Behind the rind: new genomic insights into watermelon evolution, quality, and resilience

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BOYCE THOMPSON INSTITUTE

Watermelon is a globally significant agricultural product, both in terms of the total amount produced and the total economic value generated.

Scientists at the Boyce Thompson Institute have constructed a comprehensive "super-pangenome" for watermelon and its wild relatives, uncovering beneficial genes lost during domestication that could improve disease resistance and fruit quality of this vital fruit crop.

"We aimed to delve deeper into the genetic variations that make watermelons so diverse and unique," stated Professor Zhangjun Fei, the study's lead author. "Our findings not only provide insights into the evolutionary journey of watermelons but also present significant implications for breeding and disease resistance."

The watermelon super-pangenome was built using reference genome sequences and genome resequencing data from 547 watermelon accessions spanning four species - cultivated watermelon (Citrullus lanatus) and its wild relatives C. mucosospermus, C. amarus, and C. colocynthis.

Analyses of the super-pangenome revealed that many disease-resistance genes present in wild species were lost during domestication, as early farmers selected for fruit quality traits like sweetness, flesh color, and rind thickness. "These beneficial genes could be reintroduced into modern cultivars to breed more resilient watermelon varieties," noted Fei.

A key discovery of the research, recently published in the Plant Biotechnology Journal, was the identification of a tandem duplication of the sugar transporter gene ClTST2 that enhances sugar accumulation and fruit sweetness in cultivated watermelon. This genetic variant was rare in wild watermelons but was selected during domestication.

"The super-pangenome provides a valuable genetic toolkit for breeders and researchers to improve cultivated watermelon," said Fei. "By understanding the genetic makeup and evolutionary patterns of watermelons, we can develop varieties with enhanced yield, increased disease resistance, and improved adaptability."

This research was supported by grants from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Specialty Crop Research Initiative (2015-51181-24285 and 2020-51181-32139) and the US National Science Foundation (IOS-1855585).

About Boyce Thompson Institute
Founded in 1924, Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) is a premier plant biology and life sciences research institution located in Ithaca, New York. BTI scientists conduct investigations into fundamental research with the goals of increasing food security, improving environmental sustainability, and making basic discoveries that will enhance human health. Throughout this work, BTI is committed to inspiring and educating students and to providing advanced training for the next generation of scientists. BTI is an independent nonprofit research institute that is affiliated with Cornell University. For more information, please visit BTIscience.org.

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JOURNAL

Plant Biotechnology Journal

DOI

10.1111/pbi.14120 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Cells

ARTICLE TITLE

A Citrullus genus super-pangenome reveals extensive variations in wild and cultivated watermelons and sheds light on watermelon evolution and domestication

Hundred-year storms? That's how long they last on Saturn.

Megastorms leave marks on Saturn’s atmosphere for centuries

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - BERKELEY

 

IMAGE: A HUGE STORM DOMINATES THE RATHER FEATURELESS SURFACE OF SATURN IN AN IMAGE TAKEN BY THE CASSINI SPACECRAFT ON FEB. 25, 2011, ABOUT 12 WEEKS AFTER THE POWERFUL STORM WAS FIRST DETECTED IN THE PLANET'S NORTHERN HEMISPHERE. THE MEGASTORM IS SEEN OVERTAKING ITSELF AS IT ENCIRCLES THE ENTIRE PLANET. ASTRONOMERS HAVE FOUND DEEP IN THE ATMOSPHERE THE AFTEREFFECTS OF MEGASTORMS THAT OCCURRED HUNDREDS OF YEARS AGO. THE DARK STRIPES ARE THE SHADOWS OF SATURN'S RINGS. view more 

CREDIT: NASA/JPL/SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE

The largest storm in the solar system, a 10,000-mile-wide anticyclone called the Great Red Spot, has decorated Jupiter's surface for hundreds of years.

