Coral microbiome composition along the northern Red Sea suggests high plasticity of bacterial and specificity of endosymbiotic dinoflagellate communities

Background The capacity of reef-building corals to tolerate (or adapt to) heat stress is a key factor determining their resilience to future climate change. Changes in coral microbiome composition (particularly for microalgal endosymbionts and bacteria) is a potential mechanism that may assist corals to thrive in warm waters. The northern Red Sea experiences extreme temperatures anomalies, yet corals in this area rarely bleach suggesting possible refugia to climate change. However, the coral microbiome composition, and how it relates to the capacity to thrive in warm waters in this region, is entirely unknown. Results We investigated microbiomes for six coral species (Porites nodifera, Favia favus, Pocillopora damicornis, Seriatopora hystrix, Xenia umbellata, and Sarcophyton trocheliophorum) from five sites in the northern Red Sea spanning 4° of latitude and summer mean temperature ranges from 26.6 °C to 29.3 °C. A total of 19 distinct dinoflagellate endosymbionts were identified as belonging to three genera in the family Symbiodiniaceae (Symbiodinium, Cladocopium, and Durusdinium). Of these, 86% belonged to the genus Cladocopium, with notably five novel types (19%). The endosymbiont community showed a high degree of host-specificity despite the latitudinal gradient. In contrast, the diversity and composition of bacterial communities of the surface mucus layer (SML)—a compartment particularly sensitive to environmental change—varied significantly between sites, however for any given coral was species-specific. Conclusion The conserved endosymbiotic community suggests high physiological plasticity to support holobiont productivity across the different latitudinal regimes. Further, the presence of five novel algal endosymbionts suggests selection of certain genotypes (or genetic adaptation) within the semi-isolated Red Sea. In contrast, the dynamic composition of bacteria associated with the SML across sites may contribute to holobiont function and broaden the ecological niche. In doing so, SML bacterial communities may aid holobiont local acclimatization (or adaptation) by readily responding to changes in the host environment. Our study provides novel insight about the selective and endemic nature of coral microbiomes along the northern Red Sea refugia

Older People’s Needs and Opportunities for Assistive Technologies

Older adults experience a disconnect between their needs and adoption of technologies that have potential to assist and to support more independent living. This paper reviewed research that links people’s needs with opportunities for assistive technologies. It searched 13 databases identifying 923 papers with 34 papers finally included for detailed analysis. The research papers identified needs in the fields of health, leisure, living, safety, communication, family relationship and social involvement. Amongst these, support for activities of daily living category was of most interest. In specific sub-categories, the next most reported need was assistive technology to support walking and mobility followed by smart cooking/kitchen technology and assistive technology for social contacts with family member/other people. The research aimed to inform a program of research into improving the adoption of technologies where they can ameliorate identified needs of older people

Exploring phygitalization in architecture : comparative analysis of the reality of digital and physical experiences in relationships of humans and space

42nd Conference on Education and Research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe (eCAADe 2024), Nicosia, Cyprus, 11-13 September 2024202505 bcchVersion of RecordOthersThe Community of Practice (CoP) on Student-Staff Partnership (SSP)PublishedVoR allowe

High-resolution tracking of microbial colonization in Fecal Microbiota Transplantation experiments via metagenome-assembled genomes

This project contains anvi'o profiles and contigs databases that is used and/or referenced from the Lee STM and Khan SA, et al. study titled "High-resolution tracking of microbial colonization in Fecal Microbiota Transplantation experiments via metagenome-assembled genomes". The pre-print of this study is available via http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/090993. To be able to work with the data files you will need anvi'o v2.1.0 to be installed on your system. For installation instructions, or to have access to a Docker image for anvi'o, please visit this URL: http://merenlab.org/software/anvio Public data: ANVIO-FMT-D-R01-R02-QUICK-VISUALIZATION.tar.gz: Data files for a quick visualization of the 97 MAGs and their distribution across the two FMT recipients. A run script in the archive explains how to use this data.   ANVIO-FMT-D-R01-R02-MERGED-PROFILE.tar.gz: The merged anvi'o profile for the entire data, which also contains a collection of 97 MAGs identified in the donor. The profile database contains no hierarchical clustering of contigs, however, individual MAGs can be displayed via the following notation since the collection 'MAGs' describe the organization of contigs in each MAG referenced from the dataset `ANVIO-FMT-D-R01-R02-QUICK-VISUALIZATION`, as well as from the paper: "anvi-refine -c CONTIGS.db -p PROFILE.db -C MAGs -b FMT-Donor_MAG_00054". All MAG names are in the supplementary tables in our paper.   ANVIO-FMT-D-R01-R02-MAGs-SUMMARY.tar.gz: A static HTML website that contains FASTA files for each MAG, and TAB-delimited matrices for coverage and detection values, and others. After unpacking, you can double-click the index.html file.   </ul

Development of molecular clamp stabilized hemagglutinin vaccines for Influenza A viruses

Influenza viruses cause a significant number of infections and deaths annually. In addition to seasonal infections, the risk of an influenza virus pandemic emerging is extremely high owing to the large reservoir of diverse influenza viruses found in animals and the co-circulation of many influenza subtypes which can reassort into novel strains. Development of a universal influenza vaccine has proven extremely challenging. In the absence of such a vaccine, rapid response technologies provide the best potential to counter a novel influenza outbreak. Here, we demonstrate that a modular trimerization domain known as the molecular clamp allows the efficient production and purification of conformationally stabilised prefusion hemagglutinin (HA) from a diverse range of influenza A subtypes. These clamp-stabilised HA proteins provided robust protection from homologous virus challenge in mouse and ferret models and some cross protection against heterologous virus challenge. This work provides a proof-of-concept for clamp-stabilised HA vaccines as a tool for rapid response vaccine development against future influenza A virus pandemics