| 1. |
- Hudson, Lawrence N, et al.
(author)
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The database of the PREDICTS (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems) project
- 2017
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In: Ecology and Evolution. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 2045-7758. ; 7:1, s. 145-188
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)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. |
- ter Steege, Hans, et al.
(author)
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Mapping density, diversity and species-richness of the Amazon tree flora
- 2023
-
In: COMMUNICATIONS BIOLOGY. - 2399-3642. ; 6:1
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Using 2.046 botanically-inventoried tree plots across the largest tropical forest on Earth, we mapped tree species-diversity and tree species-richness at 0.1-degree resolution, and investigated drivers for diversity and richness. Using only location, stratified by forest type, as predictor, our spatial model, to the best of our knowledge, provides the most accurate map of tree diversity in Amazonia to date, explaining approximately 70% of the tree diversity and species-richness. Large soil-forest combinations determine a significant percentage of the variation in tree species-richness and tree alpha-diversity in Amazonian forest-plots. We suggest that the size and fragmentation of these systems drive their large-scale diversity patterns and hence local diversity. A model not using location but cumulative water deficit, tree density, and temperature seasonality explains 47% of the tree species-richness in the terra-firme forest in Amazonia. Over large areas across Amazonia, residuals of this relationship are small and poorly spatially structured, suggesting that much of the residual variation may be local. The Guyana Shield area has consistently negative residuals, showing that this area has lower tree species-richness than expected by our models. We provide extensive plot meta-data, including tree density, tree alpha-diversity and tree species-richness results and gridded maps at 0.1-degree resolution. A study mapping the tree species richness in Amazonian forests shows that soil type exerts a strong effect on species richness, probably caused by the areas of these forest types. Cumulative water deficit, tree density and temperature seasonality affect species richness at a regional scale.
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| 3. |
- Householder, John Ethan, et al.
(author)
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One sixth of Amazonian tree diversity is dependent on river floodplains
- 2024
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In: NATURE ECOLOGY & EVOLUTION. - 2397-334X. ; 8, s. 901-911
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Amazonia's floodplain system is the largest and most biodiverse on Earth. Although forests are crucial to the ecological integrity of floodplains, our understanding of their species composition and how this may differ from surrounding forest types is still far too limited, particularly as changing inundation regimes begin to reshape floodplain tree communities and the critical ecosystem functions they underpin. Here we address this gap by taking a spatially explicit look at Amazonia-wide patterns of tree-species turnover and ecological specialization of the region's floodplain forests. We show that the majority of Amazonian tree species can inhabit floodplains, and about a sixth of Amazonian tree diversity is ecologically specialized on floodplains. The degree of specialization in floodplain communities is driven by regional flood patterns, with the most compositionally differentiated floodplain forests located centrally within the fluvial network and contingent on the most extraordinary flood magnitudes regionally. Our results provide a spatially explicit view of ecological specialization of floodplain forest communities and expose the need for whole-basin hydrological integrity to protect the Amazon's tree diversity and its function.
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| 4. |
- Santangelo, James S., et al.
(author)
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Global urban environmental change drives adaptation in white clover
- 2022
-
In: Science. - : American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). - 0036-8075 .- 1095-9203. ; 375
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Urbanization transforms environments in ways that alter biological evolution. We examined whether urban environmental change drives parallel evolution by sampling 110,019 white clover plants from 6169 populations in 160 cities globally. Plants were assayed for a Mendelian antiherbivore defense that also affects tolerance to abiotic stressors. Urban-rural gradients were associated with the evolution of clines in defense in 47% of cities throughout the world. Variation in the strength of clines was explained by environmental changes in drought stress and vegetation cover that varied among cities. Sequencing 2074 genomes from 26 cities revealed that the evolution of urban-rural dines was best explained by adaptive evolution, but the degree of parallel adaptation varied among cities. Our results demonstrate that urbanization leads to adaptation at a global scale.
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| 5. |
- Zuntini, Alexandre R., et al.