A new study now shows that Saturn — though much blander and less colorful than Jupiter — also has long-lasting megastorms with impacts deep in the atmosphere that persist for centuries.

The study was conducted by astronomers from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, who looked at radio emissions from the planet, which come from below the surface, and found long-term disruptions in the distribution of ammonia gas.

The study was published today (Aug. 11) in the journal Science Advances.

Megastorms occur approximately every 20 to 30 years on Saturn and are similar to hurricanes on Earth, although significantly larger. But unlike Earth's hurricanes, no one knows what causes megastorms in Saturn's atmosphere, which is composed mainly of hydrogen and helium with traces of methane, water and ammonia.

“Understanding the mechanisms of the largest storms in the solar system puts the theory of hurricanes into a broader cosmic context, challenging our current knowledge and pushing the boundaries of terrestrial meteorology,” said lead author Cheng Li, a former 51 Peg b Fellow at UC Berkeley who is now an assistant professor at the University of Michigan.

Imke de Pater, a UC Berkeley professor emerita of astronomy and of earth and planetary sciences, has been studying gas giants for over four decades to better understand their composition and what makes them unique, employing the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array in New Mexico to probe the radio emissions from deep inside the planet.

“At radio wavelengths, we probe below the visible cloud layers on giant planets. Since chemical reactions and dynamics will alter the composition of a planet’s atmosphere, observations below these cloud layers are required to constrain the planet’s true atmospheric composition, a key parameter for planet formation models,” she said. “Radio observations help characterize dynamical, physical and chemical processes including heat transport, cloud formation and convection in the atmospheres of giant planets on both global and local scales.”

As reported in the new study, de Pater, Li and UC Berkeley graduate student Chris Moeckel found something surprising in the radio emissions from the planet: anomalies in the concentration of ammonia gas in the atmosphere, which they connected to the past occurrences of megastorms in the planet’s northern hemisphere.

According to the team, the concentration of ammonia is lower at midaltitudes, just below the uppermost ammonia-ice cloud layer, but has become enriched at lower altitudes, 100 to 200 kilometers deeper in the atmosphere. They believe that the ammonia is being transported from the upper to the lower atmosphere via the processes of precipitation and reevaporation. What’s more, that effect can last for hundreds of years.

The study further revealed that although both Saturn and Jupiter are made of hydrogen gas, the two gas giants are remarkably dissimilar. While Jupiter does have tropospheric anomalies, they have been tied to its zones (whitish bands) and belts (darkish bands) and are not caused by storms like they are on Saturn. The considerable difference between these neighboring gas giants is challenging what scientists know about the formation of megastorms on gas giants and other planets and may inform how they’re found and studied on exoplanets in the future.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities Inc.

Radio image of Saturn taken with the VLA in May 2015, with the brighter radio emissions from Saturn and its rings subtracted to enhance the contrast in the fainter radio emissions between the various latitudinal bands in the atmosphere. Since ammonia blocks radio waves, the bright features indicate areas where ammonia is depleted and the VLA could see deeper in the atmosphere. The broad bright band at northern latitudes is the aftermath of the 2010 storm on Saturn, which apparently depleted ammonia gas just below the ammonia-ice cloud, which is what we see with the naked eye.

CREDIT

R. J. Sault and I. de Pater

Cassini and VLA Saturn composite 

In the optical, Saturn's banded atmosphere appears to smoothly shift from color to color. But seen here in radio light — VLA data overlays a Cassini image of Saturn — the distinct nature of the bands is apparent. Scientists used VLA data to better understand ammonia in the gas giant's atmosphere and learned that megastorms transport the ammonia from the upper to the lower atmosphere.

