Podcasts about GenBank

Jedes Jahr werden rund 6.000 Saatgut-Proben nach Norwegen in einen Saatgut-Tresor in Spitzbergen geliefert. Für die Artenvielfalt und die Ernährungs-Sicherheit sei dieser Tresor essenziell, sagt Manuela Nagel, Expertin für Kryokonservierung. Von WDR 5.

Alan is stranded out in the Pacific and Thom is left to present a show on genetics, a topic so confusing to him it may as well be magic. Luckily, friends of the show are on hand. Dr Heather Ritchie is tricked into co-hosting and we talk to Dr Johanna Weston about the things we can learn about the deep sea from genetic analysis.   Feel free to get in touch with us with questions or you own tales from the high seas on: podcast@armatusoceanic.com   Read the show notes and find out more about us at: www.armatusoceanic.com   Links ‘The Code' - INTERNATIONAL CODE OF ZOOLOGICAL NOMENCLATURE The genetic code database – GenBank   #deepsea #deepocean #podcast #science #marinebiology #sciencecommunication #scicomm #genetics #giantisopod #deepseacreatures #deepseapodcast #alanjamieson #heatherritchie #johannaweston #newspecies #discovery #pressurised

Sind alte Landsorten gesünder als moderne? Schmecken sie uns noch? Wie gelangen sie zurück ins Ladenregal und warum brauchen wir sie überhaupt? Julia Ecker wagt mit Christian Partl und Michael Traugott einen vorausschauenden Rückblick auf 100 Jahre Tiroler Genbank und ihre kalten Schätze in braunen Sackerln.

Vi börjar fundera på att skaffa kor. Eller ja, en ko och en oxe, eller tjur som det kallas lite beroende på var i Sverige du är. Dvs ett nötkreatur av honkön och ett av hankön.Tanken är att blir självförsörjande på mejeriprodukter, få kött och gödsel.Mattias vill åka på studiebesök och har hittat en kurs att gå. Dessutom skall det bli ett gårdsbesök i Junsele.Men frågorna är många. Vi diskuterar detta utifrån ett småbruksperspektiv där vi inte skall producera för att sälja. Vi har ju inte haft kor tidigare och det är ett stort beslut. Detta går att kalla för "Business case affärsområde ko".Skall vi ha kött eller mjölkdjur? Mjölkdjur men kombinationsras egentligenVilken ras skall vi ha?Fjäll eller fjällnära (Highland Cattle)Vad väger en vuxen koCa 250-300 kg (kon) Genbank eller inteVi väljer att hålla genbank.Hur länge är kon dräktig?282 dagar +/- 10 dagarHur länge diar kalven? 8-11 månader Kan avvänjas efter 2-4 månader (tyst avvänjning?). Se "Hur mycket äter kalven".Hur mycket mjölk är det kvar efter kalven diat?Hur länge mjölkar kon efter kalven slutat dia?Hur länge behöver den sina?När brunstar den efter att ha kalvat?Brunsten kommer med ca 21 dagars mellanrum och varar 12-24h. Hur mycket äter vuxna djur?ca 4 kg underhållsfoder per dag. Räkna med 1 kg hö per liter mjölk vilket är opraktiskt. Produktionsfoder (kraftfoder)  kan vara 2 delar krossat korn, 1 del krossat havre, 1 del krossade bönor/ärtor per liter mjölk. Tilll detta tillsätts (per ton kraftfoder) 9 kg kalkstensmjöl, 9 kg ångpreparerat benmjöl, 9 kg saltHur mycket äter kalven?Komjölk, 10% av kalvens vikt, och ljummet vatten, 1 del vatten oc tre delar mjölk.Efter en månad kraftfoder.Efter två till fyra månader vänjs den av med mjölk och får ett par kilo hö och 1.5 kg kraftfoder. Det bästa är fint bete.Efter 6 månader får den 3 kg hö och 1.5 kg kraftfoder om den inte går på beteNär skall kon betäckas?Det kan vara lämpligt att vänta till den andra brunsten, två månader efter kalvningen, innan man betäcker såkon fårvila sig efter kalvningen.När skall kalven slaktas?När betet tar slut? När den är ett år? När vi tycker är lämpligt?Hur ser årshjulet ut? Betäcks, kalvar, diar, mjölkas, sinar, betäcks.Om kon kalvar så att kalven har diat klart när betessäsongen startar, är det smart att slakta kalven när betessäsongen slutar? Eller är det bättre att fodra kalven över vintern för att den skall bli 12 månader? Eller  är det bättre att då låta kalven beta gräs till hösten för att slakta då?En fråga vi kom på i ett annat podavsnitt är att ta reda på hur stor del av vår hushållsbudget vi spenderar på mejerivaror. Mer om det i nästa veckas podd!Bli LilltorpKompis! Gillar du det vi gör? Stöd oss då gärna. För bara 19 kr i månaden kan du bli LilltorpKompis och stötta oss. Annars så uppskattar vi om du delar det här avsnittet i sociala medier. Eller om du tar en kompis telefon och subscribar oss i dennes podspelare :)

Link to bioRxiv paper: http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2022.08.30.505911v1?rss=1 Authors: Li, H., Huynh, T. N., Duong, M. T., Gow, J., Chang, C. C., Chang, T. Y. Abstract: Background: Cholesterol is essential for growth and maintenance of mammalian cells. It is stored as cholesteryl esters by the enzymes acyl-CoA:cholesterol acyltransferases 1 & 2 (ACAT 1 & 2 ) (Sterol O-acyltransferase 1 & 2 ; SOATs in GenBank). ACAT1 blockade (A1B) in macrophages ameliorates various pro-inflammatory responses elicited by lipopolysaccharides (LPS) or by cholesterol loading. In mouse and human brains, Acat1 expression dominates over Acat2 and Acat1 is elevated in many neurodegenerative diseases and in acute neuroinflammation. However, the possible effects of ACAT1 blockade in neuroinflammation, regulated by mediators such as Toll-Like Receptor 4 (TLR4), has not been studied. Methods: We conducted LPS-induced acute neuroinflammation experiments in control vs myeloid specific or neuron specific Acat1 knockout (KO) mice. Furthermore, we evaluated LPS-induced neuroinflammation in the microglial cell line N9 with or without pre-treatment of the small molecule ACAT1-specific inhibitor K-604. Biochemical and microscopy assays were used to monitor inflammatory responses and the fate of TLR4. Results: In vivo studies revealed that Acat1 inactivation in myeloid cell lineage, but not in neurons, markedly attenuated LPS-induced activation of various pro-inflammatory response genes in hippocampus and cortex. Studies in cell culture showed that pre-incubating cells with K-604 significantly ameliorated the pro-inflammatory responses induced by LPS. In cells acutely treated with LPS (for 30 min), pre-incubation with K-604 significantly increased the endocytosis of TLR4, the major transmembrane signaling receptor that mediates LPS-dependent acute neuroinflammation. In cells chronically treated with LPS (for 24-48 hrs), pre-incubation with K-604 significantly decreased the total TLR4 protein content, presumably due to enhanced trafficking of TLR4 to the lysosomes for degradation. For ex vivo evidence, we isolated microglia from adult mice, and found that in mice without LPS stimulation, myeloid Acat1 inactivation altered cellular distribution of TLR4; in mice with LPS stimulation, myeloid Acat1 inactivation decreased the cellular content of TLR4. Conclusion: Blocking ACAT1 in mouse microglia alters the fate of TLR4 and suppresses its ability to participate in pro-inflammatory signaling cascade in response to LPS. Copy rights belong to original authors. Visit the link for more info Podcast created by PaperPlayer

Mit Rad und Bahn - Umweltfreundlich in den Urlaub; Schulbücher: Nachholbedarf beim Thema Inklusion; Freie Zeit kaufen: Tut richtig gut; Pille absetzen: Geht's wirklich besser ohne künstliche Hormone?; Die Bedeutung der ukrainischen Pflanzen-Genbank; Biber in Nordrhein-Westfalen; Moderation: Franz-Josef Hansel. Von WDR 5.

Morio-Muskat, Bacchus, Regent oder Domina -> Alles Züchtungen aus der Hand des Geilweilerhofs in Siebeldingen. Ein Institut mit prägender Wirkung auf den Pfälzer Weinbau! Gemeinsam mit Hr. Dr. Oliver Trapp, Rebzüchter am Institut für Rebenzüchtungen, Geilweilerhof entdecken wir die Welt der Rebenzüchtung: - Wie entstanden die heutigen Weinreben? - Was macht die Rebenzüchtung? - Welche Rollen spielen die Nachhaltigkeit und der Klimawandel bei der Rebenzüchtung? - Wie sieht eine Genbank für Reben aus? und wir lernen den Rebenlehrpfad am Geilweilerhof kennen. Viel Spaß beim Hören! INFOS ZUM PODCAST: Den Dubbecast gibt es auf allen Streamingdiensten, auf Youtube und www.dubbecast.de INFOS ZUM GEILWEILERHOF: Mehr vom Geilweilerhof in Siebeldingen gibt es auf der Seite des Fördervereins Geilweilerhof: https://geilweilerhof.eu/ und auf der Homepage des Julius Kühn-Institut: https://www.julius-kuehn.de/zr/ Ein Podcast der Dubbemedia UG (haftungsbeschränkt). Impressum: www.dubbecast.de/impressum