(author)
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Phylogenomics and the rise of the angiosperms
- 2024
-
In: NATURE. - 0028-0836 .- 1476-4687. ; 629, s. 843-850
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Angiosperms are the cornerstone of most terrestrial ecosystems and human livelihoods(1,2). A robust understanding of angiosperm evolution is required to explain their rise to ecological dominance. So far, the angiosperm tree of life has been determined primarily by means of analyses of the plastid genome(3,4). Many studies have drawn on this foundational work, such as classification and first insights into angiosperm diversification since their Mesozoic origins(5-7). However, the limited and biased sampling of both taxa and genomes undermines confidence in the tree and its implications. Here, we build the tree of life for almost 8,000 (about 60%) angiosperm genera using a standardized set of 353 nuclear genes(8). This 15-fold increase in genus-level sampling relative to comparable nuclear studies(9) provides a critical test of earlier results and brings notable change to key groups, especially in rosids, while substantiating many previously predicted relationships. Scaling this tree to time using 200 fossils, we discovered that early angiosperm evolution was characterized by high gene tree conflict and explosive diversification, giving rise to more than 80% of extant angiosperm orders. Steady diversification ensued through the remaining Mesozoic Era until rates resurged in the Cenozoic Era, concurrent with decreasing global temperatures and tightly linked with gene tree conflict. Taken together, our extensive sampling combined with advanced phylogenomic methods shows the deep history and full complexity in the evolution of a megadiverse clade.
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| 6. |
- Luize, Bruno Garcia, et al.
(author)
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Geography and ecology shape the phylogenetic composition of Amazonian tree communities
- 2024
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In: JOURNAL OF BIOGEOGRAPHY. - 0305-0270 .- 1365-2699. ; 51:7, s. 1163-1184
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Aim: Amazonia hosts more tree species from numerous evolutionary lineages, both young and ancient, than any other biogeographic region. Previous studies have shown that tree lineages colonized multiple edaphic environments and dispersed widely across Amazonia, leading to a hypothesis, which we test, that lineages should not be strongly associated with either geographic regions or edaphic forest types. Location: Amazonia. Taxon: Angiosperms (Magnoliids; Monocots; Eudicots). Methods: Data for the abundance of 5082 tree species in 1989 plots were combined with a mega-phylogeny. We applied evolutionary ordination to assess how phylogenetic composition varies across Amazonia. We used variation partitioning and Moran's eigenvector maps (MEM) to test and quantify the separate and joint contributions of spatial and environmental variables to explain the phylogenetic composition of plots. We tested the indicator value of lineages for geographic regions and edaphic forest types and mapped associations onto the phylogeny. Results: In the terra firme and v & aacute;rzea forest types, the phylogenetic composition varies by geographic region, but the igap & oacute; and white-sand forest types retain a unique evolutionary signature regardless of region. Overall, we find that soil chemistry, climate and topography explain 24% of the variation in phylogenetic composition, with 79% of that variation being spatially structured (R-2 = 19% overall for combined spatial/environmental effects). The phylogenetic composition also shows substantial spatial patterns not related to the environmental variables we quantified (R-2 = 28%). A greater number of lineages were significant indicators of geographic regions than forest types. Main Conclusion: Numerous tree lineages, including some ancient ones (>66 Ma), show strong associations with geographic regions and edaphic forest types of Amazonia. This shows that specialization in specific edaphic environments has played a long-standing role in the evolutionary assembly of Amazonian forests. Furthermore, many lineages, even those that have dispersed across Amazonia, dominate within a specific region, likely because of phylogenetically conserved niches for environmental conditions that are prevalent within regions.
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| 7. |
- Ademuyiwa, Adesoji O., et al.
