WHOLE GENOME TARGETED ENRICHMENT AND SEQUENCING OF HUMAN-INFECTING CRYPTOSPORIDIUM spp.

Cryptosporidium spp. are protozoan parasites that cause severe illness in vulnerable human populations. Obtaining pure Cryptosporidium DNA from clinical and environmental samples is challenging because the oocysts shed in contaminated feces are limited in quantity, difficult to purify efficiently, may derive from multiple species, and yield limited DNA (<40 fg/oocyst). Here, we develop and validate a set of 100,000 RNA baits (CryptoCap_100k) based on six human-infecting Cryptosporidium spp. ( C. cuniculus , C. hominis , C. meleagridis , C. parvum , C. tyzzeri , and C. viatorum ) to enrich Cryptosporidium spp. DNA from a wide array of samples. We demonstrate that CryptoCap_100k increases the percentage of reads mapping to target Cryptosporidium references in a wide variety of scenarios, increasing the depth and breadth of genome coverage, facilitating increased accuracy of detecting and analyzing species within a given sample, while simultaneously decreasing costs, thereby opening new opportunities to understand the complex biology of these important pathogens.

Investigating biodiversity patterns across scales in freshwater mussels.

Hypotheses relating genomic diversity to community attributes such as abundance and species diversity attract attention from a wide and varied audience because their applications are twofold. First, testing such hypotheses can further a theoretical-and hopefully generalizable-understanding of the forces that assemble communities and create observed patterns of biodiversity. Second, relationships that hold true could ease the burden of data collection for conservation or other urgent applications; for example, a strong correlation between species diversity and genetic diversity could make it possible to use one as a proxy for the other, and focus limited resources on measuring the easier of the two without sacrificing information gained. In a From the Cover article in this issue of Molecular Ecology, Bucholz et al. (2023) explore the relationships between within-species genomic diversity, community relative abundance and community species richness, testing three types of ecological hypotheses in the freshwater mussel communities of the southeastern United States. They find positive relationships between mussel density and species richness, and between genomic diversity within a species and density of that species, but no robust support for the expectation of correlated genomic and species diversity. Their analyses highlight the among-species variability in relationships among these different levels of organization and also the complex ways in which interactions with the broader ecosystem (i.e. unionid mussels require fish hosts for maturation) affect these quantitative relationships, nonetheless pushing forward into the important frontier of community-wide genomic assessment for theoretical and conservation applications.

Cadmium, copper, iron, and zinc concentrations in kidneys of grey wolves, Canis lupus, from Alaska, Idaho, Montana (USA) and the Northwest Territories (Canada).

Cadmium, copper, iron, and zinc levels were measured in the kidneys of 115 grey wolves (Canis lupus) from Idaho, Montana and Alaska (United States), and from the Northwest Territories (Canada). No significant differences in the levels of iron or copper were observed between locations, but wolf kidneys from more northern locations had significantly higher cadmium levels (Alaska > Northwest Territories > Montana ≈ Idaho), and wolves from Alaska showed significantly higher zinc than other locations. Additionally, female wolves in Alaska had higher iron levels than males, and adult wolves in Montana had higher copper levels than subadults.

Isolation of linoleic and alpha-linolenic acids as COX-1 and -2 inhibitors in rose hip.

Rose hip has previously shown clinical efficacy in the treatment of osteoarthritis, and organic solvent extracts of rose hip have showed inhibition of cyclooxygenase-1 and -2. A petroleum ether extract of rose hip was fractioned by VLC on silica; on a C-18 column and by HPLC. Each step was COX-1/2 activity-guided. The bioassay-guided fractionation led to the isolation of linoleic acid (the IC50 for COX-1 was 85 microm and 0.6 microM for COX-2) and alpha-linolenic acid (the IC50 for COX-1 was 52 microM and 12 microM for COX-2). The COX-2/COX-1 ratio was 0.007 for linoleic acid and 0.2 for alpha-linolenic acid. Linoleic acid and alpha-linolenic acid contribute to the COX-1 and -2 inhibitory activity of rose hip.