As we say here on The Harry Glorikian Show, technology is changing everything about healthcare works—and the reason we keep talking about it month after month is that the changes are coming much faster than they ever did in the past. Each leap in innovation enables an even bigger leap just one step down the road. Another way of saying this is that technological change today feels exponential. And there's nobody who can explain exponential change better than today's guest, Azeem Azhar.Azeem produces a widely followed newsletter about technology called Exponential View. And last year he published a book called The Exponential Age: How Accelerating Technology is Transforming Business, Politics, and Society. He has spent his whole career as an entrepreneur, investor, and writer trying to help people understand what's driving the acceleration of technology — and how we can get better at adapting to it. Azeem argues that most of our social, business, and political institutions evolved for a period of much slower change—so we need to think about how to adapt these institutions to be more nimble. If we do that right, then maybe we can apply the enormous potential of all these new technologies, from computing to genomics, in ways that improve life for everyone.Please rate and review The Harry Glorikian Show on Apple Podcasts! Here's how to do that from an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch:1. Open the Podcasts app on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. 2. Navigate to The Harry Glorikian Show podcast. You can find it by searching for it or selecting it from your library. Just note that you'll have to go to the series page which shows all the episodes, not just the page for a single episode.3. Scroll down to find the subhead titled "Ratings & Reviews."4. Under one of the highlighted reviews, select "Write a Review."5. Next, select a star rating at the top — you have the option of choosing between one and five stars. 6. Using the text box at the top, write a title for your review. Then, in the lower text box, write your review. Your review can be up to 300 words long.7. Once you've finished, select "Send" or "Save" in the top-right corner. 8. If you've never left a podcast review before, enter a nickname. Your nickname will be displayed next to any reviews you leave from here on out. 9. After selecting a nickname, tap OK. Your review may not be immediately visible.That's it! Thanks so much.Full TranscriptHarry Glorikian: Hello. I'm Harry Glorikian. Welcome to The Harry Glorikian Show, the interview podcast that explores how technology is changing everything we know about healthcare.Artificial intelligence. Big data. Predictive analytics. In fields like these, breakthroughs are happening way faster than most people realize. If you want to be proactive about your own health and the health of your loved ones, you'll need to learn everything you can about how medicine is changing and how you can take advantage of all the new options.Explaining this approaching world is the mission of my new book, The Future You. And it's also our theme here on the show, where we bring you conversations with the innovators, caregivers, and patient advocates who are transforming the healthcare system and working to push it in positive directions.So, when you step back and think about it, why is it that people like me write books or make podcasts about technology and healthcare?Well, like I just said, it's because tech is changing everything about healthcare works—and the changes are coming much faster than they ever did in the past.In fact, the change feels like it's accelerating. Each leap in innovation enables an even bigger leap just one step down the road.Another way of saying this is that technological change today feels exponential.And there's nobody who can explain exponential change better than today's guest, Azeem Azhar.Azeem produces a widely followed newsletter about technology called Exponential View.And last year he published a book called The Exponential Age: How Accelerating Technology is Transforming Business, Politics, and Society.He has spent his whole career as an entrepreneur, investor, and writer trying to help people understand what's driving the acceleration of technology — and how we can get better at adapting to it.Azeem argues that most of our social, business, and political institutions evolved for a period of much slower change. So we need to think about how to adapt these institutions to be more nimble.If we do that right, then maybe we can apply the enormous potential of all these new technologies, from computing to genomics, in ways that improve life for everyone.Azeem and I focus on different corners of the innovation world. But our ideas about things like the power of data are very much in sync. So this was a really fun conversation. Here's Azeem Azhar.Harry Glorikian: Azeem, welcome to the show.Azeem Azhar: Harry, what a pleasure to be here.Harry Glorikian: I definitely want to give you a chance to sort of talk about your work and your background, so we really get a sense of who you are. But I'd first like to ask a couple of, you know, big picture questions to set the stage for everybody who's listening. You like this, your word and you use it, "exponential," in your branding and almost everything you're doing across your platform, which is what we're going to talk about. But just for people who don't, aren't maybe familiar with that word exponential. What does that word mean to you? Why do you think that that's the right word, word to explain how technology and markets are evolving today?Azeem Azhar: Such a great question. I love the way you started with the easy questions. I'm just kidding because it's it's hard. It's hard to summarize short, but in a brief brief statement. So, you know, exponential is this idea that comes out of math. It is the idea that something grows by a fixed proportion in any given time period. An interest-bearing savings account, 3 percent growth or in the old days, we'd get 3 percent per annum, three percent compounded. And compound interest is really powerful. It's what your mom and your dad told you. Start saving early so that when you're a bit older, you'll have a huge nest egg, and it never made sense to us. And the idea behind an exponential is that these are processes which, you know, grow by that certain fixed percentage every year. And so the amount they grow grows every time. It's not like going from the age of 12 to 13 to 14 to 15 were actually proportionately—you get less older every year because when you go from 15 to 16, you get older by one fifteenth of your previous age. And when you go from 50 to fifty one, it's by one 50th, which is a smaller proportion. Someone who is growing in age exponentially would be growing by, say, 10 percent every year. So you go from 10 to 11 and that's by one year. From 20, you go to 22, two years. From 30 to 33. So that's the idea of an exponential process. It's kind of compound interest. But why I use the phrase today to describe what's going on in the economy and in the technologies that drive the economy, is that many of the key technologies that we currently rely on and will rely on as they replace old industrial processes are improving at exponential rates on a price-performance basis.Azeem Azhar: That means that every year you get more of them for less, or every year what you got for the the same dollar you get much more. And I specifically use a threshold, and that threshold is to say essentially it's an exponential technology if it's improving by double digits, 10 percent or more every year on a compounding basis for decades. And many of the technologies that I look at increased by improve by 30, 40, 50, 60 percent or more every year, which is pretty remarkable. The reverse of that, of course, is deflation, right? These capabilities are getting much cheaper. And I think the reason that's important and the reason it describes the heartbeat of our economies is that we're at a point in development of, you know, sort of economic and technological development where these improvements can be felt. They're viscerally felt across a business cycle. Across a few years, in fact. And that isn't something that we have reliably and regularly seen in any previous point in history. The idea that this pace of change can be as fast as it as it is. And on the cover of my book The Exponential Age, which I'm holding up to you, Harry. The thing about the curve is is that it starts off really flat and a little bit boring, and you would trade that curve for a nice, straight, sharp line at 45 degrees. And then there's an inflection point when it goes suddenly goes kind of crazy and out of control. And my argument is that we are now past that inflection point and we are in that that sort of vertical moment and we're going to have to contend with it.Harry Glorikian: Yeah, I mean, we are mentally aligned. And I try to talk to people about this. I mean, when we were doing the genome project that Applied Biosystems, you know, when we had finished, I think it was 2 percent or 4 percent of the genome, everybody's like, Oh, you have like ninety something [to go], and they couldn't see the exponential curve. And then we were done like five years later. And so it's it's this inability of the human mind. You know, it's really not designed to do that, but we're not designed to see exponential shift. We're sort of looking around that corner from an evolutionary perspective to see what's happening. But, you know? Exponential growth is not a new concept, if you think about, you know, really, I think the person that brought it to the forefront was Gordon Moore, right? With, you know, how semiconductor chips were going to keep doubling every two years and cost was going to stay flat. And you know, how do you see it playing out? Today, what is so different right now, or say, in the past two, three, four, five years. What you can see going forward that. May not have been as obvious 10 or 15 years ago.Azeem Azhar: I mean, it is an idea that's been around with us for a long time. You know, arguably Thomas Malthus, the British scholar in the 18th century who worried about the exponential growth of the population destroying the land's carrying capacity and ability to produce crops. And of course, we have the sort of ancient Persian and Hindu stories about the vizier and the chessboard, who, you know, puts a grain of rice and doubles on each square and doubles at each time. So it's an idea that's been around for a while. The thing that I think has happened is that it's back to its back to that point, the kink, the inflection in the curve. The point at which in the story of the chess, the king gets so angry with his vizier that he chops off his head. The point with the semiconductors, where the chips get so powerful and so cheap that computing is everything, and then every way in which we live our lives is mediated through these devices. And that wasn't always the way. I mean, you and I, Harry, are men of a certain age, and we remember posting letters and receiving mail through the letterbox in the morning. And there was then, some 15 years later, there were, or 20 years later, there was a fax, right? I mean, that's what it looked like.Azeem Azhar: And the thing that's different now from the time of Gordon Moore is that that what he predicted and sort of saw out as his clock speed, turns out to be a process that occurs in many, many different technology fields, not just in computing. And the one that you talked about as well, genome sequencing. And in other areas like renewable energy. And so it becomes a little bit like...the clock speed of this modern economy. But the second thing that is really important is to ask that question: Where is the bend in the curve? And the math purists amongst your listeners will know that an exponential curve has no bend. It depends on where you zoom in. Whatever however you zoom, when you're really close up, you're really far away. You'll always see a band and it will always be in a different place. But the bend that we see today is the moment where we feel there is a new world now. Not an old world. There are things that generally behave differently, that what happens to these things that are connected to exponential processes are not kind of geeks and computer enthusiasts are in Silicon Valley building. They're happening all over the world. And for me, that turning point happens some point between 2011, 2012 and 2015, 2016. Because in 2009, America's largest companies wereAzeem Azhar: not in this order, Exxon, Phillips, Wal-Mart, Conoco... Sorry, Exxon Mobil, Wal-Mart, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, General Motors, General Electric, Ford, AT&T, Valero. What do all of them have in common? They are all old companies are all built on three technologies that emerged in the late 19th century. The car or the internal combustion engine, the telephone and electricity. And with the exception of Wal-Mart, every one of those big companies was founded between about 1870 and sort of 1915. And Wal-Mart is dependent on the car because you needed suburbs and you needed large cars with big trunks to haul away 40 rolls of toilet paper. So, so and that was a century long shift. And then if you look out four years after 2009, America's largest firms, in fact, the world's largest firms are all Exponential Age firms like the Tencent and the Facebooks of this world. But it's not just that at that period of time. That's the moment where solar power became for generating electricity became cheaper than generating electricity from oil or gas in in most of the world. It's the point at which the price to sequence the human genome, which you know is so much better than I do, diminished below $1000 per sequence. So all these things came together and they presented a new way of doing things, which I call the Exponential Age.Harry Glorikian: Yeah, in my last book. I, you know, I do state that the difference between evolution and revolution is time, right? If you wait long enough, things happen evolutionarily, but at the speed that things are changing, it feels revolutionary and in how it's affecting everybody. So let's rewind and talk about your background. You've been active as a business columnist, as a journalist, a startup founder, a CEO, a leader of corporate innovation, incubators at Reuters and a venture capital partner. Lately you've built what eems like a very busy career around books and talks and podcasts and all around this theme of accelerating technologies, I'd love to hear how you how you first got interested in all these themes about technological change. You know, how society can manage this change? I know you were in Oxford. You got your master's degree in the famous PPE program. The politics, philosophy and economics. You know, was it soon after that that you went down this road? Or is Oxford where it all started?Azeem Azhar: It started well before then in, in a weird way. So, so you know, my interest really is between sits between technology and an economic institutions and society. And I, I was born, like most of us are, to two parents, and my parents were working in in Zambia in the early 70s, and my dad was working on helping this newly independent country develop economic institutions. It didn't have them and it needed them to go through that sort of good institutions, make for healthy economies, make for social welfare and sort of civil politics. That's the argument. So he was out there doing all of that. And I was born the year after Intel released its 4004 chip, which is widely regarded as the sort of the chip that kicked off the personal computing revolution. And so, so in the backdrop of people talking about development and development economics and being curious about my own personal story, I was exposed to these ideas. I mean, you don't understand them when you're eight or 10 and you know, but you're exposed to them and you have an affiliation to them and so on. And at the same time, computers were entering into the popular consciousness.Azeem Azhar: You know, you had C-3PO, the robot and computers in Star Trek, and I saw a computer in 1979 and I had one from 1981. And so my interest in these things, these two tracks was start set off quite early on and I really, really loved the computing. And I did, you did notice, but you don't necessarily understand that, why computers are getting more and more powerful. My first computer only had one color. Well, it had two, white and black. And my second could manage 16 at some time, probably not 16. Eight out of a palette of 16 at any given time. And they get better and better. And so alongside my life were computers getting faster. I'm learning to program them and discovering the internet and that, I think, has always sat alongside me against this kind of family curiosity. I suspect if my parents had been, I don't know, doctors, I would have been in your field in the field of bioinformatics and applying exponential technologies to health care. And if my parents had been engineers, I would have been doing something that intersected engineering and computing.Harry Glorikian: Yeah, no, it's you know, it's interesting, I remember when we got our first chip, when I was first learning about, you know, computers like it was, you know, eight bits, right? And then 16 bits and oh my god, what can we do with them? And we were building them, and I actually have to get you a copy of my new book because I think if you read the first chapter and what you just said, you'll be like, Oh my God, we have more in common than we may think, even though you know you're where you are and I'm in the health care field to. But you were co-founder and CEO of a company, I believe that was called PeerIndex, which was a startup in the late 2000s. And even back then, you were trying to quantify people's influence on different social media platforms. And I'm trying to remember like, do I even know what the social media platform was back in 2000? It seems like so long ago, and you successfully sold it to Brandwatch in, like, 2014. What did that experience sort of teach you about, you know, the bigger issues and how technology impacts society and vice versa? Because I have to believe that you know your hands on experience and what you were seeing has to have changed the way that you thought about how fast this was going and what it was going to do.Azeem Azhar: Oh, that is an absolutely fantastic, fantastic question. And. You know, you really get to the heart of all of the different things that you learn as a founder. When we when I started PeerIndex, the idea was really that people were going on to the internet with profiles that they maintained for themselves. So up until that point, apart from people who had been really early on the internet, like you and I who used Usenet and then early web pages for ourselves, no one really had a presence. And these social apps like MySpace and Twitter and LinkedIn and Facebook show up and they start to give people a presence. And we felt that initially there would be a clear problem around trying to discover people because at the time the internet was an open network. You could look at anyone's page on Facebook. There weren't these walled gardens. And we looked down on them. So we thought initially that there would be a an opportunity to build some kind of expertise system where I could say, "Listen, find me something that someone who knows something about, you know, sushi restaurants in Berlin." And it would help me find that person. I could connect their profile and talk to them because it was the really early, naive days before Facebook or LinkedIn had advertising on them. And we could we kind of got the technology to work, but actually the market was moving and we couldn't land that.Azeem Azhar: And so we had to kind of pivot, as you do several times, ultimately, until we became this kind of influence analytics for marketers. But the few things that I learned. So the first one was how quickly new players in a market will go from being open to being closed. So it was 2011 when Facebook started to put the shutters down on its data and become a closed garden. And they realized that the network effect and data is what drove them forward. And the second thing was the speed with which what we did changed. So when we were getting going and doing all of this kind of analytics on Twitter and Facebook. They didn't really have data science teams. In fact, Twitter's first data scientists couldn't get a US visa and ended up helping, working with us for several months. And I think back to the fact that we used five or six different core technologies for our data stores in a seven-year period. And in that time, what we did became so much more powerful. So when we started, we had maybe like 50,000 people in this thing, it was really hard to get it to work. The entire company's resources went on it. At one point we were we had about 100 million people in the data in our dataset, or 100 million profiles in the data.Azeem Azhar: They were all public, by the way. I should say this is all public data and it was just like a search engine in a way. And in order to update the index, we would need to run processes on thousands of computers and it would take a big, big, big servers, right? And it would take a day. Yeah. By the time we sold the company, a couple more iterations of Moore's Law, some improvements in software architecture, we were updating 400 million user profiles in real time on a couple of computers. Yep, so not only do we quadrupled the dataset, we had increased its, sort of decreased its latency. It was pretty much real time and we had reduced the amount of computers we needed by a factor of about 400. And it was a really remarkable evolution. And that gets me to the third lesson. So the second lesson is really all about that pace of change in the power of Moore's law. And then the third lesson was really that my engineers learned by doing. They figured out how to do this themselves. And whereas I was sort of roughly involved in the first design, by the time we got to the fifth iteration this was something of a process that was entirely run by some brilliant young members of the team.Harry Glorikian: Yeah, I mean, you've got to actually cook something to understand how to do it and taste it and understand how it's going to come out. So your new book, The Exponential Age, came out this fall. You know, in the first chapter, you sort of identify two main problems, right? One is how do we perceive technology and then or the way we relate to technology and. Can you describe the two problems as you see them and maybe, maybe even hint a little? I don't want I don't want if people want to buy the book, I want them to buy it, but maybe hint that the solution?Azeem Azhar: Yeah. Well, I mean, there are there are a couple of issues here, right, in the Exponential Age. The first is that technology creates all sorts of new potentials and we live them. We're doing this over Zoom, for example. Right. And there are. But the arrival of new potentials always means that there's an old system that is going to be partially or entirely replaced. And so I describe that process as the exponential gap. It is the gap between the potentials of the new and the way in which most of us live our lives. And the thing is, the reason I say "the way most of us live our lives" is because our lives, even in America, which doesn't like its sort of government, are governed by institutions and by regulations. You know, when you when you start to cook, you wash your hands, right? There's no law. That's just an institution, its common habit. If you have teenage kids like I do, you're battling with the fact that people are meant to talk over dinner, not stare at their phones. In the UK there is an institution that says on a red light traffic signal, you never turn. You wait. It's not like the US where you can do that. Now some of these institutions are codified like our traffic laws, and some are not.Azeem Azhar: There are then more formal institutions of different types like, you know, the Fed or NATO or the Supreme Court. And the purpose of institutions, social, formal, legal, informal is to make life easier to live, right? Right, you don't have to remember to put our pants on. I will read a rule that says, put your pants on before you leave the house. It's like you just put them on and everybody kind of knows it. And there's no law that says you should or shouldn't, right. So they become very valuable. But the thing is that the institutions in general, by their nature, don't adapt to at the speed with which these new technologies do adapt. And even slower moving technologies like the printing press really upended institutions. I mean, Europe went into centuries of war just after the printing press emerged. So, so the central heart of the challenge is, on the one hand, we have these slightly magical technologies that do amazing things, but they somewhat break our institutions and we have to figure out how we get our institutions to adapt better. But there's a second complication to all of this, which is that which is, I think, more one that's about historical context. And that complication is that the way we have talked about technology, especially in the West in the last 40 or 50 years, has been to suggest that technology is deterministic.Azeem Azhar: We're a bit like people in a pre-med, pre-science era who just say the child got the pox and the child died. We say the technology arrived and now we must use it. The iPhone arrived and we must use it. TheFacebook arrived, and we must use it. We've gotten into this worldview that technology is this sort of unceasing deterministic force that arrives from nowhere and that a few men and women in Silicon Valley control, can harness it. We've lost sight of the fact that technology is something that we as members of society, as business people, as innovators, as academics, as parents get to shape because it is something that we build ourselves. And that for me was a second challenge. And what I sought to do in the book, as I was describing, the Exponential Age is not only persuade people that we are in the Exponential Age, but also describe how it confuses our institutions broadly defined and also explain why our response has sometimes been a bit poor. Some a large part of which I think is connected to putting technology on a particular pedestal where we don't ask questions of it. And then hopefully at the end of this, I do give some suggestions.Harry Glorikian: Well, it's interesting, right, I've had the pleasure of giving talks to different policy makers, and I always tell them like, you need to move faster, you need to implement policy. It's good to be a little wrong and then fix it. But don't be so far behind the curve that you, you know, some of these things need corralling otherwise, they do get a lot of, you know, get out of hand. Now in health care, we have almost the opposite. We're trying to break the silos of data so that we can improve health care, improve diagnosis, improve outcomes for patients, find new drugs. Harry Glorikian: So I'm going to, I'm going to pivot there a little bit and sort of dive a little deeper into life sciences and health care, right, which is the focus of the show, right? And in the book, you you say that our age is defined by the emergence of several general-purpose technologies, which I'm totally aligned with, and that they are all advancing exponentially. And you actually say biology is one of them. So first, what are the most dramatic examples in your mind of exponential change in life sciences? And how do you believe they're affecting people's health?Azeem Azhar: Well, I mean, if you got the Moderna or BioNTech vaccination, you're a lucky recipient of that technology and it's affecting people's health because it's putting a little nanobots controlled by Bill Gates in your bloodstream to get you to hand over all your bitcoin to him, is the other side of the problem. But I mean, you know, I mean, more seriously, the Moderna vaccine is an example that I give at the at the end of the book comes about so remarkably quickly by a combination of these exponential technologies. I'm just going to look up the dates. So on the 6th of January 2020, there's a release of the sequence of a coronavirus genome from from a respiratory disease in Wuhan. Yeah, and the the genome is just a string of letters, and it's put on GenBank, which is a bit like an open-source story storage for gene sequences. People started to download it, and synthetic genes were rapidly led to more than 200 different vaccines being developed. Moderna, by February the 7th, had its first vials of its vaccine. That was 31 days after the initial release of the sequence and another six days they finalized the sequence of the vaccine and 25 more days to manufacture it. And within a year of the virus sequence being made public, 24 million people had had one dose of it.Azeem Azhar: Now that's really remarkable because in the old days, by which I mean February 2020, experts were telling us it would take at least 18 months to figure out what a vaccine might even look like, let alone tested and in place. So you see this dramatic time compression. Now what were the aspects at play? So one aspect at play was a declining cost of genome sequencing, which the machines are much cheaper. It's much cheaper to sequence these samples. That means that the entire supply chain of RNA amplifiers and so on a more widely available. This then gets shared on a website that can be run at very few dollars. It can get access to millions of people. The companies who are doing the work are using synthetic genes, which means basically writing out new bases, which is another core technology that's going through an exponential cost decline. And they're using a lot of machine learning and big data in order to explore the phenomenally complex biological space to zero in on potential candidates. So that the whole thing knits together a set of these different technologies in a very, very powerful and quite distributed combination.[musical interlude]Harry Glorikian: Let's pause the conversation for a minute to talk about one small but important thing you can do, to help keep the podcast going. And that's to make it easier for other listeners discover the show by leaving a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.All you have to do is open the Apple Podcasts app on your smartphone, search for The Harry Glorikian Show, and scroll down to the Ratings & Reviews section. Tap the stars to rate the show, and then tap the link that says Write a Review to leave your comments. It'll only take a minute, but you'll be doing us a huge favor.And one more thing. If you like the interviews we do here on the show I know you'll like my new book, The Future You: How Artificial Intelligence Can Help You Get Healthier, Stress Less, and Live Longer. It's a friendly and accessible tour of all the ways today's information technologies are helping us diagnose diseases faster, treat them more precisely, and create personalized diet and exercise programs to prevent them in the first place.The book is now available in Kindle format. Just go to Amazon and search for The Future You by Harry Glorikian.And now, back to the show.[musical interlude]Harry Glorikian: Let's step back here for just a minute. So I wonder if you have a thesis—from a fundamental technology perspective, what's really driving the exponential technological change, right? Do you think that that, is there a force maybe outside of semiconductors that are driving biology forward? What's your view? I mean, if you took the computational tools away from life sciences and drug developers, would we still see the same rapid advances in that area, and the answer could be no, because I can tell you my thoughts after you tell me yours.Azeem Azhar: Well, we wouldn't see the same advances, but we would still see significant advances and it's hard to unpack one from another. But if you look at the I mean, you worked on the genome sequencing stuff. So you know that there's a lot of interesting aspects to do with the reagents that are used the electrochemistry, the arrays and making little ongoing improvements in those areas. There are also key improvements in the actual kind of automation of the processes between each to each step, and some of those automations are not, they're not kind of generalized robots, soft robots, they are trays that are being moved at the right time from one spot to another, stop on a kind of lab bench. So you'd still see the improvements, but you wouldn't see the same pace that we have seen from computing. And for two reasons. So one is that kind of the core ability to store lots of this data, which runs into the exabytes and then sift through it, is closely connected to storage capacity and computation capability. But also even the CAD package that the person used to redraw the designs for the new laboratory bench to handle the new vials of reagents required a computer. But yes, but you know, so what? What's your understanding as someone who is on the inside and, note to listener, that was a bit cruel because Harry is the expert on this one!Harry Glorikian: And oh no, no, no, no. I, you know, it's interesting, right… I believe that now that information is more readily available, which again drives back to sensors, technology, computation, speed as well as storage is changing what we do. Because the information feeds our ability to generate that next idea. And most of this was really hard to get. I mean, back in the day, I mean, if you know, now I wear a medical device on my on my wrist. I mean, you know this, I look as a as a data storage device, right? Data aggregation device. And this I look at it more as a coach, right? And but the information that it's getting, you know, from me on a momentary basis is, I mean, one of the companies I helped start, I mean, we have trillions of heartbeats, trillions. Can you imagine the analytics from a machine learning and, you know, A.I. perspective that I can do on that to look for? Is there a signal of a disease? Can I see sleep apnea or one of the I could never have done that 10 years ago.Azeem Azhar: I mean, even 10, how about I mean, five maybe, right? I mean, the thing that I find remarkable about about all of this is what it's told me. So I went from I used to check my bloods every year and so I would get a glucose reading or an insulin reading every year. I then put a CGM on continuous glucose monitor and I wore it for 16 to 18 weeks and it gave me a reading every 15 months minutes. So I literally went from once a year, which is 365 times 96, 15 minute intervals. So it's like a 40,000-fold improvement. I went to from to that every 15 minutes, and it was incredible and amazing and changed my life in so many good ways, which I'm happy to go into later. But the moment I put the 15 minute on, I kid you not, within an hour I was looking for the streaming cGMPs that give you real time feed. No 15-minute delay. And there is one that Abbott makes through a company, sells through a company called Super Sapiens. But because suddenly I was like a pilot whose altimeter doesn't just tell them you're in the air or you've hit the ground, which is what happened when I used to go once a year, I've gone to getting an altitude reading every minute, which is great, but still not brilliant for landing the plane to where I could get this every second. And this would be incredible. And I find that really amazing. I just I just and what we can then do with that across longitudinal data is just something else.Harry Glorikian: We're totally aligned. And, you know, jumping back to the deflationary force of all this. Is. What we can do near-patient, what we can do at home, what we can do at, you know, I'll call it CVS, I think by you, it would be Boots. But what these technologies bring to us and how it helps a person manage themselves more accurately or, you know, more insightfully, I think, brings us not to chronic health, but we will be able to keep people healthier, longer and at a much, much lower cost than we did before because. As you know, every time we go to the hospital, it's usually big machines, very expensive, somebody to do the interpretation. And now if we can get that information to the patient themselves and AI and machine learning can make that information easier for them to interpret. They can actually do something actionable that that that makes a difference.Azeem Azhar: I mean, I think it's a really remarkable opportunity with a big caveat that where we can look at look historically, so you know, we're big fans of the Hamilton musical in my household. And if you go back to that time, which is only a couple of hundred years ago and you said to them, this is the kind of magic medicine they'll have in the US by 2020. I mean, it's space tech. It's alien space tech. You know, you can go in and we measure things they didn't even know could be measured, right, like the level of antibodies in the bloodstream. And you can get that done in an hour almost anywhere, right? Yeah. And it's really quite cheap because GDP per capita in the per head in the US is like $60,000 a year. And I can go and get my blood run. A full panel run for $300 in London, one of the most expensive cities in the world. 60 grand a year. $300. Well, surely everybody's getting that done. And yet and you know this better than me. Right. You know this better than me that despite that, we don't have everyone getting their bloods done because it's just so cheap, right, there are other structural things that go on about who gets access, and I think America is a great example of this because for all the people who read, we are aware of Whoop, and have, you know, biological ages that are 10 years younger than their chronological age, you've also got like a much, much larger incidence of deaths by drug overdose and chronic obesity and sort of diseases of inflammation and so on. And that's despite having magical the magical space technology of the 2020s. So the question I think we have to have is why would we feel that next year's optoelectronic sensors from Rockly or the Series 7 or Series 8 Apple Watch will make the blindest bit of difference to health outcomes for the average American.Harry Glorikian: Now, I totally agree with you, I mean, I think half of it is education, communication. You know, there's a lot of social and political and policy and communication issues that exist, and actually that was going to be my next, one of my next questions for you, which is: What are some of the ways that exponential change challenges our existing social and political structures? And you know, do you see any—based on all the people that you've talked to, you know, writing the book, et cetera—insights of how we're going, what those are and maybe some ideas about how we can move beyond them.Azeem Azhar: Hmm. Well, I mean, on the health care side, I think one of the most important issues is and this is I mean, look, you've got an American audience and your health system is very different to, let's just say everyone.Harry Glorikian: Actually, the audience is global. So everybody, I have people that all over the world that listen to this.Azeem Azhar: Fair enough. Okay. Even better, so the rest of the world will understand this point, perhaps more, which is that, you know, in many place parts of the world, health care is treated as not, you know, it's treated differently to I take a vacation or a mutual bond that you buy, right or a car, it's not seen purely as a kind of profit vehicle. It's seen as something that serves the individual and serves a community and public health and so on matters. And I think one of the opportunities that we have is to think out for it, look out for is how do we get the benefits of aggregated health data, which is what you need. You need aggregate population wide data that connects a genotype to a phenotype. In other words, what the gene says to how it gets expressed to me physically to my biomarkers, you know, my, what's in my microbiota, what my blood pressure is on a minute by minute basis and my glucose levels and so on. And to whatever illnesses and diseases and conditions I seem to have, right, the more of that that we have, the more we can build predictive models that allow for the right kind of interventions and pre-habilitation right rather than rehabilitation. But in order to do that at the heart of that, yes, there's some technology. But at the heart of that is how do we get people's data in such a way that they are willing to provide that in a way that is not forced on them through the duress of the state or the duress of our sort of financial servitude? And so that, I think, is something that we really, really need to think about the trouble that we've had as the companies have done really well out of consumer data recently.Azeem Azhar: And I don't just mean Google and Facebook, but even all the marketing companies before that did so through a kind of abusive use of that data where it wasn't really done for our benefit. You know, I used to get a lot of spam letters through my front door. Physical ones. I was never delighted for it, ever. And so I think that one of the things we have to think, think about is how are we going to be able to build common structures that protect our data but still create the opportunities to develop new and novel therapeutic diagnosis, early warning systems? And that's not to say there shouldn't be profit making companies on there that absolutely should be. But the trouble is, the moment that you allow the data resource to be impinged upon, then you either head down this way of kind of the sort of dominance that Facebook has, or you head down away the root of that kind of abuse of spam, junk email and so on, and junk physical mail.Azeem Azhar: So I think there is this one idea that that emerges as an answer, which is the idea of the data commons or the data collective. Yeah. We actually have a couple of them working in health care in in the U.K., roughly. So there's one around CT scans of COVID patients. So there's lots and lots of CT scans and other kind of lung imaging of COVID patients. And that's maintained in a repository, the sort of national COVID lung imaging databank or something. And if you're if you're an approved researcher, you can get access to that and it's done on a non-commercial basis, but you could build something commercially over the top of it. Now the question is why would I give that scan over? Well, I gave give it over because I've been given a cast-iron guarantee about how it's going to be used and how my personal data will be, may or may not be used within that. I would never consider giving that kind of data to a company run by Mark Zuckerberg or, you know, anyone else. And that, I think, is the the cross-over point, which is in order to access this, the benefits of this aggregate data from all these sensors, we need to have a sort of human-centric approach to ensure that the exploitation can happen profitably, but for our benefit in the long run.Harry Glorikian: Yeah, I mean, I'm looking at some interesting encryption technologies where nothing is ever unencrypted, but you can, you know, the algorithm can learn from the data, right? And you're not opening it up. And so there, I believe that there are some solutions that can make give the side that needs the data what they need, but protect the other side. I still think we need to policymakers and regulators to step up. That would cause that shift to happen faster. But you know, I think some of those people that are making those policies don't even understand the phone they're holding in their hands most of the time and the power that they're holding. So. You know, last set of questions is. Do you think it's possible for society to adapt to exponential change and learn how to manage it productively?Azeem Azhar: It's a really hard question. I'm sure we will muddle through. We will muddle through because we're good at muddling through, you know? But the question is, does that muddling through look more like the depression years. Or does that muddling through look like a kind of directed Marshall Plan. Because they both get through. One comes through with sort of more productive, generative vigor? What I hoped to do in the book was to be able to express to a wider audience some underlying understanding about how the technologies work, so they can identify the right questions to to ask. And what I wanted to do for people to work in the technology field is draw some threads together because a lot of this will be familiar to them, but take those threads to their consequences. And in a way, you know, if I if I tell you, Harry, don't think of an elephant. What are you thinking about right  now?Harry Glorikian: Yeah. Yeah, of course it's not, you know, suggestive.Azeem Azhar: And by laying out these things for these different audiences in different ways, I'm hoping that they will remember them and bear those in mind when they go out and think about how they influence the world, whether it's decisions they make from a product they might buy or not buy, or how they talk influence their elected officials or how they steer their corporate strategy or the products they choose to build. I mean, that's what you would you would hope to do. And then hopefully you create a more streamlined approach to it to the change that needs to happen. Now here's the sort of fascinating thing here, is that over the summer of 2021, the Chinese authorities across a wide range of areas went in using a number of different regulators and stamped on a whole set of Exponential Age companies, whether it was online gaming or online education. The big, multi sided social networks, a lot of fintech, a lot of crypto. And they essentially had been observing the experiment to learn, and they had figured out what things didn't align with their perceived obligations as a government to the state and to the people. Now, you know, I'm using that language because I don't want this to become a kind of polarized sort of argument.Azeem Azhar: I'm just saying, here's a state where you may not agree with its objectives and the way it's accountable, but in its own conception, it's accountable to its people and has to look out for their benefit. And it took action on these companies in really, really abrupt ways. And. If you assume that their actions were rational and they were smart people and I've met some of them and they're super smart people, it tells you something about what one group of clever people think is needed at these times. This sort of time. And I'm not I'm not advocating for that kind of response in the US or in Western Europe, but rather than to say, you know, when your next-door neighbor, and you live in an apartment block and your next-door neighbor you don't like much runs out and says the whole building is on fire. The fact that you don't like him shouldn't mean that you should ignore the fact that there's a fire. And I think that some sometimes there is some real value in looking at how other countries are contending with this and trying to understand the rationale for it, because the Chinese were for all the strength of their state, were really struggling with the power of the exponential hedge funds in their in their domain within Europe.Azeem Azhar: The European Union has recognized that these companies, the technologies provide a lot of benefit. But the way the companies are structured has a really challenging impact on the way in which European citizens lives operate, and they are making taking their own moves. And I'll give you a simple example, that the right to repair movement has been a very important one, and there's been a lot of legislative pressure in the in Europe that is that we should be have the right to repair our iPhones and smartphones. And having told us for years it wasn't possible suddenly, Apple in the last few days has announced all these repair kits self-repair kits. So it turns out that what is impossible means may mean what's politically expedient rather than anything else. And so my sense is that that by engaging in the conversation and being more active, we can get ultimately get better outcomes. And we don't have to go the route of China in order to achieve those, which is an incredibly sort of…Harry Glorikian: A draconian way. Yes.Azeem Azhar: Yeah. Very, very draconian. But equally, you can't you know where that where I hear the U.S. debate running around, which is an ultimately about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and not much beyond that, I think is problematic because it's missing a lot of opportunities to sort of write the stuff and foster some amazing innovation and some amazing new businesses in this space.Harry Glorikian: Oh yeah, that's, again, that's why, whenever I get a chance to talk to policymakers, I'm like, “You guys need to get ahead of this because you just don't understand how quickly it's moving and how much it's going to impact what's there, and what's going to happen next.” And if you think about the business model shifts by some of these... I mean, what I always tell people is like, okay, if you can now sequence a whole genome for $50 think about all the new business models and all the new opportunities that will open up versus when it was $1000. It sort of changes the paradigm, but most people don't think that we're going to see that stepwise change. Or, you know, Google was, DeepMind was doing the optical analysis, and they announced, you know, they could do one analysis and everybody was like, Oh, that's great, but it's just one. And a year later, they announced we could do 50. Right? And I'm like, you're not seeing how quickly this is changing, right? One to 50 in 12 months is, that's a huge shift, and if you consider what the next one is going to be, it changes the whole field. It could change the entire field of ophthalmology, especially when you combine it with something like telemedicine. So we could talk for hours about this. I look forward to continuing this conversation. I think that we would, you know, there's a lot of common ground, although you're I'm in health care and you're almost everywhere else.Azeem Azhar: I mean, I have to say that the opportunity in in health care is so global as well because, you know, if you think about how long and how much it costs to train a doctor and you think about the kind of margin that live that sits on current medical devices and how fragile, they might be in certain operating environments and the thought that you could start to do more and more of this with a $40 sensor inside a $250 smartwatch is a really, really appealing and exciting, exciting one. Yeah.Harry Glorikian: Excellent. Well, thank you so much for the time and look forward to staying in touch and I wish you great success with the book and everything else.Azeem Azhar: Thank you so much, Harry. Appreciate it.Harry Glorikian: That's it for this week's episode. You can find past episodes of The Harry Glorikian Show and the MoneyBall Medicine show at my website, glorikian.com, under the tab Podcasts.Don't forget to go to Apple Podcasts to leave a rating and review for the show. You can also find me on Twitter at hglorikian. And we always love it when listeners post about the show there, or on other social media. Thanks for listening, stay healthy, and be sure to tune in two weeks from now for our next interview.