(author)
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Determinants of morbidity and mortality following emergency abdominal surgery in children in low-income and middle-income countries
- 2016
-
In: BMJ Global Health. - : BMJ Publishing Group Ltd. - 2059-7908. ; 1:4
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Background: Child health is a key priority on the global health agenda, yet the provision of essential and emergency surgery in children is patchy in resource-poor regions. This study was aimed to determine the mortality risk for emergency abdominal paediatric surgery in low-income countries globally.Methods: Multicentre, international, prospective, cohort study. Self-selected surgical units performing emergency abdominal surgery submitted prespecified data for consecutive children aged <16 years during a 2-week period between July and December 2014. The United Nation's Human Development Index (HDI) was used to stratify countries. The main outcome measure was 30-day postoperative mortality, analysed by multilevel logistic regression.Results: This study included 1409 patients from 253 centres in 43 countries; 282 children were under 2 years of age. Among them, 265 (18.8%) were from low-HDI, 450 (31.9%) from middle-HDI and 694 (49.3%) from high-HDI countries. The most common operations performed were appendectomy, small bowel resection, pyloromyotomy and correction of intussusception. After adjustment for patient and hospital risk factors, child mortality at 30 days was significantly higher in low-HDI (adjusted OR 7.14 (95% CI 2.52 to 20.23), p<0.001) and middle-HDI (4.42 (1.44 to 13.56), p=0.009) countries compared with high-HDI countries, translating to 40 excess deaths per 1000 procedures performed.Conclusions: Adjusted mortality in children following emergency abdominal surgery may be as high as 7 times greater in low-HDI and middle-HDI countries compared with high-HDI countries. Effective provision of emergency essential surgery should be a key priority for global child health agendas.
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| 8. |
- Muscarella, Robert, et al.
(author)
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The global abundance of tree palms
- 2020
-
In: Global Ecology and Biogeography. - : Wiley. - 1466-822X .- 1466-8238. ; 29:9, s. 1495-1514
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- AimPalms are an iconic, diverse and often abundant component of tropical ecosystems that provide many ecosystem services. Being monocots, tree palms are evolutionarily, morphologically and physiologically distinct from other trees, and these differences have important consequences for ecosystem services (e.g., carbon sequestration and storage) and in terms of responses to climate change. We quantified global patterns of tree palm relative abundance to help improve understanding of tropical forests and reduce uncertainty about these ecosystems under climate change.LocationTropical and subtropical moist forests.Time periodCurrent.Major taxa studiedPalms (Arecaceae).MethodsWe assembled a pantropical dataset of 2,548 forest plots (covering 1,191 ha) and quantified tree palm (i.e., ≥10 cm diameter at breast height) abundance relative to co‐occurring non‐palm trees. We compared the relative abundance of tree palms across biogeographical realms and tested for associations with palaeoclimate stability, current climate, edaphic conditions and metrics of forest structure.ResultsOn average, the relative abundance of tree palms was more than five times larger between Neotropical locations and other biogeographical realms. Tree palms were absent in most locations outside the Neotropics but present in >80% of Neotropical locations. The relative abundance of tree palms was more strongly associated with local conditions (e.g., higher mean annual precipitation, lower soil fertility, shallower water table and lower plot mean wood density) than metrics of long‐term climate stability. Life‐form diversity also influenced the patterns; palm assemblages outside the Neotropics comprise many non‐tree (e.g., climbing) palms. Finally, we show that tree palms can influence estimates of above‐ground biomass, but the magnitude and direction of the effect require additional work.ConclusionsTree palms are not only quintessentially tropical, but they are also overwhelmingly Neotropical. Future work to understand the contributions of tree palms to biomass estimates and carbon cycling will be particularly crucial in Neotropical forests.
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| 9. |
- Cooper, Declan L.M., et al.
