Gut microbiota composition correlates with diet and health in the elderly

Alterations in intestinal microbiota composition are associated with several chronic conditions, including obesity and inflammatory diseases. The microbiota of older people displays greater inter-individual variation than that of younger adults. Here we show that the faecal microbiota composition from 178 elderly subjects formed groups, correlating with residence location in the community, day-hospital, rehabilitation or in long-term residential care. However, clustering of subjects by diet separated them by the same residence location and microbiota groupings. The separation of microbiota composition significantly correlated with measures of frailty, co-morbidity, nutritional status, markers of inflammation and with metabolites in faecal water. The individual microbiota of people in long-stay care was significantly less diverse than that of community dwellers. Loss of community-associated microbiota correlated with increased frailty. Collectively, the data support a relationship between diet, microbiota and health status, and indicate a role for diet-driven microbiota alterations in varying rates of health decline upon ageing.     

Common variants at 11p13 are associated with susceptibility to tuberculosis

After imputation of data from the 1000 Genomes Project into a genome-wide dataset of Ghanaian individuals with tuberculosis and controls, we identified a resistance locus on chromosome 11p13 downstream of the WT1 gene (encoding Wilms tumor 1). The strongest signal was obtained at the rs2057178 SNP (P = 2.63 × 10(-9)). Replication in Gambian, Indonesian and Russian tuberculosis case-control study cohorts increased the significance level for the association with this SNP to P = 2.57 × 10(-11).     

非线性系统的DFL及隐动态

在１９８１年韩京清发表的论文＂线性系统的结构与反馈计算＂的基础上发展和完善了基于高阶微分方程输入－输出描述的非线性系统直接反馈线性化（ＤＦＬ）理论。给出了ＤＦＬ问题的有解条件和补偿器的结构。首次提出了＂隐动态＂（ＨＤ）概念,并证明了它与微分几何非线性控制理论中的＂零动态＂（ＺＤ）的等价关系。该法所需数学工具简单;保留了原状态变量的物理意义,便于工程应用。     

Mediation of the solar wind termination shock by non-thermal ions

Broad regions on both sides of the solar wind termination shock are populated by high intensities of non-thermal ions and electrons. The pre-shock particles in the solar wind have been measured by the spacecraft Voyager 1 (refs 1-5) and Voyager 2 (refs 3, 6). The post-shock particles in the heliosheath have also been measured by Voyager 1 (refs 3-5). It was not clear, however, what effect these particles might have on the physics of the shock transition until Voyager 2 crossed the shock on 31 August-1 September 2007 (refs 7-9). Unlike Voyager 1, Voyager 2 is making plasma measurements. Data from the plasma and magnetic field instruments on Voyager 2 indicate that non-thermal ion distributions probably have key roles in mediating dynamical processes at the termination shock and in the heliosheath. Here we report that intensities of low-energy ions measured by Voyager 2 produce non-thermal partial ion pressures in the heliosheath that are comparable to (or exceed) both the thermal plasma pressures and the scalar magnetic field pressures. We conclude that these ions are the >0.028 MeV portion of the non-thermal ion distribution that determines the termination shock structure and the acceleration of which extracts a large fraction of bulk-flow kinetic energy from the incident solar wind.     

Towards a proteome-scale map of the human protein-protein interaction network

Systematic mapping of protein-protein interactions, or 'interactome' mapping, was initiated in model organisms, starting with defined biological processes and then expanding to the scale of the proteome. Although far from complete, such maps have revealed global topological and dynamic features of interactome networks that relate to known biological properties, suggesting that a human interactome map will provide insight into development and disease mechanisms at a systems level. Here we describe an initial version of a proteome-scale map of human binary protein-protein interactions. Using a stringent, high-throughput yeast two-hybrid system, we tested pairwise interactions among the products of approximately 8,100 currently available Gateway-cloned open reading frames and detected approximately 2,800 interactions. This data set, called CCSB-HI1, has a verification rate of approximately 78% as revealed by an independent co-affinity purification assay, and correlates significantly with other biological attributes. The CCSB-HI1 data set increases by approximately 70% the set of available binary interactions within the tested space and reveals more than 300 new connections to over 100 disease-associated proteins. This work represents an important step towards a systematic and comprehensive human interactome project.