DNA・RNA・タンパク質を、デジタルな情報から物質へとプリントするDigital-to-Biological Converter (DBC)の技術について、論文を中心に議論しました。Show notes ASMR (自立聴覚絶頂反応) … Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR)。#ラボASMR募集中です。 エッペンチューブ … エッペンドルフ社のチューブ 遠心機 超音波ホモジナイザー … ソニケーター Boles et al., Nature Biotechnology (2017) … “Digital-to-biological converter for on-demand production of biologics” 今回の論文 J. Craig Venter … Biotechnology研究のリード研究者のうちの一人。自伝はマジでオススメです。 ヒトゲノムを解読した男 クレイグ・ベンター自伝 … もうタイトルからしてかっこよすぎます。 J. Craig Venter Institute … Venterさんの私設研究所。研究者自前の研究所なんてもう憧れof憧れです。 Daniel Gibson … Gibson assemblyを作った人。 Gibson Assembly … 断片化したDNAをつなげる技術 GLR parser … 通称Tomita LR法 Okazaki Fragment … “DNAの不連続的複製モデルを支持する研究成果は、1968年に行われたコールドスプリングハーバーシンポジウム (Replication of DNA in Microorganisms)において発表された。岡崎グループが発見した短いDNA鎖は、R. ホッチキス博士によるシンポジウムの最後のまとめの中で、”Okazaki pieces”と名付けられ (3)、その後「岡崎フラグメント」と呼ばれるようになった。” Synthetic genomics, INC biologics … バイオ医薬品とかのこと GenBank VEEV transfection/transportation/infection … 使い分けがきっちりできていませんでした。大変申し訳ございません。勉強し直します。 biosafety Star Trek Transporter … Star Trekに出てくる転送装置 Reprapプロジェクト … 自己複製する3D printerを目指すプロジェクト アジャイルソフトウェア開発 攻殻機動隊 … このポッドキャスト、もう何回攻殻機動隊の話すれば気がすむの… 今回の話はG.I.Sです。 Kilroy was here. … “Kilroy was here.” Codex DNA BioXP CodexDNA twitter Editorial notes CodexDNA試してみたいです (soh) Cypher 1.0とかクソ適当な話してすいませんでした。#ラボASMR よさげ。論文をめくる音とかいいながら紙包みを開けつづけるおじさんにしか聞こえなくて悲しいです。(tadasu) アケコンASMRは俺に任せろーー(coela)