(author)
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Consistent patterns of common species across tropical tree communities
- 2024
-
In: Nature. - 0028-0836 .- 1476-4687. ; 625:7996, s. 728-734
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Trees structure the Earth’s most biodiverse ecosystem, tropical forests. The vast number of tree species presents a formidable challenge to understanding these forests, including their response to environmental change, as very little is known about most tropical tree species. A focus on the common species may circumvent this challenge. Here we investigate abundance patterns of common tree species using inventory data on 1,003,805 trees with trunk diameters of at least 10 cm across 1,568 locations 1–6 in closed-canopy, structurally intact old-growth tropical forests in Africa, Amazonia and Southeast Asia. We estimate that 2.2%, 2.2% and 2.3% of species comprise 50% of the tropical trees in these regions, respectively. Extrapolating across all closed-canopy tropical forests, we estimate that just 1,053 species comprise half of Earth’s 800 billion tropical trees with trunk diameters of at least 10 cm. Despite differing biogeographic, climatic and anthropogenic histories 7, we find notably consistent patterns of common species and species abundance distributions across the continents. This suggests that fundamental mechanisms of tree community assembly may apply to all tropical forests. Resampling analyses show that the most common species are likely to belong to a manageable list of known species, enabling targeted efforts to understand their ecology. Although they do not detract from the importance of rare species, our results open new opportunities to understand the world’s most diverse forests, including modelling their response to environmental change, by focusing on the common species that constitute the majority of their trees.
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| 10. |
- Gemmell, Neil J., et al.
(author)
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The tuatara genome reveals ancient features of amniote evolution
- 2020
-
In: Nature. - : Springer Nature. - 0028-0836 .- 1476-4687. ; 584:7821, s. 403-409
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus)—the only living member of the reptilian order Rhynchocephalia (Sphenodontia), once widespread across Gondwana1,2—is an iconic species that is endemic to New Zealand2,3. A key link to the now-extinct stem reptiles (from which dinosaurs, modern reptiles, birds and mammals evolved), the tuatara provides key insights into the ancestral amniotes2,4. Here we analyse the genome of the tuatara, which—at approximately 5 Gb—is among the largest of the vertebrate genomes yet assembled. Our analyses of this genome, along with comparisons with other vertebrate genomes, reinforce the uniqueness of the tuatara. Phylogenetic analyses indicate that the tuatara lineage diverged from that of snakes and lizards around 250 million years ago. This lineage also shows moderate rates of molecular evolution, with instances of punctuated evolution. Our genome sequence analysis identifies expansions of proteins, non-protein-coding RNA families and repeat elements, the latter of which show an amalgam of reptilian and mammalian features. The sequencing of the tuatara genome provides a valuable resource for deep comparative analyses of tetrapods, as well as for tuatara biology and conservation. Our study also provides important insights into both the technical challenges and the cultural obligations that are associated with genome sequencing.
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| 11. |
- Andueza, Miren, et al.
(author)
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Connectivity in Reed Warblers Acrocephalus scirpaceus between breeding grounds in Europe and autumn stopover sites in Iberia
- 2013
-
In: Ardea. - : Netherlands Ornithologists' Union. - 0373-2266. ; 101:2, s. 133-140
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We determined the degree of connectivity in the Eurasian Reed Warbler Acrocephalus scirpaceus between breeding regions in central and northern Europe and stopover sites in Iberia, during the autumn migration. We used both recovery data and wing length analyses to achieve this. Biometric data were obtained during 2009 at 11 sampling localities in Iberia, which we amalgamated into four major migratory areas within the region (Central, Western, Eastern and Southwestern Iberia, hereafter CI, WI, EI, SW). From the EURING database, we selected birds captured at their breeding sites in Europe and recaptured in Iberia during the autumn migration. Reed Warblers passing through WI had shorter wings than those in CI, EI and SW, suggesting that birds in WI migrated shorter distances, a fact also supported by recovery data. Although Reed Warblers showed some population overlap when passing through Iberia, we found that birds passing through EI and CI came from areas further to the east (continental Europe) than those passing through WI (mainly British Isles), thus supporting parallel migration. Reed Warblers tended to converge in southwestern Iberia, suggesting an effect of nearby geographical barriers.
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| 12. |
- Ravikumar, Sadhana, et al.