CREDIT

S. Dagnello (NRAO/AUI/NSF), I. de Pater et al (UC Berkeley)

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JOURNAL

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.adg9419 

ARTICLE TITLE

Long-lasting, deep effect of Saturn’s Giant Storms

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

11-Aug-2023

 

New concussion headset shows when it's safe to return to play

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SAN FRANCISCO

A new digital headset designed to measure alterations in brain function could change decisions about how quickly an athlete is ready to return to play after a concussion. In an evaluation of the device, UC San Francisco researchers found it revealed brain changes even in athletes whose concussion symptoms had gone away, suggesting they could be playing too soon.

Although not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the device could fill an important niche among athletes, clinicians, trainers and coaches, who are concerned about the long-term effects of repeated sports-related concussions. These include chronic traumatic encephalopathy, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. 

The headset – patented by UCSF and licensed by MindRhythm, a medical technology company – picked up changes in what the researchers call “headpulse,” which are subtle forces exerted on the skull as the heart contracts. 

The researchers observed how the device performed on 101 young adults playing Australian Rules Football, who had experienced 44 concussions. Results appeared Aug. 11, 2023, in JAMA Network Open.

On average, the changes detected by the headset lasted 12 days longer than the players’ symptoms. 

“We found a mismatch between symptoms and changes in biometrics recorded by the device,” said Cathra Halabi, MD, of the UCSF Department of Neurology and the Weill Institute for Neurosciences, who is the first author of the study. “This raises concern about relying on symptoms for return-to-play decisions. Delays could be recommended for those symptom-free athletes if head pulse abnormalities persist.” 

Researchers said the headset should be used in conjunction with medical expertise.

“We believe that it can provide critical objective biometric measures that can be used by athletes and medical professionals to decide when to return to play,” said senior author Wade S. Smith, MD, PhD, chief of the UCSF Neurovascular Division and co-founder of MindRhythm. “The headset is also used to monitor athletes afterward to ensure measures remain in the normal range.” 

Concussed Brain at Risk if Physical Activity Resumed

Playing sports with concussion puts the brain at increased risk of damage. “There is a rare condition called second impact syndrome, where a soon-after second concussion can cause near immediate brain death,” Smith said.

More commonly, playing sports with concussion may result in an increased risk for subsequent brain injury, due to symptoms like delayed reaction time, impaired balance or vision. 

“Recurrent concussions in close succession can lead to more debilitating symptoms that last longer, keeping athletes out of the game,” Halabi said. 

While the headset was tested in young adults, its use eventually may be expanded to minors. MindRhythm is hoping to acquire FDA approval within one year, said co-founder and chief executive officer John Keane. “The plan is to make the technology available to the medical community, with the most likely areas of interest being sports medicine physicians and concussion clinics,” he said. 

Athletes with concussion may be able to record their own biometric measurements, the researchers noted. Clinicians or athletic trainers would monitor the data remotely and provide guidance on when it is safe to resume sports and other physical activities.

Co-Authors: Lynda Norton, RN, MPH, and Kevin Norton, PE, PhD, of the University of South Australia, Adelaide.

Funding: Sport and Real Knowledge, John Madden Family, MindRhythm. 

Disclosures: Smith is partial owner of MindRhythm and has a patent pending with UCSF. For other disclosures, please see the study.

 

About UCSF Health: UCSF Health is recognized worldwide for its innovative patient care, reflecting the latest medical knowledge, advanced technologies and pioneering research. It includes the flagship UCSF Medical Center, which is a top-ranked specialty hospital, as well as UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals, with campuses in San Francisco and Oakland; Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital and Clinics; UCSF Benioff Children’s Physicians; and the UCSF Faculty Practice. These hospitals serve as the academic medical center of the University of California, San Francisco, which is world-renowned for its graduate-level health sciences education and biomedical research. UCSF Health has affiliations with hospitals and health organizations throughout the Bay Area. Visit https://www.ucsfhealth.org/. Follow UCSF Health on Facebook or on Twitter

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Follow UCSF
ucsf.edu | Facebook.com/ucsf | Twitter.com/ucsf | YouTube.com/ucsf

 

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JOURNAL

JAMA Network Open

 

SLU ethicists, leading scholars publish guidance for parents, physicians making medical decisions for children

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SAINT LOUIS UNIVERSITY

ST. LOUIS – How should others make decisions for pediatric patients?