Link to bioRxiv paper: http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2020.10.05.326504v1?rss=1 Authors: Robeson, M. S., O'Rourke, D. R., Kaehler, B. D., Ziemski, M., Dillon, M. R., Foster, J. T., Bokulich, N. A. Abstract: Background: Nucleotide sequence and taxonomy reference databases are critical resources for widespread applications including marker-gene and metagenome sequencing for microbiome analysis, diet metabarcoding, and environmental DNA (eDNA) surveys. Reproducibly generating, managing, using, and evaluating nucleotide sequence and taxonomy reference databases creates a significant bottleneck for researchers aiming to generate custom sequence databases. Furthermore, database composition drastically influences results, and lack of standardizations limits cross-study comparisons. To address these challenges, we developed RESCRIPt, a software package for reproducible generation and management of reference sequence taxonomy databases, including dedicated functions that streamline creating databases from popular sources, and functions for evaluating, comparing, and interactively exploring qualitative and quantitative characteristics across reference databases. Results: To highlight the breadth and capabilities of RESCRIPt, we provide several examples for working with popular databases for microbiome profiling (SILVA, Greengenes, NCBI-RefSeq, GTDB), eDNA, and diet metabarcoding surveys (BOLD, GenBank), as well as for genome comparison. We show that bigger is not always better, and reference databases with standardized taxonomies and those that focus on type strains have quantitative advantages, though may not be appropriate for all use cases. Most databases appear to benefit from some curation (quality filtering), though sequence clustering appears detrimental to database quality. Finally, we demonstrate the breadth and extensibility of RESCRIPt for reproducible workflows with a comparison of global hepatitis genomes. Conclusions: RESCRIPt provides tools to democratize the process of reference database acquisition and management, enabling researchers to reproducibly and transparently create reference materials for diverse research applications. RESCRIPt is released under a permissive BSD-3 license at https://github.com/bokulich-lab/RESCRIPt. Copy rights belong to original authors. Visit the link for more info

Bienenzüchter setzen seit Jahren auf einige wenige ertragreiche Bienenarten. Die Folge: Die genetische Vielfalt der Nutztiere geht zurück. Eine Genbank soll das nun verhindern.

