Project description:Background. The bacterial foodborne pathogen Campylobacter jejuni is a common cause of acute gastroenteritis and is also associated with the postinfectious neuropathies, Guillain-Barré and Miller Fisher syndromes. This study described the use of multilocus sequence typing and DNA microarrays to examine the genetic content of a collection of South African C. jejuni strains, recovered from patients with enteritis, Guillain-Barré or Miller Fisher syndromes. Methodology/Principal Findings. The comparative genomic analysis by using multilocus sequence typing and DNA microarrays demonstrated that the South African strains with Penner heat-stable (HS) serotype HS:41 were clearly distinct from the other South African strains. Further analysis of the DNA microarray data demonstrated that the serotype HS:41 strains from South African GBS and enteritis patients are highly similar in gene content. Interestingly, the South African HS:41 strains were distinct in gene content when compared to serotype HS:41 strains from other geographical locations due to the presence of genomic islands, referred to as Campylobacter jejuni integrated elements. Only the genomic integrated element CJIE1, a Campylobacter Mu-like prophage, was present in the South African HS:41 strains whereas absent in the closely-related HS:41 strains from Mexico. A more distantly-related HS:41 strain from Canada possessed both genomic integrated elements CJIE1 and CJIE2. Conclusion/Significance. These findings demonstrated that these C. jejuni integrated elements may contribute to the differentiation of closely-related C. jejuni strains. In addition, the presence of bacteriophage-related genes in CJIE1 may probably contribute to increasing the genomic diversity of these C. jejuni strains. This comparative genomic analysis of the foodborne pathogen C. jejuni provides fundamental information that potentially could lead to improved methods for analyzing the epidemiology of disease outbreaks and their sources. Keywords: comparative genomic indexing analysis
Project description:To predict differentially expressed miRNAs between monosomy 3 and disomy 3, and to associate these miRNAs with the clinico-pathological parameters in South Asian Indian population with uveal melanoma (UM). The study consists of six uveal melanoma primary tumour tissues of South Asian-Indian population. These six tumours have been screened for chromosome 3 aberration using Chromogenic in-situ hybridisation (CISH). Thus, sample under the study includes, three each of monosomy 3 and disomy 3. The miRNA profiling was carried out from the tumor sections of formalin-fixed paraffin embedded eyeball samples. miRNA expression profile was obtained in monosomy 3 and disomy 3 samples, analysed by unsupervised analysis (Principal Component Analysis) and supervised analysis (Significance analysis of microarray). The select up-regulated and candidate miRNAs associated with monosomy 3 uveal melanoma tumors were validated further with qRT-PCR (n=86). Thus, this study indicates the role of miRNAs in UM tumor progression and their implication in predetermining the liver metastasis.
Project description:Time-course expression analysis profiling whole blood samples collected from healthy South African adolescents while monitoring their potential acquisition of a Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection.
Project description:We report the accuracy of various existing blood transcriptional signatures in distinguishing TB and LTBI individuals in a South Indian cohort
Project description:We sequenced and assembled de novo the coding transcriptomes in four species of Notothenioid fish: Neopagetopsis ionah (Jonah’s ice fish), Pseudochaenichtys georgianus (South Georgia icefish), Harpagifer antarcticus (Antarctic spiny plunderfish) and Parachaenichthys charcoti (Charcot’s dragonfish). We sampled 1-4 individuals and 1-14 tissues (brain, white muscle, liver, head kidney, trunk kidney, skin, heart, red muscle, spleen, ovary, testis, whole blood, gill, red blood cells) in each species, depending on tissue availability.
