Biology subjects

Ruiz, M. O.

Publications and source records attributed to Ruiz, M. O..

2 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2021

Proteins observed in scalp hair from preschool children

Early childhood experiences have long-lasting effects on subsequent mental and physical health, education, and employment. Measurement of these effects relies on insensitive behavioral signs, subjective assessments by adult observers, neuroimaging and neurophysiological studies, or remote epidemiologic outcomes. Despite intensive search, no biomarkers for developmental changes in the brain have been identified. We analyzed scalp hair from healthy children and their mothers using an unbiased proteomics platform to reveal 1368 hair proteins commonly observed in children, 1438 proteins commonly observed in mothers, and 1288 proteins observed sporadically in individual subjects. Mothers showed higher numbers of peptide spectral matches and hair proteins compared to children, with important age-related differences between mothers and children. Age-related differences were also observed in children, with differential protein expression patterns between younger (2 years and below) and older children (3-5 years). Boolean analyses showed greater conservation of hair protein patterns between mothers and their biological children as compared to mothers and unrelated children. The top 5% proteins driving population variability represent biological pathways associated with brain development, immune signaling, and stress response regulation. Non-structural proteins observed in scalp hair may include promising biomarkers to investigate the developmental changes associated with early childhood experiences. One Sentence SummaryThe non-structural proteins observed in scalp hair from preschool children show evidence for heritability, reflect biological functions such as brain development, or immune function and regulation of stress responses, and exhibit age- and sex-related differences across periods of early childhood development.

developmental biology↗

bioRxiv2019

The drivers of West Nile virus human illness: fine scale dynamic effects of weather, mosquito infection, social, and biological conditions

West Nile virus (WNV) has consistently been reported to be associated with human cases of illness in the region near Chicago, Illinois. However, the number of reported cases of human illness varies across years, with intermittent outbreaks. Several dynamic factors, including temperature, rainfall, and infection status of vector mosquito populations, are responsible for much of these observed variations. However, local landscape structure and human demographic characteristics also play a key role. The geographic and temporal scales used to analyze such complex data affect the observed associations. Here, we used spatial and statistical modeling approaches to investigate the factors that drive the outcome of WNV human illness on fine temporal and spatial scales. Our approach included multi-level modeling of long-term weekly data from 2005 to 2016, with weekly measures of mosquito infection, human illness and weather combined with more stable landscape and demographic factors on the geographical scale of 1000m hexagons. We found that hot weather conditions, warm winters, and higher MIR in earlier weeks increased the probability of an area of having a WNV human case. Higher population and the proportion of urban light intensity in an area also increased the probability of observing a WNV human case. A higher proportion of open water sources, percentage of grass land, deciduous forests, and housing built post 1990 decreased the probability of having a WNV case. Additionally, we found that cumulative positive mosquito pools up to 31 weeks can strongly predict the total annual human WNV cases in the Chicago region. This study helped us to improve our understanding of the fine-scale drivers of spatiotemporal variability of human WNV cases.

bioinformatics↗