Cheng, C. K. | bioRxiv Science

bioRxiv2018

Evaluation of correlates of protection against influenza A(H3N2) and A(H1N1)pdm09 infection: Applications to the hospitalized patient population.

BackgroundInfluenza vaccines are important for prevention of influenza-associated hospitalization. Assessments of serologic correlates of protection can support interpretation of influenza vaccine effectiveness evaluations in hospitalized populations.\n\nMethodsSerum specimens collected at admission from adults hospitalized for treatment of acute respiratory illnesses during two influenza seasons were tested in hemagglutination-inhibition (HAI) and neuraminidase-inhibition (NAI) assays. We evaluated the suitability of these specimens as proxies for pre-infection immune status, and measured associations between antibody titers and influenza vaccination and infection\n\nResultsSpecimens were collected within 3 days of illness onset from 65% of participants; geometric mean titers (GMTs) did not vary by day of collection. In both seasons, vaccinated participants had higher HAI and NAI GMTs than unvaccinated participants. HAI titers against the 2014-2015 A(H3N2) vaccine strain did not correlate with protection from infection with antigenically-drifted A(H3N2) viruses that circulated that season. In contrast, higher HAI titers against the A(H1N1)pdm09 vaccine strain were associated with reduced odds of A(H1N1)pdm09 infection in 2015-2016.\n\nConclusionsSerum collected after hospital admission can be used to assess correlates of protection against influenza infection. Broader implementation of similar studies would provide an opportunity to understand the successes and shortcomings of current influenza vaccines.

epidemiology↗

bioRxiv2018

Discovery of microRNA-like RNAs during early fruiting body development in the model mushroom Coprinopsis cinerea

Coprinopsis cinerea is a model mushroom particularly suited to study fungal fruiting body development and the evolution of multicellularity in fungi. While microRNAs (miRNAs) are extensively studied in animals and plants for their essential roles in post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression, miRNAs in fungi are less well characterized and their potential roles in controlling mushroom development remain unknown. To identify miRNA-like RNAs (milRNAs) in C. cinerea and explore their expression patterns during the early developmental transition of mushroom development, small RNA libraries of vegetative mycelium and primordium were generated and putative milRNA candidates were identified following the standards of miRNA prediction in animals and plants. Two out of 22 novel predicted milRNAs, cci-milR-12c and cci-milR-13e-5p, were validated by northern blot and stem-loop reverse transcription real-time PCR. Cci-milR-12c was differentially expressed whereas the expression levels of cci-milR-13e-5p were similar in the two developmental stages. Target prediction of the validated milRNAs resulted in genes associated with fruiting body development, including pheromone, hydrophobin, cytochrome P450, and protein kinase. Besides, essential genes for miRNA biogenesis, including three coding for Dicer-like (DCL), two for Argonaute-like (AGO-like) and one for quelling deficient-2 (QDE-2) proteins, were identified in the C. cinerea genome. Phylogenetic analysis showed that the DCL and AGO-like proteins of C. cinerea were more closely related to those in other basidiomycetes and ascomycetes than to animals and plants. Taken together, our findings provided the first evidence of milRNAs in the model mushroom and their potential roles in regulating fruiting body development. Information on the evolutionary relationship of milRNA biogenesis proteins across kingdoms has also provided new insights into further functional and evolutionary studies of miRNAs.

genetics↗