Fry, L. | bioRxiv Science

bioRxiv2021

Investigating the Interplay Between Affective, Phonatory and Motoric Subsystems in Autism Spectrum Disorder Using a Multimodal Dialogue Agent

We explore the utility of an on-demand multimodal conversational platform in extracting speech and facial metrics in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). We investigate the extent to which these metrics correlate with objective clinical measures, particularly as they pertain to the interplay be-tween the affective, phonatory and motoric subsystems. 22 participants diagnosed with ASD engaged with a virtual agent in conversational affect production tasks designed to elicit facial and vocal affect. We found significant correlations between vocal pitch and loudness extracted by our platform during these tasks and accuracy in recognition of facial and vocal affect, as-sessed via the Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy-2 (DANVA-2) neuropsychological task. We also found significant correlations between jaw kinematic metrics extracted using our platform and motor speed of the dominant hand assessed via a standardised neuropsychological finger tapping task. These findings offer preliminary evidence for the usefulness of these audiovisual analytic metrics and could help us better model the interplay between different physiological subsystems in individuals with ASD.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2019

Re-annotation of the Theileria parva genome refines 53% of the proteome and uncovers essential components of N-glycosylation, a conserved pathway in many organisms

BackgroundThe apicomplexan parasite Theileria parva causes a livestock disease called East coast fever (ECF), with millions of animals are at risk in sub-Saharan East and Southern Africa, the geographic distribution of T. parva. Over a million bovines die each year of ECF, with a tremendous economic burden to pastoralists in endemic countries. Comprehensive, accurate parasite genome annotation can facilitate the discovery of novel chemotherapeutic targets for disease treatment, as well as elucidate the biology of the parasite. However, genome annotation remains a significant challenge because of limitations in the quality and quantity of the data being used to inform the location and function of protein-coding genes and, when RNA data are used, the underlying biological complexity of the processes involved in gene expression. Here, we apply our recently published RNAseq dataset derived from the schizont life-cycle stage of T. parva to update structural and functional gene annotations across the entire nuclear genome. ResultsThe re-annotation effort lead to evidence-supported updates in over half of all protein-coding sequence (CDS) predictions, including exon changes, gene merges and gene splitting, an increase in average CDS length of approximately 50 base pairs, and the identification of 128 new genes. Among the new genes identified were those involved in N-glycosylation, a process previously thought not to exist in this organism and a potentially new chemotherapeutic target pathway for treating ECF. Alternatively-spliced genes were identified, and antisense and multi-gene family transcription were extensively characterized. ConclusionsThe process of re-annotation led to novel insights into the organization and expression profiles of protein-coding sequences in this parasite, and uncovered a minimal N-glycosylation pathway that changes our current understanding of the evolution of this post-translation modification in apicomplexan parasites.

genomics↗