Artenvielfalt im Bienenstock - Europas erste Genbank für Honigbienen / Trockenheit - Wassermangel macht Winzern und Waldbesitzern zu schaffen / Dürre - Wie wir mit der Wasserknappheit umgehen können / Raus aus der Tonne - Warum wir mehr Batterien recyceln sollten.

Per Funghi officinali (o alla latina Fungi officinalis) si intende una particolare specie di funghi che in natura hanno già visto di possedere principi attivi o medicinali e curativo. E ‘questo il caso dei Laricifomes officinalis ovvero Agarikon così come è conosciuto nel mondo, che contiene principi attivi antitumorali, così come riferisce il Guru mondiale dei funghi officinali, lo statunitense Paolo Stamets, proprietario della Fungi Perfecti, insieme a molti altri studiosi e aziende in tutto il mondo, che ne promuovono l’uso nelle cure palliative per i malati oncologici. Di seguito una articolo sull’Agarikon tratto da Paul Stamets.AGARIKON (Laricifomes officinalis)Laricifomes officinalis è un fungo parassita del legno dell’ordine Polyporales. Provoca la putrefazione del cuore marrone sulle conifere e si trova in Europa, Asia e Nord America, oltre che in Marocco. È comunemente noto come agarikon, così come il sapore del chinino per il suo gusto estremamente amaro. L’analisi del DNA supporta L. officinalis come distinto dal genere Fomitopsis.I frutti venivano una volta raccolti estesamente per la produzione di chinino medicinale, che si pensava contenesse, a causa del gusto amaro del cono in polvere. Tuttavia, non contengono chinino e non hanno proprietà anti-malaria .Il decadimento è comune solo in alcuni stand di vecchia crescita. I frutti o coni distintivi possono essere grandi, lunghi quanto due piedi, a forma di zoccolo o colonnari. Sono morbidi, di colore bianco-giallo quando sono giovani, diventando presto bianchi e gessosi dappertutto. Il decadimento è marrone, cubicamente incrinato, con spessi feltri bianchi in grandi fessure. Il sapore di entrambi i coni e feltri è amaro e distinto per questa specie. Un singolo cono di solito indica la completa eliminazione. Gli alberi infetti possono essere habitat per specie di nidificazione.Uso medicinaleL. officinalis era usato dagli antichi Greci per trattare la (tubercolosi) secondo gli scritti di Pedanius Dioscorides nel 65 d.C., e da alcune popolazioni indigene per curare il vaiolo. La presenza di Agarikon nei luoghi di sepoltura può indicare che un tempo il suo uso era diffuso.Il micologo Paul Stamets ha condotto numerose indagini sulle attività biologiche di Agarikon. Gli estratti di agarikon hanno dimostrato un’attività antivirale contro una serie di virus in vitro. Questa attività è stata specificamente osservata contro i virus della famiglia del vaiolo, HSV-1 e HSV-2, Influenza A, Influenza B e Mycobacterium tuberculosis in vitro. Altri ricercatori hanno identificato nuove cumarine clorurate nell’organismo che hanno dimostrato concentrazioni inibitorie minime molto basse contro il complesso del Mycobacterium tuberculosis . E’ comunemente utilizzato in tutto il mondo con il nome di Agarikon di supporto e integrazione nei pazienti oncologici soprattutto nei tumori solidi.ConservazioneL’Agarikon selvatico si trova solo nelle foreste a crescita antica e cresce sulle conifere, in particolare l’abete Douglas (Pseudotsuga) e il larice (Larix). La conservazione delle popolazioni selvatiche di L. officinalis è preoccupante a causa della perdita di habitat forestali antichi. Poiché è difficile mantenere l’integrità genetica a lungo termine dei ceppi coltivati ​​in laboratorio, è necessario preservare il fungo in natura.EtnomicologiaLaricifomes officinalis era importante sia a livello medico che spirituale per le popolazioni indigene della costa nord-occidentale del Pacifico del Nord America, come il Tlingit, Haida e Tsimshian. L. officinalis era indicato come “il pane dei fantasmi” nelle lingue locali e i corpi fruttiferi intagliati segnavano le tombe degli sciamani tribali .RiferimentiLa maggior parte delle medicine moderne ha origine in natura. Sebbene alcuni funghi siano stati usati nelle terapie per migliaia di anni, stiamo ancora scoprendo nuove potenziali medicine nascoste al loro interno. Per molti anni ho cercato e studiato Agarikon, un fungo insolito originario delle antiche foreste di conifere di crescita del Nord America e dell’Europa. Un grande cono di legno – un polypore perenne – Agarikon sopravvive per molti anni ed emette spore attraverso i pori biancastri dalla sua parte inferiore ogni estate (vedi foto sotto). Questo fungo a forma di alveare può essere il fungo vivente più lungo del mondo, che cresce nelle foreste temperate di conifere della California del Nord, Oregon, Washington e Columbia Britannica. Questa specie sopravvive anche, in modo precario, sui vecchi alberi di larice della crescita nelle Alpi slovene, vicino ai confini dell’Italia e dell’Austria. Agarikon ha due nomi scientifici comunemente usati: Laricifomes officinalis, preferito per gli esemplari trovati sugli alberi di larice (specie Larix) e Fomitopsis officinalis, che si applica a quelli ospitati da abete Douglas, abete rosso e cicuta.I micologi di Fungi Perfecti conservano una biblioteca culturale di 44 ceppi di questo fungo raro che sono stati raccolti in tutto il mondo negli ultimi 20 anni. Undici di questi ceppi sono stati geneticamente sequenziati e hanno contribuito alla “genetica impronta digitale” di Fomitopsis officinalis a GenBank presso il Centro Nazionale di genetica vegetale US.(tratto da articolo originale di Paul Stamets 2009)

On Thursday, the “Trump, Inc.” team gathered with laptops, pizza and Post-its to disconnect — and to read special counsel Robert Mueller’s report. What we found was page after page of jaw-dropping details about the inner workings of the administration of President Donald Trump, meetings with foreign officials and plots to affect our elections. But we also found rich details on how Trump ran his business dealings in Russia, itself the subject of our recent episode on his Moscow business partners. It backed up a lot of our earlier reporting: The deal with Andrey Rozov, a relatively unknown developer whose claim to international prominence was the purchase of a building in Manhattan’s garment district, did go further than agreements with other developers. The type of development they were hoping for would need signoff from Russia’s powers that be — namely, President Vladimir Putin — potentially putting Trump in the position of owing favors to a hostile foreign power. And the deal went on longer than the Trump campaign wanted the public to know, with the then-candidate rebuffing Michael Cohen’s concerns about the accuracy of his portrayal of his relationships with Russia. Here are a few of our takeaways: The deal was bigger… The Mueller report puts the terms of Trump’s most infamous Trump Tower deal side by side with a failed prior deal with the family of Russian pop star Emin Agalarov. In doing so, it proposes an answer to why Trump chose to move forward with Rozov: he offered Trump a much better deal. In fact, Cohen said the tower overall "was potentially a $1 billion deal.” Under the terms of the agreement, the Trump Organization would get an upfront fee, a share of sales and rental revenue, and an additional 20% of the operating profit. The deal offered by the well-known Agalarov developers, in contrast, would have brought in a flat 3.5%. We’d tried to reach Rozov to talk about the deal for our earlier reporting. He never responded. For Trump, this agreement promised to be the deal of a lifetime. There were more Russian contacts… The report says Cohen and Felix Sater, a fixer who brought the Trump Organization together with the potential developer for the Moscow deal, both believed securing Putin’s endorsement was key. There was also plenty of outreach from Russians, many of them offering to make that very connection. But even as the two were figuring out how to pitch the tower plan to Putin, at least three intermediaries who claimed to have connections to the Russian president were reaching out to Trump and his associates. They promised help with Trump’s business interests and his campaign, the report says. One was Dmitry Klokov, whom Cohen looked up online and mistakenly identified as a former Olympic weightlifter. Klokov, in fact, worked for a government-owned electric company and was a former aide to Russia’s energy minister. He told Cohen he could facilitate a meeting with a “person of interest” — that is, Putin — and also offered help creating “synergy on a government level.” But Klokov’s overtures for talks on matters beyond mere business interests were rebuffed by Cohen. The report also clarified that it was Sater who approached the Russian developer with the idea of a Trump Tower Moscow — and later brought his pitch to the Trump Organization. This sequence of events raises new questions about whether the tower deal, which Trump had wanted for decades, was part of the Russian government’s multiple intelligence approaches to Trump and his advisers at the time. One other figure in our previous Trump Moscow episode surfaced again in the Mueller report: Yevgeny Dvoskin, a Russian national with a U.S. criminal record and alleged ties to organized crime. Dvoskin is now a part-owner of Genbank, a small Russian bank sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury. He grew up in Brighton Beach at the same time as Sater, who, in 2016, called on Dvoskin to invite Trump and Cohen to Russia for an exploratory visit. To arrange the invitation, Dvoskin asked for copies of Cohen’s and Trump’s passports, which Cohen was happy to provide. The Mueller report says that Trump’s personal assistant even brought Trump’s passport to Cohen’s office, but that it is not clear whether it was ever passed on to Sater. Sater declined to comment for the podcast. Genbank and Dvoskin did not respond to earlier requests for comment. And there was more cover-up… Mueller describes continued efforts to mislead investigators and the public about the Trump Moscow deal and associates’ contacts with Russian officials. Many of the details are gleaned from Cohen’s cooperation. Cohen confronted Trump after he denied having business ties to Russia in July 2016 and pointed out that Trump Tower Moscow was still in play. “Trump told Cohen that Trump Tower Moscow was not a deal yet and said, ‘Why mention it if it is not a deal?’” according to the Mueller report. To maintain Cohen’s loyalty during the investigation, multiple Trump staff members and friends told him the “boss” “loves you,” according to the Mueller report. “You are loved,” another associate told him in an email. Cohen also said the president’s lawyer told him he’d be protected as long as he didn’t go “rogue.” The report concludes that active negotiations in Moscow continued into the summer of 2016. Cohen told Mueller’s team that the project wasn’t officially dead until January 2017, when it was listed with other deals that needed to be “closed out” ahead of the inauguration. After admitting to lying to Congress about when the Moscow deal fizzled, Cohen told Mueller about the “script,” or talking points he’d developed with Trump to downplay his ties to Russia. He also said he believed lawyers associated with his joint defense agreement — including attorneys for the president — edited out a key line about communications with Russia from his congressional testimony. The offending line: “The building project led me to make limited contacts with Russian government officials.” You can contact us via Signal, WhatsApp or voicemail at 347-244-2134. Here’s more about how you can contact us securely. You can always email us at tips@trumpincpodcast.org. And finally, you can use the Postal Service: Trump, Inc. at ProPublica 155 Ave of the Americas, 13th Floor New York, NY 10013 “Trump, Inc.” is a production of WNYC Studios and ProPublica. Support our work by visiting donate.propublica.org or by becoming a supporting member of WNYC. Subscribe here or wherever you get your podcasts.