(author)
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Ex vivo MRI atlas of the human medial temporal lobe : characterizing neurodegeneration due to tau pathology
- 2021
-
In: Acta Neuropathologica Communications. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2051-5960. ; 9:1
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Tau neurofibrillary tangle (NFT) pathology in the medial temporal lobe (MTL) is closely linked to neurodegeneration, and is the early pathological change associated with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). To elucidate patterns of structural change in the MTL specifically associated with tau pathology, we compared high-resolution ex vivo MRI scans of human postmortem MTL specimens with histology-based pathological assessments of the MTL. MTL specimens were obtained from twenty-nine brain donors, including patients with AD, other dementias, and individuals with no known history of neurological disease. Ex vivo MRI scans were combined using a customized groupwise diffeomorphic registration approach to construct a 3D probabilistic atlas that captures the anatomical variability of the MTL. Using serial histology imaging in eleven specimens, we labelled the MTL subregions in the atlas based on cytoarchitecture. Leveraging the atlas and neuropathological ratings of tau and TAR DNA-binding protein 43 (TDP-43) pathology severity, morphometric analysis was performed to correlate regional MTL thickness with the severity of tau pathology, after correcting for age and TDP-43 pathology. We found significant correlations between tau pathology and thickness in the entorhinal cortex (ERC) and stratum radiatum lacunosum moleculare (SRLM). When focusing on cases with low levels of TDP-43 pathology, we found strong associations between tau pathology and thickness in the ERC, SRLM and the subiculum/cornu ammonis 1 (CA1) subfields of the hippocampus, consistent with early Braak stages.
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| 13. |
- Ravikumar, Sadhana, et al.
(author)
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Improved Segmentation of Deep Sulci in Cortical Gray Matter Using a Deep Learning Framework Incorporating Laplace’s Equation
- 2023
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In: Information Processing in Medical Imaging - 28th International Conference, IPMI 2023, Proceedings. - 0302-9743 .- 1611-3349. - 9783031340475 ; 13939 LNCS, s. 692-704
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- When developing tools for automated cortical segmentation, the ability to produce topologically correct segmentations is important in order to compute geometrically valid morphometry measures. In practice, accurate cortical segmentation is challenged by image artifacts and the highly convoluted anatomy of the cortex itself. To address this, we propose a novel deep learning-based cortical segmentation method in which prior knowledge about the geometry of the cortex is incorporated into the network during the training process. We design a loss function which uses the theory of Laplace’s equation applied to the cortex to locally penalize unresolved boundaries between tightly folded sulci. Using an ex vivo MRI dataset of human medial temporal lobe specimens, we demonstrate that our approach outperforms baseline segmentation networks, both quantitatively and qualitatively.
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| 14. |
- Roh, Hyung S., et al.
(author)
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Integrating Color Deconvolution Thresholding and Weakly Supervised Learning for Automated Segmentation of Neurofibrillary Tangle and Neuropil Threads
- 2023
-
In: Medical Imaging 2023 : Digital and Computational Pathology - Digital and Computational Pathology. - 1605-7422. - 9781510660472 ; 12471
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Abnormally phosphorylated tau proteins are known to be a major indicator of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) with strong association with memory loss and cognitive decline. Automated generation of pixel-wise accurate neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs) and neuropil threads (NTs) segmentation is a challenging task, due to lack of ground truth segmentation data of these abnormal tau pathology. This problem is most prominent in the case of segmenting NTs, where the small threadlike morphology makes pixel-wise labeling a laborious task and unrealistic for large-scale studies. Lack of ground truth data poses a significant limitation for many learning-based methods to generate accurate segmentations of NFTs and NTs. This work presents an automated pipeline for pixel level segmentation of NFTs and NTs that does not rely on ground truth segmentation data. The pipeline is composed of four main steps: (1) color deconvolution is used to separate histopathology images into staining channels (DAB, Hematoxylin, and Eosin), (2) Otsu's thresholding is used on the DAB stain channel to generate pixel level segmentation of abnormal tau proteins staining, (3) a weakly-supervised learning paradigm (WildCat), using only global descriptors of images, is used to generate density maps of potential regions of NFTs and NTs, and (4) density maps and segmentations are then integrated using connected component analysis to localize NFTs and NTs in the detected tau segmentations. Our results show high global classification accuracy for NFTs (Acc:0.96) and NTs (Acc:0.91), and statistically significant distinctions when evaluating the percent area occupied of the detected NTs relative to expert ratings of NTs severity. Qualitative assessment of the NFTs and NTs results showed accurate pixel-level segmentations of the NFTs, while modest performance for NTs.
