Spatiotemporal modeling of first and second wave outbreak dynamics of COVID-19 in Germany

The COVID-19 pandemic has kept the world in suspense for the past year. In most federal countries such as Germany, locally varying conditions demand for state- or county-level decisions to adapt to the disease dynamics. However, this requires a deep understanding of the mesoscale outbreak dynamics between microscale agent models and macroscale global models. Here, we use a reparameterized SIQRD network model that accounts for local political decisions to predict the spatiotemporal evolution of the pandemic in Germany at county resolution. Our optimized model reproduces state-wise cumulative infections and deaths as reported by the Robert Koch Institute and predicts the development for individual counties at convincing accuracy during both waves in spring and fall of 2020. We demonstrate the dominating effect of local infection seeds and identify effective measures to attenuate the rapid spread. Our model has great potential to support decision makers on a state and community politics level to individually strategize their best way forward during the months to come.

     

Die Gattung Plumeria L. (Apocynaceae) auf Kuba

12 endemic species of Plumeria and one often cultivated species could be corfirmed for the island of Cuba. The species are: 1. P. filifolia Griseb., 2. P. clusioides Griseb., 3. P. cubensis Urb., 4. P. nipensis Britt., 5. P. ekmanii Urb., 6. P. emarginata Griseb., 7. P. venosa Britt., 8. P. trinitensis Britt., 9. P. cayensis Urb., 10. P. sericifolia Griseb., 11. P. lanata Britt., 12. P. montana Britt. et Wils. und P. rubra L. as cultivated species. P. alba L., P. obtusa L. and P. tuberculata Lodd. are not present in Cuba.     

Lipoteichoic acid is an important microbe-associated molecular pattern of Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG

Background

Receptors with a single transmembrane (TM) domain are essential for the signal transduction across the cell membrane. NMR spectroscopy is a powerful tool to study structure of the single TM domain. The expression and purification of a TM domain in Escherichia coli (E.coli) is challenging due to its small molecular weight. Although ketosteroid isomerase (KSI) is a commonly used affinity tag for expression and purification of short peptides, KSI tag needs to be removed with the toxic reagent cyanogen bromide (CNBr).

Result

The purification of the TM domain of p75 neurotrophin receptor using a KSI tag with the introduction of a thrombin cleavage site is described herein. The recombinant fusion protein was refolded into micelles and was cleaved with thrombin. Studies showed that purified protein could be used for structural study using NMR spectroscopy.

Conclusions

These results provide another strategy for obtaining a single TM domain for structural studies without using toxic chemical digestion or acid to remove the fusion tag. The purified TM domain of p75 neurotrophin receptor will be useful for structural studies.