This week, we’re exploring President Donald Trump’s efforts to do business in Moscow. Our team — Heather Vogell, Andrea Bernstein, Meg Cramer and Katie Zavadski — dug into just who Trump was working with and just what Trump needed from Russia to get a deal done. (Listen to the podcast episode here.) First, the big picture. We already knew that Trump had business interests involving Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign — which he denied — that could have been influencing his policy positions. As the world has discovered, Trump was negotiating to develop a tower in Moscow while running for president. Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen has admitted to lying to Congress about being in contact with the Kremlin about the project during the campaign. All of that explains why congressional investigators are scrutinizing Trump’s Moscow efforts. And we’ve found more: •  Trump’s partner on the project didn't appear to be in a position to get the project approved and built. On Oct. 28, 2015 — the same day as a Republican primary debate — Trump signed a letter of intent with the partner, a developer named Andrey Rozov, to build a 400-unit condominium and hotel tower in Moscow. In a letter Rozov wrote to Cohen pitching his role, he cited his work on a suburban development outside of Moscow, a 12-story office building in Manhattan’s Garment District (which he bought rather than constructed) and two projects in Williston, North Dakota, a town of around 30,000.We looked into each of them. Rozov’s Moscow project has faced lawsuits from homeowners, some of which have settled and some of which are ongoing, and the company developing it filed for bankruptcy. It remains unfinished. Property records show that Rozov owned his New York building for just over a year. He bought it for about $35 million in cash, took out an almost $13 million loan several months later, made no significant improvements and then sold it for a 23 percent profit. Trump’s former business associate, Felix Sater, who once pleaded guilty to financial fraud and reportedly later became an asset for U.S. intelligence agencies, is listed on the sale as an “authorized signatory.” We did find a developer with a workforce housing project in Williston, as well as approved plans for a mall/hotel/water-park. (The town attracted interest from developers as the center of North Dakota’s oil boom earlier in the decade.) Rozov’s name doesn’t appear on materials relating to the company, but a person familiar with the project confirmed that this is what Rozov was bragging about in his letter. Oil prices cratered and the mega-mall was never built. Rozov did not respond to an email seeking comment. Here is a rendering of the plan: Plans for "Williston Crossing," a 218 acre site in Williams County, North Dakota. (Williston Crossing Major Comprehensive Plan Amendment Presentation/Gensler) •  An owner of a sanctioned Russian bank that vouched for the Trump Organization in Moscow had a criminal history that included involvement in a Russian mafia gas-bootlegging scheme in the U.S. Making a business trip to Russia requires an official invitation. According to correspondence published by BuzzFeed, Sater arranged for an invitation from Genbank, a small Russian bank that expanded significantly in Crimea after Russia invaded in 2014. One of Genbank’s co-owners is Yevgeny Dvoskin, a Russian-born financier who grew up in Brighton Beach at the same time as Sater. Dvoskin pleaded guilty to tax evasion in federal court in Ohio for the bootlegging scheme and spent time in prison. He was later deported to Russia, according to press accounts. In Russia, he remained tied to criminal networks, according to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. (We were unable to reach Dvoskin for comment.) •  We also get a hint about why Trump may have needed the Kremlin to get his deal done. Some of the sites under consideration for a potential Trump Tower Moscow were in historic areas with strict height restrictions. Just a few years before the 2015 letter of intent that Trump signed, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin pledged to do all he could to prevent the city from being overrun by skyscrapers. If Trump’s deal was to move forward in some place like the Red October Chocolate Factory, one of the spots that was considered, getting around zoning restrictions would need help from the very top. Sater and Cohen were also kicking around a plan to offer Putin the building’s $50 million penthouse, according to BuzzFeed. That need for special help, combined with the potential offer of a valuable asset, raises questions about whether the plan ran afoul of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, according to Alexandra Wrage, the president and founder of Trace International, an organization that helps companies comply with anti-bribery laws. “What you describe is certainly worrying,” she said. The Trump Organization, the White House, and Michael Cohen did not respond to requests for comment. For his part, Sater is scheduled to testify before the House Intelligence Committee on March 27. The committee members will undoubtedly have plenty of questions. You can contact us via Signal, WhatsApp or voicemail at 347-244-2134. Here’s more about how you can contact us securely. You can always email us at tips@trumpincpodcast.org. And finally, you can use the Postal Service: Trump, Inc. at ProPublica 155 Ave of the Americas, 13th Floor New York, NY 10013 “Trump, Inc.” is a production of WNYC Studios and ProPublica. Support our work by visiting donate.propublica.org or by becoming a supporting member of WNYC. Subscribe here or wherever you get your podcasts.

Reminder: it's not "your data".It's the patients' dataIt's the taxpayers' dataIt's the funder's data-----------------If you're in industry or self-fund the research & don't publish, then you have the right not to share your data. Otherwise, it's not your data.— Lenny Teytelman (@lteytelman) July 16, 2018 A few months ago, I came across Protocols.io founder Lenny Teytelman’s tweet on data ownership. Since we’re in the business of protecting data, I was curious what inspired Lenny to tweet out his value statement and to also learn how academics and science-based businesses approach data analysis and data ownership. We’re in for a real treat because it’s rare that we get to hear what scientists think about data when in search for discoveries and innovations. Transcript Lenny Teytelman: I am Lenny Teytelman and I'm a geneticist and computational biologist by training. I did graduate school in Berkeley and then post-doctoral research out at MIT. And since 2012, I have been the Co-founder and CEO of Protocols.io, which is a GitHub Wikipedia-like central repository of research recipes, so for science methods detailing what exactly scientists have of found. Cindy Ng: Welcome, Lenny. We first connected on Twitter through a tweet of yours, and I'm going to read it, it says, "Reminder: it's not 'your data.' It's the patient's data, it's the taxpayers' data. It's the funders' data. And if you're in an industry or self-funded the research and don't publish, then you have the right not to share your data. Otherwise, it's not your data." So can you tell us a little bit more about your point of view, your ideas about data ownership, and what inspired you to tweet out your value statement? Lenny Teytelman: Thank you, Cindy. So this is something that comes up periodically, more so particularly, in the past 5, 10 years in the research community as different funders and publishers starting more and more intentions of reproducability challenges and published research, and including guidelines and policies that encourage or require the sharing of data as a prerequisite for publication or as a condition of getting funding. So we're seeing more and more of that, and I think the vast majority of the research community, of the scientists, are in favor of those then this time that it's important, then this time that it's one of the pillars of science to be able to reproduce and verify and validate out the people's results and not just to take them at their word. We all make mistakes, right? But there is a minority that is upset about these kinds of requirements and I, periodically, either in person or someone on Twitter will say, "Hey, I've spent so long sailing the oceans and collecting the data. I don't want to just give it away. I want to spend the next 5, 10 years publishing and then it's my data." And so that's the part that I'm reacting to it. There are some scientists that forget who's funding them and who actually has the rights to the data. Cindy Ng: Why do they feel like it's their data rather than the patients' data or the taxpayers' data or the funder's data? Lenny Teytelman: So it's understandable because, particularly when the data generation takes a long time, so imagine you go on an own expeditions two, three months away from family, sampling bacteria in oceans or digging in the desert, and it can take a really long time to get the samples, to get the data, and you start to feel ownership, and it's also the career, your career, the more publications you get on a given dataset, the stronger your resume, the higher the chances of getting fellowships, faculty positions, and so on. People become a little bit possessive and take ownership of the data, if you like, put so much into it, "It's mine." Cindy Ng: Prior to digitalizing our data, who owned the data? Lenny Teytelman: Well, I guess, universities can also lay some claim to the intellectual property rights. I'm not an attorney so it's tricky. But I think there was always the understanding in the science world that you should be able to provide the tables, the datasets that you're publishing on request. But then we got paper journals, there really just wasn't space to make all of that available. And we're now in a different environment where we have repositories, there's GitHub focal, there are many repositories for the data to be shared. And so, with the web, we're no longer in that contact author for details and we're now in a place where journals can say, "If you want to publish in our journal, you have to make the data available." And there are some that have put in very stringent data requirement policies. Cindy Ng: Who sets those parameters in terms of the kind of data you publish and the stringency behind it? Do a bunch of academics come together, chairman, scientists decide best practices, or they vary from publication to publication? Lenny Teytelman: Both. So it depends on the community. There are some communities, for example, the genomics community, back when the human genome was being sequenced, there were a lot of...and I mean before that, there were a lot of meetings of the leaders in the field sort of agreeing on what are the best practices, and depositing the DNA sequences in the central repository GenBank run by the U.S. government became sort of expected in the community and from the journals. And so, that really was community-led best practices, but more recently, I also see just funders putting out mandates, and when you agree to getting funding, you agree to the data-sharing policies of the foundation. And same thing for journals. Now, journals, more and more of them are putting in statements requiring data, but it doesn't mean that they're necessarily enforcing it, so requirements are one thing, enforcement is another. Cindy Ng: What is the difference between scientific academic research versus the science-based companies? Because a lot of, for instance, pharmaceuticals hire a lot of PhDs and they must have a close connection between one another. Lenny Teytelman: So there is certainly overlap. You're right that, I think, in biomedicine particularly, most of the people who get PhDs actually don't stay in academia and then outside of it. Not all of it is in industry. They go through a broad spectrum, all for different careers, but a lot do end up in industry. There is some overlap where you will have industry funding some of the research. So, Novartis could give a grant to UC Berkeley, or British Petroleum could be doing ecological research, and those tend to be very interesting because there may be a push from the industry side to keep the data private, like you can imagine tobacco companies sponsoring something. So there's some conflict of interest then usually universities try to frame these in a way that gives the researchers the right to publish regardless of what the results are, and to make it available so that the funder does not have a yea or nay vote. So those are on collaboratives side when there's some funding coming in from industry but, in general, there is basic science, there is academic science, and there is expectation there that you're publishing and making the results open, and then there is the industry side, and, of course, I'm broadly generalizing. There are things you will keep private in academia, there's competitiveness in academia as well, you're afraid of getting scooped. But broadly speaking, academia tends to publish and be very open, and your reputation and your career prospects are really tied to your publications. And on the industry side, it's not so much about the publications as about the actual company bottom line and the vaccines, drug targets, right, molecules that you're discovering, and those you're not necessarily sharing, so there's a lot of research that happens in industry. And my understanding is that the vast majority of it is actually not published. Cindy Ng: I think even though they have different goals, the thread between all of them really, is the data because regardless of what industry you're in, I hate this phrase, "data is the new oil," but it's considered one of the most valuable assets around. I'm wondering is there a philosophy around how much you share amongst scientists regardless of the industry? Lenny Teytelman: In academia, it tends to be all over the place. So I think in industry, they're very careful about the security, they're very, very concerned about breach and somebody getting access to the trials, to the molecules they're considering. The competition is very intense and they take the intellectual property and security very seriously. On the academic side, it really varies and there are groups that, even long before they're ready to publish their intel on science, they generate data, they feel like we've done the sequencing of these species or of these tissues from patients, and we're going to anonymize the patient names and release the information and the sequences of the data that we have as soon as we've generated it even before the story is finished so other people can use it. There are some academic projects that are funded as resources where you are expected to share the data as they come online. There might be requests that you don't publish from the data before we did if they're the ones producing it, so there can be community standards, but there are examples in academia, many examples in academia where the data are shared and simply as they're produced even before publications. And then you also have kind of groups that are extremely secretive. Until they're ready to publish, no one else has access to the data and sometimes even after they publish, they try to prevent other people from getting access to the data. Cindy Ng: So it's back to the possessiveness aspect of it. Lenny Teytelman: My feeling just anecdotally from the 13 years that I was at the bench, as a student, post-doc, is that the vast majority of scientists are open and are collaborative in academia and that it's a tiny minority that try to hoard the data, but I'm sure that that does vary by field. Cindy Ng: In the healthcare industry, it's been shown that people try to anonymize data and release it for researchers to do research on, but then there are also a few security and privacy pros who have said that you can re-identify the anonymized data. Has there been a problem? Lenny Teytelman: Yes, this is something that comes up a lot in discussions. Everone does when you're working with patient data, every one does go through concerted effort to anonymize the information, but usually, when people opt in to participating in these studies and these types of projects, the disclaimers do warn the patients, do warn the people participating that, yes, we'll go through anonymizing steps, but it is possible to re-identify, as you said, the anonymized, the data and figure out who it really is no matter how hard you try. So there are a lot of conversations in academia about this and it is important to be very clear with patients about it. There are concerns, but I don't know actual examples of people re-identifying for any kind of malicious purpose. There might be space and opportunity for doing that, and I'm not saying the concerns are not valid, but I don't know of examples where this has happened with genomic data, DNA sequencing, or individuals. Cindy Ng: What about Henrietta Lacks where she was being treated for...I can't remember what problem she had, and then it was a hospital... Lenny Teytelman: Yes, that's a major...there's a book on this, right, there's a movie. That's a major fiasco and a learning opportunity for the research community where there was no consent. Cindy Ng: Did you ever see this movie called the "Three Identical Strangers" about triplets who found each other? Lenny Teytelman: No, I haven't. Cindy Ng: And then they found that all three of those triplets were adopted, and then they thought, "Hmm, that's really strange." So then they had a wonderful reunion and then, later down the line, they realized that they're being used as a study. There were researchers that went in every single week to their homes, to the adoptee's homes, to do research on the kids, and knew that they're all brothers, but neglected to tell the families until they found each other by chance. And then they realized they're part of a study and they refused to release the data. And so, I found the Henrietta Lacks and this new movie that came out just really fascinating. I mean, I guess that's why they have regulations so that you don't have things like these scenarios happen, where you find out after you're an adult, that you're a part of a strange experiment. Lenny Teytelman: That's fascinating. So I don't know this movie, but on a related note, I'm thinking back…I don't remember the names, but I'm thinking back on the recent serial killer that was identified, not through his own DNA being in the database, but the relatives participating in ancestry sequencing, right, submitting personal genomics, submitting their cells for genotyping, and the police having access, tracing the serial killer through that. There certainly are implications of the data that we are sharing. I don't know what the biggest concerns are, but there are a lot of fascinating issues that the scientific community, patients, and regulators have to grapple with. Cindy Ng: So, since you're a geneticist, what do you think about the latest DNA testing companies working with pharmaceuticals in potentially finding cures with a lot of privacy alarms coming up for advocates? Lenny Teytelman: Yeah, so it has to be done ethically. You do have to think about these issues. My personal feeling is that there's a lot for world and humans to gain from sharing the DNA information and personal information. The positives outweigh the risks. That's a very vague statement, so I do, you know, I think about the opportunity to do studies where a drug is not just tested whether it works or not, but depending on the DNA of the people, you can figure out what are the percolations, what are the types of the drugs that will have adverse reactions to it, who are the ones who are unlikely to benefit from it. So there is such powerful opportunity for good use of this. Obviously, we can't dismiss the privacy risks and the potential for abuse and misuse, but it would be a real shame if we just backed away from the research and from the opportunity that this offers altogether, instead of carefully thinking through the implications and trying to do this in an ethical way.