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| 15. |
- Yushkevich, Paul A., et al.
(author)
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Three-dimensional mapping of neurofibrillary tangle burden in the human medial temporal lobe
- 2021
-
In: Brain. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0006-8950 .- 1460-2156. ; 144:9, s. 2784-2797
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Tau protein neurofibrillary tangles are closely linked to neuronal/synaptic loss and cognitive decline in Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. Our knowledge of the pattern of neurofibrillary tangle progression in the human brain, critical to the development of imaging biomarkers and interpretation of in vivo imaging studies in Alzheimer's disease, is based on conventional two-dimensional histology studies that only sample the brain sparsely. To address this limitation, ex vivo MRI and dense serial histological imaging in 18 human medial temporal lobe specimens (age 75.3 ± 11.4 years, range 45 to 93) were used to construct three-dimensional quantitative maps of neurofibrillary tangle burden in the medial temporal lobe at individual and group levels. Group-level maps were obtained in the space of an in vivo brain template, and neurofibrillary tangles were measured in specific anatomical regions defined in this template. Three-dimensional maps of neurofibrillary tangle burden revealed significant variation along the anterior-posterior axis. While early neurofibrillary tangle pathology is thought to be confined to the transentorhinal region, we found similar levels of burden in this region and other medial temporal lobe subregions, including amygdala, temporopolar cortex, and subiculum/cornu ammonis 1 hippocampal subfields. Overall, the three-dimensional maps of neurofibrillary tangle burden presented here provide more complete information about the distribution of this neurodegenerative pathology in the region of the cortex where it first emerges in Alzheimer's disease, and may help inform the field about the patterns of pathology spread, as well as support development and validation of neuroimaging biomarkers.
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| 16. |
- Andueza, Miren, et al.
(author)
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Geographic variation in body mass of first-year Reed Warblers Acrocephalus scirpaceus in Iberia
- 2014
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In: Ornis Fennica. - 0030-5685. ; 91:2, s. 88-99
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- On their route to tropical Africa, European trans-Saharan migrants must cross two major geographical barriers, the Mediterranean Sea and the Sahara Desert, which necessitates the accumulation of large fuel loads. While northern Africa is the chief region where most migrants gain fuel for the Sahara crossing, Iberia is a target area to gain fuel before the sea crossing existing between Europe and Africa. Despite the large body of studies approach- ing the question of fuel accumulation before geographic barriers, it is still poorly known which factors apart from distance to a certain barrier shape the geographical pattern of fuel reserves. To investigate this question in detail we used data of first-year Reed Warblers from 12 localities within Iberia during the autumn migration period of 2009. We run linear models to analyze the effects of location in Iberia, date, and body size on body mass variation at each migratory flyway (eastern, central and western Iberia). Flight ranges from each site were also calculated. Our results showed that Reed Warblers in Iberia had the necessary fuel needed to arrive in northern Africa but not to tropical Africa. However, body mass patterns varied depending on the geographical region (eastern, central or west- ern Iberia). Date did not affect body mass in central and western Iberia, but in eastern Ibe- ria heavier birds tended to pass later. Thus, the factors shaping body mass of Reed War- blers in Iberia before the sea crossing to Africa seemed to be more complex than just the distance to this geographical barrier, with underlying stopover quality-associated factors possibly playing a relevant role.
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| 17. |
- Best, Myron G., et al.
