Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global threat, especially in fungal pathogens. To optimize the use of available antifungals, we need rapid detection and monitoring tools that rely on high-quality AMR mutation data. Here we present FungAMR, a resource based on manual curation of 501 published studies on AMR mutations in clinically and agriculturally relevant fungal pathogens resulting in 35,792 entries covering 208 drugs, 246 genes and 95 fungal species.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn signaling networks, protein-protein interactions are often mediated by modular domains that bind short linear motifs. The motifs' sequences affect many factors, among them affinity and specificity, or the ability to bind strongly and to the appropriate partners. Using Deep Mutational Scanning to create a mutant library, and protein complementation assays to measure protein-protein interactions, we determined the in vivo binding strength of a library of mutants of a binding motif on the MAP kinase kinase Pbs2, which binds the SH3 domain of the osmosensor protein Sho1 in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCowpea (Vigna unguiculata L. Walp., 2n = 2x = 22) is a vital dryland legume crop, renowned for its affordable dietary protein and essential nutrients for humans and animals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEscherichia coli recovered from dogs with clinical conditions such as urinary tract infections are often used to assess populations for resistance to critically important antimicrobials (CIAs). Despite the potential importance of such strains, the number of organisms scrutinised is very small and no information is obtained from the preponderance of normal, healthy dogs. Commensal E.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn response to novel anthropogenic stresses, defense strategies including resistance, tolerance, and escape can evolve. However, if the evolution of one or more of these strategies is limited by weak natural selection or a lack of genetic variation, then a mixed strategy (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe increasing resistance of bacteria to antimicrobials is a major threat to public health. This study investigates the prevalence of antimicrobial resistance, both phenotypic and genotypic, among Campylobacter isolates from Australian meat chickens in 2022, as a follow up to investigate trends since the last national surveillance undertaken in 2016. Isolates (n = 186) were obtained at slaughter from 200 pooled cecal samples taken from 1,000 meat chickens.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFYield increase in sorghum has been achieved primarily by increasing grain number. Scope exists to increase yield by increasing grain size; however, this has been limited by the negative correlation between grain size and grain number. Extending the duration of the grain-filling period has potential to enable increased grain size without the trade-off with grain number.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Enterotoxigenic F4 Escherichia coli (F4-ETEC) pose an economic threat to the swine industry through reduced growth, increased mortality and morbidity, and increased costs associated with treatment. Prevention and treatment of F4-ETEC often rely on antimicrobials; however, due to the threat of antimicrobial resistance, antimicrobial use is being minimized, and hence alternative control methods are needed. This study investigated the effects of postbiotics in the form of Lactobacillus acidophilus fermentation products (LFP) and Saccharomyces cerevisiae fermentation products (SFP), on pigs challenged with an F4 ETEC strain.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNPJ Antimicrob Resist
January 2025
Faced with the burden of increasing resistance to antifungals in many fungal pathogens and the constant emergence of new drug-resistant strains, it is essential to assess the importance of various resistance mechanisms. Fungi have relatively plastic genomes and can tolerate genomic copy number variation (CNV) caused by aneuploidy and gene amplification or deletion. In many cases, these genomic changes lead to adaptation to stressful conditions, including those caused by antifungal drugs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnderstanding how crop varieties acclimate to elevated temperatures is key to priming them for future climates. Here, we exposed two genotypes of Sorghum bicolor (one sensitive to heat shock (Sen) and one tolerant (Tol)) from multiple growth temperatures to a six-day heat shock (reaching 45°C), carrying out a suite of measurements before and during heat shock. Sen consistently reduced photosynthetic functioning during heat shock, while Tol increased its photosynthetic rate.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe roles and responsibilities of radiation safety officers (RSO), medical health physicists (MHP) and diagnostic medical physicists (DMP) have evolved significantly over the past 20 years. With the availability of enterprise software systems and aggregated data platforms for various radiologic healthcare systems, the roles of these professions are expanding beyond their original scopes in managing the Radioactive Materials License (RSO, MHP) and Machine Specific Physics Testing (DMP). Workers in medical radiation safety are transitioning from siloed workers working within their specific disciplines as new emerging technology and clinical care require these roles to evolve.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHow do we capture the breadth of behavior in animal movement, from rapid body twitches to aging? Using high-resolution videos of the nematode worm , we show that a single dynamics connects posture-scale fluctuations with trajectory diffusion and longer-lived behavioral states. We take short posture sequences as an instantaneous behavioral measure, fixing the sequence length for maximal prediction. Within the space of posture sequences, we construct a fine-scale, maximum entropy partition so that transitions among microstates define a high-fidelity Markov model, which we also use as a means of principled coarse-graining.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSeminal root angle (SRA) is an important root architectural trait associated with drought adaptation in cereal crops. To date, all attempts to dissect the genetic architecture of SRA in durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) have used large association panels or structured mapping populations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe assembly of two sorghum T2T genomes corrected the assembly errors in the current reference, uncovered centromere variation, boosted functional genomics research, and accelerated sorghum improvement.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClickable chemical tools are essential for studying the localization and role of biomolecules in living cells. For this purpose, alkyne-based close analogs of the respective biomolecules are of outstanding interest. Here, in the field of phytosterols, we present the first alkyne derivative of sitosterol, which fulfills the crucial requirements for such a chemical tool as follows: very similar in size and lipophilicity to the plant phytosterols, and correct absolute configuration at C-24.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Med Imaging (Bellingham)
March 2024
Purpose: Joint space width (JSW) is a common metric used to evaluate joint structure on plain radiographs. For the hand, quantitative techniques are available for evaluation of the JSW of finger joints; however, such techniques have been difficult to establish for the trapeziometacarpal (TMC) joint. This study aimed to develop a validated method for measuring the radiographic joint space of the healthy TMC joint.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Food animal AMR surveillance programs assess only small numbers of Escherichia coli (from 100 to 600 per animal class) nationally each year, severely limiting the evaluation of public health risk(s). Here we demonstrate an affordable approach for early detection of emerging resistance on a broad scale that can also accurately characterize spatial and temporal changes in resistance.
Methods: Caecal samples (n = 295) obtained from 10 meat poultry were screened using high-throughput robotics.
Mol Syst Biol
November 2023
How do the same mechanisms that faithfully regenerate complex developmental programmes in spite of environmental and genetic perturbations also allow responsiveness to environmental signals, adaptation and genetic evolution? Using the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans as a model, we explore the phenotypic space of growth and development in various genetic and environmental contexts. Our data are growth curves and developmental parameters obtained by automated microscopy. Using these, we show that among the traits that make up the developmental space, correlations within a particular context are predictive of correlations among different contexts.
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