Project description:BackgroundThe increasing human impact in Romanian caves raises the urgency of publishing a correct database of the strictly-adapted cave fauna. Previous attempts at indexing cave fauna and classifying caves by using their fauna opened many questions regarding the use of an incomplete list of cave species and mixed lists of troglobionts/stygobionts with troglophiles/stygophiles for ranking caves with priority for protection. It has also become obvious that there is a need to publish a list of Romanian cave species that are under threat. Cave species in Romania (and elsewhere) are endemic on small ranges, are unique and must be considered as important units for conservation. A cave must be equally protected if it has one or more rare and strictly endemic cave species. Although not exhaustive, we here provide the first checklist of Romanian troglobionts/stygobionts developed in the framework of the DARKFOOD and GROUNDWATERISK projects, coordinated by the "Emil Racovita" Institute of Speleology, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. The GIS application was used to complement the checklist of cave species with data on caves and surface environments above the caves. Until complete data on species diversity and population sizes are made available for each cave, measures of conservation can be implemented, based on the presence/absence of cave species, while classifications of caves for protection, based on the number of species, must be avoided. We also propose a list of Romanian caves with fauna that are under threat and a tentative Red List of Romanian troglobiont/stygobionts.New informationThis is the first database with identified troglobiont and stygobiont species of Romania, with a critical analysis of their distribution inside the country. A list of caves that need protection for their rare and unique species and a tentative Red List of Romanian cave fauna are also added. A total of 173 species were identified, of which 77 troglobionts and 96 stygobionts are currently registered in 366 caves. The database is divided into two parts, one part with a list of troglobionts, their revised systematic position, cave name, cave code and geographic region; and the second part with the same information on stygobionts. The database represents the contribution of many active researchers, who are the authors of this paper and of review publications of many other authors of the "Emil Racoviță" Institute of Speleology.
Project description:In recent years, there has been a major expansion in digital storage capability for hosting raw diffraction datasets. Naturally, the question has now arisen as to the benefits and costs for the preservation of such raw, i.e., experimental diffraction datasets. We describe the consultations made of the global structural chemistry, i.e., chemical crystallography community from the points of view of the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) Committee on Data, of which JRH was the Chair until very recently, and the IUCrData Raw Data Letters initiative, for which LKB is the Main Editor. The monitoring by the CCDC of CSD depositions which cite the digital object identifiers of raw diffraction datasets provides interesting statistics by probe (x-ray, neutron, or electron) and by home lab vs central facility. Clearly, a better understanding of the reproducibility of current analysis procedures is at hand. Policies for publication requiring raw data have been updated in IUCr Journals for macromolecular crystallography, namely, that raw data should be made available for a new crystal structure or a new method as well as the wwPDB deposition. For chemical crystallography, such a step requiring raw data archiving has not yet been recommended by the IUCr Commission on Structural Chemistry.
Project description:Recent advances in next-generation sequencing technologies have paved the path for a considerable amount of sequencing data at a relatively low cost. This has revolutionized the genomics and transcriptomics studies. However, different challenges are now created in handling such data with available bioinformatics platforms both in assembly and downstream analysis performed in order to infer correct biological meaning. Though there are a handful of commercial software and tools for some of the procedures, cost of such tools has made them prohibitive for most research laboratories. While individual open-source or free software tools are available for most of the bioinformatics applications, those components usually operate standalone and are not combined for a user-friendly workflow. Therefore, beginners in bioinformatics might find analysis procedures starting from raw sequence data too complicated and time-consuming with the associated learning-curve. Here, we outline a procedure for de novo transcriptome assembly and Simple Sequence Repeats (SSR) primer design solely based on tools that are available online for free use. For validation of the developed workflow, we used Illumina HiSeq reads of different tissue samples of Santalum album (sandalwood), generated from a previous transcriptomics project. A portion of the designed primers were tested in the lab with relevant samples and all of them successfully amplified the targeted regions. The presented bioinformatics workflow can accurately assemble quality transcriptomes and develop gene specific SSRs. Beginner biologists and researchers in bioinformatics can easily utilize this workflow for research purposes.
Project description:PTSD - Posttraumatic stress disorder. 33 samples taken from PMBCs of survivors of psychological trauma, in two time points: in ER, few hours after the truma, and four months later. Some of the patients devepled chronic PTSD (17 samples) and others recovered and set to be the Control group (16 samples). This is the raw data consists of 12,600 probes from U95A chip. Samples are labeled with 3 tags: P/C for PTSD or Control, ER/M4 - for time point of sample, D/ND for Decrement or Non-decrement symptoms over time. (e.g. sample 23C-M4-D was taken 4 months after trauma from patient 23 which belongs to the control group and showed decrease in symptoms) . Samples include the expression value, the GeneBank accession number and Affymetrix indication of valid calls. Keywords: other
Project description:A genetic contribution to develop chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is well established. However, the specific genes responsible for enhanced risk or host differences in susceptibility to smoke exposure remain poorly understood. The goal of this review is to provide a comprehensive literature overview on the genetics of COPD, highlight the most promising findings during the last few years, and ultimately provide an updated COPD gene list. Candidate gene studies on COPD and related phenotypes indexed in PubMed before January 5, 2012 are tabulated. An exhaustive list of publications for any given gene was looked for. This well-documented COPD candidate-gene list is expected to serve many purposes for future replication studies and meta-analyses as well as for reanalyzing collected genomic data in the field. In addition, this review summarizes recent genetic loci identified by genome-wide association studies on COPD, lung function, and related complications. Assembling resources, integrative genomic approaches, and large sample sizes of well-phenotyped subjects is part of the path forward to elucidate the genetic basis of this debilitating disease.