For decades, there has been debate in academic literature about the ethical principles that govern medical decision-making for children. In response to this, a group of leading scholars in pediatric ethics participated in a June 2022 symposium, “Best Interests and Beyond: Standards of Decision Making in Pediatrics,” at Saint Louis University. Over the course of three days, the 17 scholars debated one question – in the context of U.S. pediatric care, what moral precepts ought to guide parents and clinicians in medical decision-making for children?

A group of leading scholars participated in a June 2022 symposium, “Best Interests and Beyond: Standards of Decision Making in Pediatrics,” at Saint Louis University. Submitted photo. 

The symposium and further discussions led to six recommendations for pediatric decision-making. Those findings, “Pediatric Decision Making: Consensus Recommendations,” appeared in Pediatrics on Aug. 9.

Erica K. Salter, Ph.D., associate professor of health care ethics and pediatrics at Saint Louis University, is the paper’s lead author. Johan Bester, M.B.Ch.B, Ph.D., associate dean for pre-clerkship curriculum at Saint Louis University School of Medicine and Lou Vinarscik, an M.D./Ph.D. student in health care ethics, also contributed to the work. Bester is an associate professor in family and community medicine and health care ethics at SLU.

The American Academy of Pediatrics offers four standards for pediatric decision-making – the Best Interest Standard, Diekema’s Harm Principle, Ross’s Constrained Parental Authority and Shared Family Centered Decision Making. This constellation of principles often confused pediatric clinicians about the ethical norms of decision-making, especially when parents and physicians disagree about a particular course of action.

The recommendations from the SLU symposium aim to provide a unified set of decision-making principles that will be more accessible and applicable for clinicians, parents and legal guardians for children from infancy to primary school.

This work brought together experts in pediatric ethics who have defended different points of view and who have different backgrounds and perspectives. The stand-out feature of this work is that they could identify points of consensus regarding which moral precepts are fundamental to medical decision-making for children. 

“The fact that this group of distinguished pediatric ethicists, in particular, was able to reach consensus about these six recommendations represents an important step forward in pediatric ethics,” Salter said.   

Recommendations 

1. Parents should be presumed to have wide, but not unlimited, discretion to make health care decisions for their children.
2. Parents should protect and promote the health interests of their children while balancing practical constraints and/or other important obligations and interests.
3. A clinician’s primary responsibility is to protect and promote their pediatric patients’ health interests. Clinicians’ recommendations should be informed by professional judgment and the best available evidence.
4. To respect children and promote their well-being, clinicians and parents should inform pediatric patients of salient information and invite their perspective to the degree that it is developmentally appropriate.
5. In addition to fulfilling state-mandated reporting requirements, clinicians should seek state intervention when all less-restrictive alternatives have failed and a parental decision places the child at significant risk of serious imminent harm or fails to meet the child’s basic interests.
6. Clinicians and parents should strive to collaborate in a shared decision-making process to promote the child’s interest.

“With these recommendations, we hope that pediatric providers feel better equipped to engage in decision-making with parents and patients, especially when there may be disagreement. It can be very distressing when providers and parents disagree about what treatment option is best for a given child, but differences of opinion are not uncommon and should sometimes be expected,” said Salter.

“The recommendations demonstrate that parents and physicians come to the decision-making table with different sets of priorities because they play different roles in the decision-making process. Pediatric providers can now engage in those discussions with a better sense of their role and its ethical justification.” 

This work will help practicing clinicians and bioethicists to make decisions for children grounded in shared moral values. These principles will also help with teaching of pediatric ethics, and with guiding academic work in the field of pediatric ethics.

The authors say further evaluation is needed to determine if these principles apply to newborn babies, teenagers and wards of the state or if modifications are needed for those patient populations.