Der bewunderte Tausendsassa Lope de Vega versperrt Cervantes und seinen Zeitgenossen den Weg zur Bühne. Unfrohen Herzens müht er sich, einen Schäferroman zu schreiben. Es liest Ulrich Noethen.

By using the genetic sequence database, known as GenBank, Rebecca Dikow discusses her research on the genomic relationships across the three domains of life.

完整文稿看周日微信第三条，你懂的~This is NEWS Plus Special English. I&`&m Liu Yan in Beijing. Here is the news.With the help of 3D printing technology, doctors in Shanghai have separated three-month-old twin sisters who were conjoined at the hip.The twins, born in east China&`&s Jiangxi Province, were connected by soft tissues at the lower spine. They had mostly separate digestive systems but shared one lower bowel.After a five hour operation in the Children&`&s Hospital of Fudan University, the twins were separated, and had their organs and muscles reconstructed.Doctors used 3D printing to build two models simulating the structure of the twins&`& connected parts, which helped them better understand case.Since 2000, doctors at the hospital have successfully separated seven pairs of conjoined twins.This is NEWS Plus Special English.Nine people have been detained in Jiangxi Province, east China, for posing as other students and sitting the "Gaokao", or college entrance exam.Local police said one of the suspects, 20-year-old surnamed Peng, is a college student in Wuhan, central China&`&s Hubei Province. Peng has confessed to the police and provided the information of five other substitute exam sitters.Peng and the other substitutes were organized by another suspect surnamed Zhao who hails from Shandong Province in east China. Zhao arranged accommodation for Peng and the others and supplied the exam passes.The scam was exposed by a reporter who had gone undercover as an exam substitute. The first suspect was caught on the first day of the exam.Over 9.4 million high school students sat for the Gaokao from June 7 to 9. Public security authorities across the country were working to clamp down on cheating activities including the distribution of wireless devices, and the practice of substitute exam sitters.This is NEWS Plus Special English.Shanghai will lower its exit and entry threshold on July 1 to attract overseas talent by adding 12 programs to the latest brain gain list.Overseas personnel introduced by the program will enjoy preferential policies in visa applications, residence permits, doing business in China, as well as exit and entry convenience.The new programs will be market oriented, transparent and more efficient.Shanghai also encourages overseas students graduated from Chinese universities to work or start a business in Shanghai.Local authorities promised to extend the period of validity of visas held by foreign business people and offer them favorable policies.The new programs also aim to improve service standards for overseas personnel during their entry, transit and residing in Shanghai.You are listening to NEWS Plus Special English. I&`&m Liu Yan in Beijing.Chinese scientists have completed sequencing the genome of the first case of imported Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, and found no evidence of variation that makes the virus more contagious.The genome map of the virus shows high homology with the MERS virus detected in the Middle East. Scientists believe the strain originated in Saudi Arabia.The result of the sequencing has been uploaded to GenBank at National Center for Biotechnology Information in the United States.By testing and comparing genome sequence of different strains, scientists may find effective measures to prevent the spread of the disease, which has a fatality rate of 40 percent.

Die als Zehnfußkrebse oder auch als Decapoda bezeichneten Arthropoden sind eine weltweit verbreitete, zum Teil hoch spezialisierte und vielseitig angepasste Gruppe, die in fast allen aquatischen Ökosystemen, aber auch in terrestrischen Habitaten zu finden ist. Die enorme Artenzahl von 17,635 rezent und fossil bekannten Arten (De Grave et al., 2009) sowie das hohe Alter der Gruppe an sich erschwert die systematische Eingliederung einzelner Arten. Fossile Funde von Dekapoden wurden bis ins Devon (vor 415 bis 359,2 Millionen Jahren) datiert (Schram et al., 1978). Damit haben die rezenten Vertreter viele Millionen Jahre Evolution durchlaufen und die Ergebnisse dieses langwierigen Prozesses schlagen sich in einer hohen morphologischen Vielfalt zwischen den Arten nieder. Um eine zuverlässige Phylogenie aufstellen und Arten eindeutig charakterisieren zu können sind neue Merkmale, Methoden und Ansätze erforderlich. Eine zuverlässige Bestimmung und Einordnung der verschiedenen Arten bildet die Basis für verschiedene Datenbanken und Projekte wie z.B. GenBank, Barcoding of Life (BOLD), German Barcode of Life (GBOL) oder Barcoding Fauna Bavarica und zeigt, welch hohen Stellenwert die Taxonomie besitzt. Ziel dieser kumulativen Dissertation ist es mit Einsatz von verschiedenen modernen morphologischen und molekularen Methoden wie der Rasterelektronenmikroskopie, der Fluoreszenzmikroskopie und der Analyse von mitochondrialen DNA-Sequenzen (Cytochrom-c-Oxydase) neue Merkmalssätze zur besseren Charakterisierung der verschiedenen Arten und deren Artabgrenzungen zu erarbeiten. Aber auch klassische Methoden wie das Abwägen von morphologischen Merkmalen, kommen in einem integrativen Ansatz zur Artabgrenzung zur Anwendung. Die in den Arbeiten angewandte Rasterelektronenmikroskopie erlaubt eine weitaus höhere Vergrößerung als die klassische Lichtmikroskopie bei gleichzeitig höherer Auflösung und Schärfentiefe. Somit konnten auch kleinste eidonomische (Bestimmungs-) Merkmale wie das Dorsalorgan oder einzelne Setae-Typen bei Zoea-Larven detailliert beschrieben und als neue oder früher wenig beachtete morphologischen Merkmale zur systematischen Einordnung herangezogen werden (Publikationen I, II und III). Des Weiteren konnte mit Hilfe der Fluoreszenzmikroskopie anhand von DAPI-Färbungen gezeigt werden, dass die Anordnung der Zellkerne von Zoea-Larven aus den verschiedenen Unterordnungen Caridea, Anomura und Brachyura charakteristische Muster aufweist. Dieses Kriterium wird als möglicher Merkmalssatz in der Taxonomie diskutiert (Publikation VI). Ein weiteres Feld der modernen Taxonomie wird durch Publikation V abgedeckt: molekulare Analysen auf der Basis des mitochondrialen proteincodierenden Genes COI (cytochrome oxidase subunit 1) bzw „barcoding“-Gens. Zum ersten Mal für die südchilenische Fjordregion wurde mit dem Ansatz der integrativen Taxonomie die dortige Dekapoda-Fauna erfasst und analysiert. Nahe verwandte Arten der Gattungen Eurypodius Guérin, 1825 und Acanthocyclus Lucas, in H. Milne Edwards & Lucas, 1844, die morphologisch schwer zu trennen sind, konnten neu charakterisiert werden. In der Arbeit wurden klassische, morphologische Merkmale mit molekularen, morphologieunabhängigen Merkmalen kombiniert. Durch eine vorherige Inventarisierung der südchilenischen Dekapodenfauna während zahlreicher Expeditionen in die Region konnte zudem die Basis für die taxonomische Arbeit (ca. 650 Samples sind in der Zoologischen Staatssammlung München hinterlegt) geschaffen werden. Eine ausführlichen Dokumentation mit verschiedenen bildgebenden Methoden wie der Verwendung von tiefenscharfen Aufnahmen und in situ Fotos der verschiedenen Arten dieser noch nahezu unerforschten Region bildet das Rückgrat der taxonomischen Arbeiten und ist als Kapitel in dem zweisprachigen (Spanisch und Englisch) Standardwerk für die Region publiziert (PublikationVI).

Mammals are an incredibly diverse and highly successful group of animals. They include some of the tallest, heaviest and fastest animals around today, as well as our own species. For over 100 years, biologists have attempted to build mammal evolutionary trees using anatomical data. This work has provided the basis for our understanding of mammal relationships. Within the last 30 years, new technologies have enabled scientists to cheaply sequence molecular data (e.g. DNA and amino acid sequences) from thousands of mammal species. Interestingly, molecular trees reveal close relationships between some very different looking mammals. To guide us through this mammal renaissance, we are joined by Dr Robert Asher from the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge, UK.

Als ein vom Menschen stark beeinflusstes und freizeitlich genutztes Ökosystem sind städtische Grünflächen in Hinblick auf zeckenübertragene Krankheiten von besonderem wissenschaftlichem Interesse. Zu diesem Zweck wurden Zecken monatlich über zwei Jahre in insgesamt neun verschiedenen Parks in fünf bayerischen Städten mit der Flaggmethode gesammelt und die Zeckendichte(Adulte und Nymphen/100m²) ermittelt. Neun Standorte wurden 2009 mittels spezifischer konventioneller und real-time PCRs auf die Anwesenheit von DNA von Babesia spp., A. phagocytophilum, Rickettsia spp.und Bartonella spp. untersucht sowie fünf ausgewählte Standorte zusätzlich auf Babesia spp. und A. phagocytophilum in 2010. Speziesdifferenzierungen wurden mittels Sequenzanalyse und Abgleich der amplifizierten PCR-Produkte mit der GenBank vorgenommen. Es wurden insgesamt 13.403 I. ricinus sowie jeweils eine I. frontalis und I. hexagonus gefangen. Die Zeckendichte variierte zwischen 15 - 53 Zecken/100m² in 2009 bzw 15 - 35 Zecken/100m² in 2010 abhängig vom untersuchten Standort. Eine Stichprobe von 6.593 Zecken (5.569 für A. phagocytophilum) wurde untersucht mit folgenden Ergebnissen: Babesia spp.(2009: 0,4% mit einem Larvenpool (Lp) à 2 Larven; 2010: 0,5-0,7% mit einem Lp à 5 Larven); A. phagocytophilum (2009: 9,5%; 2010: 6,6%); Rickettsia spp. (2009: 6,4-7,7% mit 76 Larven in 16 Lps). Sequenzanalysen ergaben die Anwesenheit von Babesia sp. EU1 (n= 25), B. divergens (n= 1), B. divergens/capreoli (n= 1), B. gibsoni-like (n= 1), R. helvetica (n= 272), R. monacensis strain IrR/Munich (n= 12) und R. monacensis (n= 1). Die Anwesenheit von Bartonella spp konnte nicht nachgewiesen werden. Coinfektionen wurden in 0,7% aller untersuchten Zecken in 2009 festgestellt. Eine weiterführende Analyse positiver A. phagocytophilum-Proben bezüglich des 16S rRNA-Gens ergab sechs verschiedene Sequenzvarianten, von welchen schon zwei mit Erkrankungsfällen im Menschen assoziiert wurden. Prävalenzschwankungen zwischen Jahren und Standorten sowie ein außergewöhnliches Speziesauftreten von Babesia spp. zeigen, dass das Vorkommen von zeckenübertragenen Pathogenen von einer Vielzahl biotischen und abiotischen Faktoren abhängig sein kann und das Habitat „Stadtpark“ dabei eine besondere Stellung einnimmt.

Die Unkrautpflanzen Beifuß und Traubenkraut gehören zu den aggressivsten Allergieauslösern. In Salzburg befindet sich die weltweit einzige Genbank, auf deren Basis Diagnostikmittel entwickelt werden können.

Background: Only limited information is available about the occurrence of ticks and tick-borne pathogens in public parks, which are areas strongly influenced by human beings. For this reason, Ixodes ricinus were collected in public parks of different Bavarian cities in a 2-year survey (2009 and 2010) and screened for DNA of Babesia spp., Rickettsia spp. and Bartonella spp. by PCR. Species identification was performed by sequence analysis and alignment with existing sequences in GenBank. Additionally, coinfections with Anaplasma phagocytophilum were investigated. Results: The following prevalences were detected: Babesia spp.: 0.4% (n = 17, including one pool of two larvae) in 2009 and 0.5 to 0.7% (n = 11, including one pool of five larvae) in 2010; Rickettsia spp.: 6.4 to 7.7% (n = 285, including 16 pools of 76 larvae) in 2009. DNA of Bartonella spp. in I. ricinus in Bavarian public parks could not be identified. Sequence analysis revealed the following species: Babesia sp. EU1 (n = 25), B. divergens (n = 1), B. divergens/capreoli (n = 1), B. gibsoni-like (n = 1), R. helvetica (n = 272), R. monacensis IrR/Munich (n = 12) and unspecified R. monacensis (n = 1). The majority of coinfections were R. helvetica with A. phagocytophilum (n = 27), but coinfections between Babesia spp. and A. phagocytophilum, or Babesia spp. and R. helvetica were also detected. Conclusions: I. ricinus ticks in urban areas of Germany harbor several tick-borne pathogens and coinfections were also observed. Public parks are of particularly great interest regarding the epidemiology of tick-borne pathogens, because of differences in both the prevalence of pathogens in ticks as well as a varying species arrangement when compared to woodland areas. The record of DNA of a Babesia gibsoni-like pathogen detected in I. ricinus suggests that I. ricinus may harbor and transmit more Babesia spp. than previously known. Because of their high recreational value for human beings, urban green areas are likely to remain in the research focus on public health issues.

