial sweeps from hard-sweep scenarios in molecular population genomics data. The soft-shoulder effect also implies that the more common hard sweeps have been in recent evolutionary history, the more prevalent spurious signatures of soft or partial sweeps may appear in some genome-wide scans.     

Botrytis pseudocinerea Is a Significant Pathogen of Several Crop Plants but Susceptible to Displacement by Fungicide-Resistant B. cinerea Strains

Botrytis cinerea is one of the most important pathogens worldwide, causing gray mold on a large variety of crops. Botrytis pseudocinerea has been found previously to occur together with B. cinerea in low abundance in vineyards and strawberry fields. Here, we report B. pseudocinerea to be common and sometimes dominant over B. cinerea on several fruit and vegetable crops in Germany. On apples with calyx end rot and on oilseed rape, it was the major gray mold species. Abundance of B. pseudocinerea was often negatively correlated with fungicide treatments. On cultivated strawberries, it was frequently found in spring but was largely displaced by B. cinerea following fungicide applications. Whereas B. cinerea strains with multiple-fungicide resistance were common in these fields, B. pseudocinerea almost never developed resistance to any fungicide even though resistance mutations occurred at similar frequencies in both species under laboratory conditions. The absence of resistance to quinone outside inhibitors in B. pseudocinerea was correlated with an intron in cytB preventing the major G143A resistance mutation. Our work indicates that B. pseudocinerea has a wide host range similar to that of B. cinerea and that it can become an important gray mold pathogen on cultivated plants.