Sponsors of the symposium include the Harvey and Bernice Jones Chair in Pediatrics at Arkansas Children’s Hospital, the Gnaegi Center for Health Care Ethics, Saint Louis University’s Mellon Award, Saint Louis Children’s Hospital and SSM Health.

Other authors include D. Micah Hester, Ph.D., University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and Arkansas Children’s Hospital; Armand H. Matheny Antommaria, M.D. Ph.D., Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and University of Cincinnati College of Medicine; Jeffrey Blustein, Ph.D., City College of New York; Ellen Wright Clayton, M.D. J.D., Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Vanderbilt University; Douglas S. Diekema, M.D. MPH, University of Washington School of Medicine; Ana S. Iltis, Ph.D., Wake Forest University; Loretta M. Kopelman, Ph.D., East Carolina University and Georgetown University; Jay R. Malone, M.D. Ph.D., Washington University in St. Louis; Mark R. Mercurio, M.D., Yale University School of Medicine; Mark C. Navin, Ph.D., Oakland University and Corwell Health East; Erin Talati Paquette, M.D. J.D., Northwestern University and Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago; Thaddeus Mason Pope, J.D. Ph.D., Mitchell Hamline School of Law; Rosamond Rhodes, Ph.D., Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; and Lainie F. Ros, M.D. Ph.D., University of Chicago and the University of Rochester.

Albert Gnaegi Center for Health Care Ethics

The Albert Gnaegi Center for Health Care Ethics at Saint Louis University is committed to excellence in teaching, service and research in health care. Engaging in both secular and religious discourse, the center brings Catholic, Jesuit tradition into the interdisciplinary study of philosophical and legal bioethics. 

Saint Louis University School of Medicine

Established in 1836, Saint Louis University School of Medicine has the distinction of awarding the first medical degree west of the Mississippi River. The school educates physicians and biomedical scientists, conducts medical research, and provides health care on a local, national and international level. Research at the school seeks new cures and treatments in five key areas: cancer, liver disease, heart/lung disease, aging and brain disease, and infectious diseases. 

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JOURNAL

PEDIATRICS

DOI

10.1542/peds.2023-061832 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Commentary/editorial

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Pediatric Decision Making: Consensus Recommendations

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

9-Aug-2023

 

Poverty alleviation breakthrough: How a switch to a 'growth mindset' empowers entrepreneurs in developing nations

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: ADDING A GROWTH MINDSET TRAINING TO THE TECHNICAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP TRAINING IN TANZANIA EMPOWERED SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS THERE TO BE MORE CONFIDENT AND ADVANCE THEIR BUSINESSES FORWARD. view more 

CREDIT: CHALET MOLENI/BYU

Although millions are spent each year on entrepreneurship training that is intended to help alleviate poverty and elevate the quality of life of entrepreneurs in developing nations, these programs often fail to make an impact.

Brigham Young University professors Shad Morris and Chad Carlos, along with three other colleagues, were invited by the Tanzania Social Action Fund (“TASAF”) to see if they could help figure out why TASAF’s entrepreneurship trainings were not producing the results they were hoping for.

In order to assist TASAF, Morris, Carlos, and colleagues Geoff Kistruck, Elly Tumsifu and Bob Lount, carried out an extensive research project that involved field interviews and a randomized controlled experiment with entrepreneurs from several villages in rural Tanzania.

Initially the researchers suspected that perhaps the training material was too complex, or not well suited for the context. However, through their interviews, they discovered that training recipients understood and retained a knowledge of the principles learned in previous entrepreneurship trainings, but few put that knowledge into action because they lacked the confidence to apply the new information and skills learned.

“A lot of the entrepreneurs were saying they didn’t believe in themselves and they didn’t think they had the ability to be successful,” said Morris, a BYU professor of organizational behavior and human resources. “They would tell us, ‘If God wanted me to be rich, then I would be rich.’ Or ‘my neighbor is smarter than me and I’m sure that they can do this, but my family has always done things this way and that is what I am destined to do.”