The major aim of this thesis was to identify novel genes of T. uilenbergi through establishment and screening of a merozoite cDNA library with the eventual goal to develop diagnostic tools using identified genes for detection of Theileria infections. The experiments were initiated by infection of sheep using T. uilenbergi stock. When parasiteamia rose, blood was collected and the merozoites were purified. Messenger RNA was isolated from purified merozoites was then utilized to establish a cDNA library. The library was titrated to be 6 x 108 pfu/ml and the recombinant clones were estimated to be 70%. Random PCR identification of the library indicated all of the inserts were of parasite origin, indicating the usefulness of the library for the identification of new genes. Random PCR amplification of inserts of the cDNA library led to the discovery of 12 single clones, among which Clone 2, 9 and 26 exhibited a high degree of identity, especially at the 3' terminus and 3' untranslated region, indicating that they belong to the same gene family. Furthermore, PCR designed to target Clone 2 amplified again four variant genes from genomic DNA of T. uilenbergi and one from genomic DNA of T. luwenshuni, suggesting this gene family is likely isolate-specific since the DNA samples for PCR were not derived from the same parasite isolate used for library construction. Sequence analysis of another genomic fragment generated with primers targeting the 3' untranslated region of the Clone 26 sequence showed that both 5' and 3' termini were highly identical to the Clone 2 gene family and these homologous termini were separated by a 136 bp sequence fragment highly identical to the 3' untranslated region of the Clone 2 gene family, indicating Clone 2 gene family members are tandemly arranged. Bioinformatic analysis of cDNA sequences of the Clone 2 gene family indicated these genes contain signal peptides and encode potential immunogenic proteins. Analysis of recombinantly expressed Clone 2 revealed immunoreactivity with sera from Theileria-infected animals from China. No cross reaction with sera of T. lestoquardi-, Babesia motasi- or Anaplasma ovis- infected animals was observed, indicating a potential specificity of this gene family. The features of the Clone 2 gene family are similar to the Tpr gene family of T. parva, which is believed to play a role in concerted evolution. Based on the highly conserved region of the Clone 2 gene family, a set of six primers were designed for the development of a loop mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP). The established assay allowed the detection of T. uilenbergi and T. luwenshuni infections simultaneously and the reaction could be simply accomplished by incubation at 63ºC for 15 min. The specificity of the reaction was confirmed through EcoRI restriction enzyme digestion analysis and sequencing. The assay was sensitive as it detected 0.1 pg DNA of T. luwenshuni or T. uilenbergi. Moreover, the assay was evaluated by testing 86 field samples in comparison to the reverse line blot method, showing a calculated sensitivity and specificity of 66.0% and 97.4%, respectively. These results indicate that the LAMP assay has a potential usefulness for application in diagnostic and pidemiological studies on T. luwenshuni and T. uilenbergi infection of small ruminants. In addition, serological screening of the library led to discovery of a positive clone called TuIP, which has been deposited in Genbank under accession number FJ467922. Partially recombinantly cloned and expressed TuIP showed strong reactivity with serum from T. uilenbergi infected animals, indicating its potential usefulness for development of novel serological diagnostic tests or serving as a candidate for vaccine development in the future.

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The ZAP Express cDNA library was constructed using mRNA extracted from the triactinomyxon spores. First-strand cDNA was synthesized using Moloney Murine leukaemia virus reverse transcriptase. Following second-strand cDNA synthesis, the double-stranded cDNA was digested with Xho I restriction enzyme, cDNA fragments less than 400bp were removed and the remaining cDNA was ligated with the lambda ZAP Express vector. The recombinants were packaged in vitro using Gigapack III gold packaging extract. The primary cDNA library titre contained 0.5 X 106 clones, with 97% recombinant and only 3% non-recombinant clones. The cDNA library was then screened using the anti-triactinomyxon antibodies. Positive clones were selected and re-screened twice more to give a final selection of 526 clones. One clone (46-5) was selected randomly and subjected to in vivo excision of the pBK-CMV phagemid from the ZAP express vector. The sequence of the entire clone was obtained using rapid amplification of the cDNA ends. A search of the clone sequence against GenBank revealed that it related to ribosomal protein L23 and it had a high percentage similarity to this protein from different species. A conserved domain for ribosomal protein L23 was also identified in the clone sequence

Monoklonale Antikörper sind unverzichtbare Hilfsmittel, um Proteinkomplexe aus Zellen zu isolieren oder Proteine in Gewebeschnitten zu lokalisieren. Sie dienen auch dazu, Entwicklungsvorgänge aufzuklären. Dabei wird als Modellorganismus für Vertebraten oft der Zebrafisch gewählt, da er sich asaisonal vermehrt, eine zahlreiche Nachkommenschaft hat und sowohl die Befruchtung als auch die Entwicklung außerhalb des Mutterleibs erfolgt. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wurden monoklonale Antikörper generiert, die spezifisch mit neuronalen Geweben und Organen des Zebrafisches reagieren. Zur Immunisierung wurde Gehirngewebe des Zebrafisches verwendet. Immunisiert wurden Ratten. Antikörperbildende B-Zellen aus der Ratte wurden mit einer Mausmyelom-Zelllinie fusioniert. Proteine von Interesse wurden mit Hilfe der Antikörper aus Zelllysaten des Zebrafisch-Gehirns immunpräzipitiert und durch Elektrophorese in Polyacrylamidgelen aufgetrennt. Die durch Antikörper detektierbaren Banden wurden ausgeschnitten und die enthaltenen Proteine mit massenspektrometrischen Techniken identifiziert. In einem weiteren Ansatz diente eine in λ-Phagen einklonierte Genbank der Expression der Proteine. Die Proteine wurden ebenfalls mit monoklonalen Antikörpern identifiziert. Die Phagen, die diese Proteine produzierten, wurden vermehrt und die für das Protein kodierende DNA sequenziert. Wir haben unsere Anstrengungen vor allem auf Proteine neuronalen Ursprungs konzentriert, weil diese Strukturen in den Fischen besonders deutlich markiert wurden. Histologische Untersuchungen an anderen Spezies ergaben, dass die Antikörper mit neuronalen Strukturen vieler Spezies reagierten, was auf eine hohe Konservierung der Proteine in der Phylogenese schließen lässt. Aus drei Fusionen mit Milzzellen von immunisierten Ratten wurden 2400 Zellüberstände erzeugt, die auf ihre Immunglobulin-Subklasse getestet wurden. IgG-positive Überstände wurden auf histologischen Schnitten untersucht. Schließlich wurden 17 Klone etabliert, die mit Nervengewebe des Zebrafisches reagierten, und weitere 9 Klone, die sowohl mit neuronalen Zellen des Zebrafisches als auch mit neuronalem Gewebe anderer Spezies reagierten. Die von den einzelnen Antikörpern erkannten Proteine wurden entweder massenspektrometrisch oder mittels einer Expressionsgenbank, die aus drei Tage alten Zebrafischlarven hergestellt wurde, identifiziert. Es wurden Antikörper gegen folgende Proteine gefunden: 1. Tenascin R 2. Plasticin 3. TOPAP 4. VAT-1 Es wurden 16 monoklonale Antikörper, die gegen fünf verschiedene humane Antigene hergestellt worden waren, auf Kreuzreaktivität mit Zebrafischgehirn getestet. Die Antikörper reagierten sowohl mit dem Hirn des Zebrafisches als auch mit dem Hirn acht verschiedener Säugerspezies. Im zweiten Teil der Arbeit wurde der Versuch unternommen, gezielt gegen ein Fusionskonstrukt, das Teile des humanen Parkins enthielt, monoklonale Antikörper herzustellen. Aus vier Fusionen wurden nur drei spezifisch mit dem Antigen reagierende Antikörper selektiert, die auch im Western-Blot mit Parkin reagierten. In vivo wurde das Antigen in histologischen Schnitten jedoch nicht erkannt.

1. Der Aufbau des Membranpotentials und die ATP-Synthese in H. halophilus wurden durch Cl- nicht beeinflußt. Zusammen mit den Ergebnisse früherer Studien gibt es keinen Hinweis darauf, daß Cl- an der primären Bioenergetik von H. halophilus beteiligt ist. 2. Es wurde ein unter Hochsalzbedingungen induziertes, Cl--abhängiges Transportsystem für das kompatible Solut Betain identifiziert und charakterisiert. Dieses System transportiert Betain mit einer maximalen Geschwindigkeit von Vmax.= 14,0 ± 0,2 nmol/min x mg Protein und hat einen Km-Wert für Betain von 72,8 ± 10,4 µM. Die Ergebnisse der durchgeführten Hemmstoffstudien deuten darauf hin, daß die Betain-Aufnahme in H. halophilus über einen primären Transportmechanismus erfolgt. 3. Die Beweglichkeit von H. halophilus auf Weichagarplatten zeigt eine klare Cl--Abhängigkeit. In elektronenmikroskopischen Untersuchungen konnte festgestellt werden, daß die Flagellenbildung in H. halophilus Cl--abhängig ist. Das Flagellin wurde gereinigt, und es wurde ein spezifisches Antiserum dagegen hergestellt. 4. Immunologische Analysen ergaben, daß die Synthese des Flagellins Wachstumsphasen-abhängig war. In der log-Phase und in der frühen stationären Phase wurden große Mengen an Flagellin nachgewiesen, während die Flagellinkonzentration in der späten stationären Phase zurückging. Interessanterweise war die Flagellinsynthese zu jedem Zeitpunkt des Wachstums Cl--abhängig; in Abwesenheit von Cl- war kein Flagellin nachzuweisen. Dies ist der erste Nachweis einer Cl--abhängigen Proteinproduktion in einem Prokaryonten. 5. Es wurde eine Plasmid-Genbank aus chromosomaler DNA von H. halophilus generiert, die 5807 Klone mit einer durchschnittlichen Fragmentgröße von 4415 Bp enthält. Dies entspricht einer Wahrscheinlichkeit von 99,8%, daß sämtliche Bereiche des Genoms von H. halophilus abgedeckt wurden. Die für das Flagellin (fliC) und die β-Untereinheit der F1FO-ATP-Synthase (atpD) aus H. halophilus kodierenden Gene wurden mit Hilfe von Koloniehybridisierungen in der Genbank identifiziert. Anschließend wurden Teile dieser Gene kloniert und sequenziert. 6. Northern-Blot- und RT-PCR-Analysen zeigten, daß die Transkription von fliC durch Cl- um den Faktor 2 stimuliert wird. Dies ist der erste Nachweis einer durch Cl- stimulierten Transkription eines Gens mit bekannter Funktion. 7. Versuche zur Substitution von Cl- durch kompatible Solute ergaben, daß Glutamat, Succinat und Fumarat die Cl--Abhängigkeit des Wachstums von H. halophilus aufheben können. Für Glutamat wurde gezeigt, daß dies auf die nicht Cl--abhängige Aufnahme von Glutamat zurückzuführen ist. Für die Beweglichkeit und die Flagellinsynthese wurde gezeigt, daß Glutamat Cl- nicht effektiv substituieren kann. 8. Mit Hilfe von 2D-gelelektrophoretischen Studien konnten 5 weitere Cl-- abhängig synthetisierte Proteine in H. halophilus nachgewiesen werden. Die Identifizierung dieser Proteine erfolgte durch N-terminale Sequenzierung und nachfolgender Suche nach ähnlichen Proteinen in Datenbanken. Zwei davon, YvyD und SodA, gehören zum σB-Regulon von B. subtilis. YvyD ist von besonderem Interesse, da es als σ-Faktor modulierendes Protein an der Cl-- abhängigen Signaltransduktionskette, die von der Wahrnehmung des Reizes zur Genexpression führt, beteiligt sein könnte. Ein drittes Protein (YhfK) ist Aspartatund Glutamat-Semialdehyd-Dehydrogenasen sehr ähnlich. Das vierte Protein ist der ATP-bindenden Untereinheit verschiedener ABC-Transporter sehr ähnlich. Das fünfte identifizierte Protein, LuxS, ist in Gram-negativen an der Biosynthese von Autoinduktoren beteiligt. 9. Teile der Gene, die in H. halophilus für YvyD bzw. LuxS kodieren, wurden mit Hilfe von degenerierten Oligonukleotiden per PCR amplifiziert, kloniert und sequenziert. 10. In Wachstumsversuchen konnte gezeigt werden, daß 11 von 44 darauf untersuchten Arten Gram-positiver und Gram-negativer Bakterien eine Cl-- abhängige Osmotoleranz aufweisen. Dies waren: Aeromonas hydrophila, Bacillus megaterium, Bacillus subtilis, Corynebacterium glutamicum, Escherichia coli, Paracoccus denitrificans, Proteus mirabilis, Proteus vulgaris, Staphylococcus aureus, Thermus thermophilus und Vibrio fischeri.