| 1. |
- Hudson, Lawrence N, et al.
(författare)
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The database of the PREDICTS (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems) project
- 2017
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Ingår i: Ecology and Evolution. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 2045-7758. ; 7:1, s. 145-188
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The PREDICTS project-Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)-has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used this evidence base to develop global and regional statistical models of how local biodiversity responds to these measures. We describe and make freely available this 2016 release of the database, containing more than 3.2 million records sampled at over 26,000 locations and representing over 47,000 species. We outline how the database can help in answering a range of questions in ecology and conservation biology. To our knowledge, this is the largest and most geographically and taxonomically representative database of spatial comparisons of biodiversity that has been collated to date; it will be useful to researchers and international efforts wishing to model and understand the global status of biodiversity.
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| 2. |
- Sawcer, Stephen, et al.
(författare)
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Genetic risk and a primary role for cell-mediated immune mechanisms in multiple sclerosis
- 2011
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Ingår i: Nature. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0028-0836 .- 1476-4687. ; 476:7359, s. 214-219
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Multiple sclerosis is a common disease of the central nervous system in which the interplay between inflammatory and neurodegenerative processes typically results in intermittent neurological disturbance followed by progressive accumulation of disability. Epidemiological studies have shown that genetic factors are primarily responsible for the substantially increased frequency of the disease seen in the relatives of affected individuals, and systematic attempts to identify linkage in multiplex families have confirmed that variation within the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) exerts the greatest individual effect on risk. Modestly powered genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have enabled more than 20 additional risk loci to be identified and have shown that multiple variants exerting modest individual effects have a key role in disease susceptibility. Most of the genetic architecture underlying susceptibility to the disease remains to be defined and is anticipated to require the analysis of sample sizes that are beyond the numbers currently available to individual research groups. In a collaborative GWAS involving 9,772 cases of European descent collected by 23 research groups working in 15 different countries, we have replicated almost all of the previously suggested associations and identified at least a further 29 novel susceptibility loci. Within the MHC we have refined the identity of the HLA-DRB1 risk alleles and confirmed that variation in the HLA-A gene underlies the independent protective effect attributable to the class I region. Immunologically relevant genes are significantly overrepresented among those mapping close to the identified loci and particularly implicate T-helper-cell differentiation in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis.
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| 3. |
- Beal, Jacob, et al.
(författare)
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Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density
- 2020
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Ingår i: Communications Biology. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2399-3642. ; 3:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data.
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| 4. |
- Saldaño, H. P., et al.
(författare)
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SuperCAM CO(3-2) APEX survey at a 6 pc resolution in the Small Magellanic Clouds
- 2024
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Ingår i: Astronomy and Astrophysics. - 0004-6361 .- 1432-0746. ; 687
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Context. The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is an ideal laboratory for studying the properties of star-forming regions thanks to its low metallicity, which has an impact on the molecular gas abundance. However, a small number of molecular gas surveys of the entire galaxy have been carried out in the last few years, limiting the measurements of interstellar medium (ISM) properties in a homogeneous manner. Aims. We present the CO(3-2) APEX survey at a 6 pc resolution of the bar of the SMC, observed with the SuperCAM receiver attached to the APEX telescope. This high-resolution survey has allowed us to study certain properties of the ISM and to identify CO clouds in the innermost parts of the H2 envelopes. Methods. We adopted the CO analysis in the SMC bar comparing the CO(3-2) survey with that of the CO(2-1) of a similar resolution. We studied the CO(3-2)-To-CO(2-1) ratio (R32), which is very sensitive to the environment properties (e.g., star-forming regions). We analyzed the correlation of this ratio with observational quantities that trace the star formation such as the local CO emission, the Spitzer color [70/160], and the total IR surface brightness measured from the Spitzer and Herschel bands. For the identification of the CO(3-2) clouds, we used the CPROPS algorithm, which allowed us to measure the physical properties of the clouds. We analyzed the scaling relationships of such physical properties. Results. We obtained R32 = 0.65 ± 0.02 for the SW bar and a slightly higher ratio, R32 = 0.7 ± 0.1, for N66 in the SMC. We found that R32 varies from region to region, depending on the star formation activity. In regions dominated by HII and photo-dissociated regions (e.g., N22, N66) R32 tends to be higher than the median values. Meanwhile, lower values were found toward quiescent clouds. We also found that R32 is correlated with the IR color [70/160] and the total IR surface brightness. This finding indicates that R32 increases with environmental properties, such as the dust temperature, total gas density, and radiation field. We identified 225 molecular clouds with sizes of R > 1.5 pc and signal-To-noise ratios (S/N) of >3, of which only 17 are well resolved CO(3-2) clouds with S/N 5. These 17 clouds follow consistent scaling relationships to the inner Milky Way clouds but with some departures. For instance, CO(3-2) tends to be less turbulent and less luminous than the inner Milky Way clouds of similar sizes. Finally, we estimated a median virial-based CO(3-2)-To-H2 conversion factor of 12.6-7+10 M-(K km s-1 pc2)-1 for the total sample.
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