Those interviewed by Morris, Carlos and their colleagues who were more succesful in their respective businesses said that their success was due in part to their belief that “you have to try things and realize you are going to fail along the way.”

It was this response which led the researchers to conduct an experiment testing whether providing “growth mindset” training, in addition to business skills training, would help training recipients overcome the psychological barrier that they were incapable of applying the skills that they had learned. While a growth mindset doesn’t solve all problems related to poverty, such as lack of access to capital, education or healthcare, it teaches that talents can be developed and that failure brings new opportunities to learn.

“It’s about helping people understand that they have the ability to do hard things, overcome challenges, and learn from those challenges,” Morris said. “This helps them accomplish their goals through trial and error.”

The results of the experiment found that there was indeed a significant impact of the growth mindset training in improving the confidence of training participants. This bolstered confidence ultimately led participants to take more action in applying new skills in their businesses.

This implementation of a growth mindset is helping to counteract something known as the scarcity mindset, the idea of not having enough of something such as resources or ability, which plagues necessity entrepreneurs in places like Tanzania and prevents them from becoming more successful. “The scarcity mindset dwindles our ability to plan long term because we are just in survival mode,” Morris said.

People exposed to short- or long-term poverty develop a scarcity mindset because their cognitive bandwidth is overloaded with immediate concerns, leaving little space for the exploration or evaluation of a broader set of alternative actions. For example, the effort of getting enough money for food to eat today prevents creative planning for future food sourcing.

Researchers found those who worked on changing their mindset from a scarcity mindset to a growth mindset saw increased self-confidence and were able to break their previous habits of when they saw risk as a danger rather than an opportunity to create something new.

Beyond the implications for entrepreneurship training, Carlos sees these findings as important for teaching and learning more generally because “knowledge alone may have a limited impact if individuals do not have the confidence to take action in applying what they have learned. If we want to make a difference as teachers, parents, and leaders helping others to develop the confidence to act on what they have learned is critical.”

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JOURNAL

Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal

DOI

10.1002/sej.1472 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

The impact of growth mindset training on entrepreneurial action among necessity entrepreneurs: Evidence from a randomized control trial

Study reveals patients hospitalized with COVID-19 faced nearly twice the rates of death after discharge as patients with flu

Post-discharge risk of death has declined over the course of the pandemic, though inequities persist

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BETH ISRAEL DEACONESS MEDICAL CENTER

BOSTON – As of June 2023, more than 1.1 million Americans have died of COVID-19. Adults older than 65 —who make up just 16 percent of the population—account for more than 75 percent of U.S. COVID-19 deaths and were hospitalized at three times the rate of younger people, highlighting the heightened vulnerability of this population.

In a new study, researchers from the Richard A. and Susan F. Smith Center for Outcomes Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) used national Medicare data to characterize the long-term risk of death and hospital readmission after being hospitalized with COVID-19 among beneficiaries 65 years and older. The study, which appears in the BMJ, demonstrates that among individuals who were admitted to the hospital with COVID-19 and were discharged alive, the risk of post-discharge death was nearly twice that observed in those who were discharged alive from an influenza-related hospital admission.

“Since the early days of the pandemic, it has been evident that older adults bear a disproportionate burden of COVID-19 and our study provides several important insights into the longer-term clinical consequences of the disease in this vulnerable population,” said co-senior author Dhruv S. Kazi, MD, MSc, MS, associate director of the Smith Center and director of the Cardiac Critical Care Unit at BIDMC. “We know that patients who require hospital admission for COVID-19 have more comorbidities, more severe initial disease and worse short-term outcomes compared with patients who are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic, and they may be more vulnerable to late complications of infection. Our goal was to better understand long-term outcomes after patients are discharged from the hospital so as to help tailor support strategies and guide resource allocation for future surges of COVID-19 or during future pandemics.”