(author)
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Swarm Intelligence-Enhanced Detection of Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer Using Tumor-Educated Platelets
- 2017
-
In: Cancer Cell. - : Elsevier. - 1535-6108 .- 1878-3686. ; 32:2, s. 238-252
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Blood-based liquid biopsies, including tumor-educated blood platelets (TEPs), have emerged as promising biomarker sources for non-invasive detection of cancer. Here we demonstrate that particle-swarm optimization (PSO)-enhanced algorithms enable efficient selection of RNA biomarker panels from platelet RNA sequencing libraries (n = 779). This resulted in accurate TEP-based detection of early- and late-stage non-small-cell lung cancer (n = 518 late-stage validation cohort, accuracy, 88%; AUC, 0.94; 95% CI, 0.92-0.96; p < 0.001; n = 106 early-stage validation cohort, accuracy, 81%; AUC, 0.89; 95% CI, 0.83-0.95; p < 0.001), independent of age of the individuals, smoking habits, whole-blood storage time, and various inflammatory conditions. PSO enabled selection of gene panels to diagnose cancer from TEPs, suggesting that swarm intelligence may also benefit the optimization of diagnostics readout of other liquid biopsy biosources.
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| 18. |
- Neto, Julio, et al.
(author)
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Phylogeography of a Habitat Specialist with High Dispersal Capability: The Savi’s Warbler Locustella luscinioides
- 2012
-
In: PLoS ONE. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1932-6203. ; 7:6
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In order to describe the influence of Pleistocene glaciations on the genetic structure and demography of a highly mobile, but specialized, passerine, the Savi’s Warbler (Locustella luscinioides), mitochondrial DNA sequences (ND2) and microsatellites were analysed in c.330 individuals of 17 breeding and two wintering populations. Phylogenetic, population genetics and coalescent methods were used to describe the genetic structure, determine the timing of the major splits and model the demography of populations. Savi’s Warblers split from its sister species c.8 million years ago and have two major haplotype groups that diverged in the early/middle Pleistocene. One of these clades originated in the Balkans and is currently widespread, showing strong evidence for population expansion; whereas the other is restricted to Iberia and remained stable. Microsatellites agreed with a genetic break around the Pyrenees, but showed considerable introgression and a weaker genetic structure. Both genetic markers showed an isolation-by-distance pattern associated with the population expansion of the eastern clade. Breeding populations seem to be segregated at the wintering sites, but results on migratory connectivity are preliminary. Savi’s Warbler is the only known migratory bird species in which Iberian birds did not expand beyond the Pyrenees after the last glaciation. Despite the long period of independent evolution of western and eastern populations, complete introgression occurred when these groups met in Iberia. Mitochondrial sequences indicated the existence of refugia-within-refugia in the Iberian Peninsula during the last glacial period, which is surprising given the high dispersal capacity of this species. Plumage differences of eastern subspecies seemed to have evolved recently through natural selection, in agreement with the glacial expansion hypothesis. This study supports the great importance of the Iberian Peninsula and its role for the conservation of genetic variation.
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| 19. |
- Ravikumar, Sadhana, et al.
(author)
-
Postmortem imaging reveals patterns of medial temporal lobe vulnerability to tau pathology in Alzheimer’s disease
- 2024
-
In: Nature Communications. - 2041-1723. ; 15:1
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Our current understanding of the spread and neurodegenerative effects of tau neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs) within the medial temporal lobe (MTL) during the early stages of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is limited by the presence of confounding non-AD pathologies and the two-dimensional (2-D) nature of conventional histology studies. Here, we combine ex vivo MRI and serial histological imaging from 25 human MTL specimens to present a detailed, 3-D characterization of quantitative NFT burden measures in the space of a high-resolution, ex vivo atlas with cytoarchitecturally-defined subregion labels, that can be used to inform future in vivo neuroimaging studies. Average maps show a clear anterior to poster gradient in NFT distribution and a precise, spatial pattern with highest levels of NFTs found not just within the transentorhinal region but also the cornu ammonis (CA1) subfield. Additionally, we identify granular MTL regions where measures of neurodegeneration are likely to be linked to NFTs specifically, and thus potentially more sensitive as early AD biomarkers.
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