Long-term commuting times and air quality relationship to COVID-19 in São Paulo.

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic is an unprecedented global health crisis and the effects may be related to environmental and socio-economic factors. In São Paulo, Brazil, the first death occurred in March 2020 and since then the numbers have grown to 175 new deaths per day in April 2021, positioning the city as the epicenter of the number of cases and deaths in Brazil. São Paulo is one of the largest cities in the world with more than 12 million inhabitants, a fleet of about 8 million vehicles and frequent pollutant concentrations above recommended values. Social inequalities are evident in the municipality, similarly to other cities in the world. This paper focuses on transportation activities related to air pollution and associated with cardiovascular and respiratory diseases especially on people who developed comorbidities during their whole life. This study relates travel trip data to air quality analysis and expanded to COVID-19 disease. This work studied the relationship of deaths in São Paulo due to COVID-19 with demographic density, with family income, with the use of public transport and with atmospheric pollution for the period between March 17th, 2020 and April 29th, 2021. The main results showed that generally passenger kilometers traveled, commuting times and air quality related diseases increase with residential distance from the city center, and thus, with decreasing residential density. PM2.5 concentrations are positively correlated with COVID-19 deaths, regions with high urban densities have higher numbers of deaths and long-distance frequent trips can contribute to spread of the disease.

Molecular epidemiology of human respiratory syncytial virus and human metapneumovirus in hospitalized children with acute respiratory infections in Croatia, 2014-2017.

Acute respiratory infection (ARI) is the most common infection in children under 5 years of age and it is frequently caused by two pneumoviruses, human respiratory syncytial virus (HRSV) and human metapneumovirus (HMPV). Epidemic seasons of these viruses overlap and disease manifestations are highly similar, including severe lower ARI such as bronchiolitis or pneumonia. Reinfections with pneumoviruses are frequent and limited prevention treatment is available. Genetic diversity of HRSV and HMPV strains circulating in Croatia was monitored during four consecutive years (2014-2017). Co-circulation of multiple lineages was observed for both viruses. Within HRSV group A, ON1 strains gained strong predominance during the 4-year period, while previously dominant genotype NA1 was detected only sporadically. Similarly, newly occurring HMPV genotype A2c gained predominance over genotype A2b during this period, resulting in all infection in 2017 being caused by A2c. Along with phylogenetic analysis based on the commonly used fragments for detection and genotyping of these viruses, full length G and SH genes were also analysed. Evolutionary dynamics showed that inferred substitution rates of HRSV and HMPV are between 2.51 × 10-3 and 3.61 × 10-3 substitutions/site/year. This study established presence of recently described HMPV strains containing large duplications in the G gene in Croatia. Viruses with either of the two duplications belong to a subcluster A2c, which has completely replaced all other group A subclusters in 2017.

De novo design of a pentameric coiled-coil: decoding the motif for tetramer versus pentamer formation in water-soluble phospholamban.

Water-soluble phospholamban (WSPLB) is a designed, water-soluble analogue of the pentameric membrane protein phospholamban (PLB), which contains the same core and interhelical residues as PLB, with only the solvent-exposed positions mutated. WSPLB contains the same secondary and quaternary structure as PLB. The hydrophobic cores of PLB and WSPLB contain Leu and Ile at the a- and d-positions of a heptad repeat (abcdefg) from residues 31-52, while residues 21-30 are rich in polar amino acids at these positions. While the full-length WSPLB forms pentamers in solution, truncated peptides lacking residues 21-30 are largely tetrameric. Thus, truncation of residues 1-20 promotes a switch from pentamer to tetramer formation. Here, the motifs for WSPLB pentamerization were elucidated by characterizing a series of peptides, which were progressively truncated in this polar 'switch' region. When fully present, the 'switch' region promotes pentamer formation in WSPLB, by destabilizing a more stable tetrameric species which exists in its absence. We find that the burial of hydrogen bonding residues from 21 to 30 drives WSPLB from a tetramer to a pentamer, with direct implications for coiled-coil design.