The research, led by Smith Center investigators and funded by the National Health, Lung, and Blood Institute, compared outcomes for more than one million Medicare beneficiaries admitted to the hospital with COVID-19 between March 2020 and August 2022 and a historical cohort of nearly 58,000 Medicare beneficiaries admitted to the hospital for influenza between March 2018 and August 2019.

The physician-researchers observed that patients hospitalized for COVID-19 had a higher in-hospital mortality compared with the influenza cohort (17% vs 3%), but this increased risk of death after COVID-19 hospitalization persisted at 30 days, 90 days, and 180 days after discharge. The greatest difference in risk between the two groups being concentrated in the first 30 days after discharge.

Within the COVID-19 cohort, significant differences were found in the 180-day risk of post discharge, death by race and socioeconomic status. Individuals enrolled in both Medicaid and Medicare had higher risk of death. Black patients had a higher risk of death or rehospitalization compared with white patients, largely driven by an increased risk of rehospitalization. In contrast, the risk of death was slightly lower in Black patients compared with white patients.

“Individuals with low income and those from racial/ethnic minority populations have been shown to be at increased risk for adverse events associated with acute COVID-19, including higher rates of infection, hospital admissions and in-hospital death,” said co-senior author Robert W. Yeh, MD, MSc, director of the Smith Center for Outcomes Research at BIDMC. “We found that many of these inequalities persist among a cohort of patients who were discharged alive after COVID-19-related hospital admissions.”

The COVID-19 cohort also experienced a higher risk of hospital readmission at 30 days, and 90 days compared to the flu patients; however, by 180 days, the rate of readmissions were similar between the two groups. The most common reasons for readmission were circulatory conditions, respiratory conditions, sepsis, heart failure and pneumonia. Within the COVID-19 cohort, Black individuals and dual-eligible beneficiaries were more likely to be readmitted than white patients.

Encouragingly, the scientists demonstrated a decline in post-discharge death over the course of the study period. The scientists note that there may be several epidemiological factors that explain this trend: clinicians have made major advances in treating patients hospitalized with severe cases of COVID-19, that vaccination campaigns targeting high-risk patient populations including older adults may have prevented many infections from becoming severe and potentially fatal cases of COVID-19, and that the virus itself may be undergoing changes in virulence.

“While we did find that rates of death following a hospitalization for COVID-19 steadily declined over the course of the pandemic, the substantial in-hospital and early post-discharge risk of death associated with COVID-19 in this sample of Medicare beneficiaries highlights the need for preventative interventions, particularly in patients at increased long-term risk for adverse outcomes,” said lead author Andrew S Oseran, MD, MBA, a research fellow at the Smith Center now at Massachusetts General Hospital. “Our findings suggest the continued need to evaluate clinical and societal interventions that address the glaring inequities in post-discharge outcomes among older adults hospitalized with COVID-19.”

Co-authors included Yang Song, Jiaman Xu, Issa J. Dahabreh, Rishi K. Wadhera, and Tianyu Sun of the Smith Center for Outcomes Research at BIDMC; James A. de Lemos and Sandeep R. Das of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

This work was supported in part by grants from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (R01HL157530) and Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) (ME-1502- 27704). Sun is currently employed by Moderna; his involvement in this project occurred while he was employed at the Richard A. and Susan F. Smith Center for Outcomes Research before his employment at Moderna. Dahabreh is the principal investigator of research agreement between Harvard and Sanofi on statistical methods for vaccine trials with applications to influenza and has received consulting fees from Moderna. The other authors report no financial relationships with any organizations that might have an interest in the submitted work in the previous three years; no other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work.

About Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is a patient care, teaching and research affiliate of Harvard Medical School and consistently ranks as a national leader among independent hospitals in National Institutes of Health funding. BIDMC is the official hospital of the Boston Red Sox.

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is a part of Beth Israel Lahey Health, a health care system that brings together academic medical centers and teaching hospitals, community and specialty hospitals, more than 4,800 physicians and 38,000 employees in a shared mission to expand access to great care and advance the science and practice of medicine through groundbreaking research and education.

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JOURNAL

BMJ

DOI

10.1136/bmj-2023-076222 

 

UC Irvine biologists find what colors a butterfly’s world

Study identifies first known gene change in sex-differentiated vision

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - IRVINE

Irvine, Calif., Aug. 10, 2023 — As butterflies flit among flowers, they don’t all view blossoms the same way. In a phenomenon called sexually dimorphic vision, females of some butterfly species perceive ultraviolet color while the males see light and dark. University of California, Irvine biologists have discovered that in at least one species, the variation results from a vision gene’s jump onto a sex chromosome. It’s the first known finding that this kind of genetic change causes sexually dimorphic vision.

The study appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (Link to study: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2301411120)

The UCI team determined this while investigating the Heliconius butterfly genus. Some of its species see ultraviolet color, an array wider than the visible light spectrum that humans perceive. A substance produced by the opsin gene accounts for these butterflies’ visual capacity. In Heliconius species with sexually dimorphic vision, ultraviolet color perception is only present in females.

In searching for the genetic mechanism behind this difference, the UCI biologists selected as their subject Heliconius charithonia, in which visual capacity is sexually dimorphic. When they finished assembling the first complete genome for this species, they learned that its W – or female – chromosome contained the opsin gene.

“This is the first known instance where dimorphic color vision in animals comes from a single gene moving to a sex chromosome,” said first author Mahul Chakraborty, an assistant project scientist in ecology and evolutionary biology. “Besides the discovery’s scientific significance, it highlights the complexities of automated genetic sequencing and the crucial role of validation.”

He did much of his work on the project while a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratories of co-corresponding authors Adriana Briscoe and J.J. Emerson, both faculty members in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

Previously assembled genomes for Heliconius charithonia were fragmentary. None included the W chromosome, whose highly repetitive code can pose stumbling blocks for automatic sequencing. UCI researchers began their study by automatically sequencing the species genome, but this failed to reveal all expected copies of the opsin gene. Undeterred, they next examined the coding manually.

“I went through every bit of the sequencing,” said Angelica Lara, who was an ecology and evolutionary biology undergraduate when she started working with the investigative team. Lara continued to participate in the project as a postbaccalaureate researcher after earning her degree. “I still couldn’t find the opsin after all that review. Then I realized a part of the code for the W chromosome had not been well formatted, and I believed the opsin had to be located there,” she said.

Lara’s efforts cued Chakraborty to examine that segment more closely. It turned out that the automatic sequencing had dropped that section of the chromosome’s coding, likely stymied by its repetitiveness. Restoring it revealed the opsin gene, and the team confirmed the finding with additional tests.

“Without this manual annotation and investigation, we would have made assumptions that were incorrect and misleading,” said Briscoe, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. “Now that we’ve made this discovery, we can dig much deeper into the mechanics behind the dimorphism and understanding its purpose.”

Scientists believe the vision difference may be the reason that females and males within some butterfly species feed on different types of flowers. So far, the only other creatures known to have sexually dimorphic vision are certain kinds of primates.

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the UCI Optical Biology Core Facility and Texas A&M University startup funding.

About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities and is ranked among the nation’s top 10 public universities by U.S. News & World Report. The campus has produced five Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UCI has more than 36,000 students and offers 224 degree programs. It’s located in one of the world’s safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County’s second-largest employer, contributing $7 billion annually to the local economy and $8 billion statewide. For more on UCI, visit www.uci.edu.

NOTE TO EDITORS: PHOTOS AVAILABLE AT
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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

ARTICLE TITLE

Sex-linked gene traffic underlies the acquisition of sexually dimorphic UV color vision in Heliconius butterflies