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This article is an editorial published in Frontiers in Microbiology, discussing the use of artificial intelligence in forensic microbiology. The field of forensic microbiology involves examining microbial characteristics to determine sources and transmission pathways for legal purposes. The article specifically focuses on the use of artificial intelligence in identifying the spread of pathogens and assessing the damage caused by transmission. The authors highlight studies on the use of deep learning methods to predict epilepsy in glioblastoma patients and the application of machine learning in HPV detection and forensic bacterial identification. They also emphasize the need for collaboration between forensic researchers and experts from other fields to improve feature extraction methods. [Extracted from the article]

Introduction: As a central nervous system stimulant, methamphetamine (METH) can cause lasting changes after being abused, including possible changes of gene expression in the brain. The dopamine (DA) system plays a fundamental role in METH-induced behavioural changes, but the expression levels of various subtypes of DA receptors, especially the dopamine D3 receptor (D3R), remains unclear. Material and methods: We explored the effect of the D3R on METH-induced behavioural sensitization by comparing D3R knockout (D3R-/-) mice with wild type (WT) mice. The quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRTPCR) was used to detect the expression levels of the five DA receptor (D1R, D2R, D3R, D4R, and D5R) genes in four brain regions: the prefrontal cortex (PFc), nucleus accumbens (NAc), caudate-putamen (CPu), and hippocampus (Hip). Results: The behavioural test results revealed that METH could induce behavioural sensitization both in WT and D3R-/- mice. Moreover, in D3R-/- mice, the increase in movement distance induced by methamphetamine was significantly less than that of wild-type mice. The response of the five DA receptors to METH exposure varies in different brain regions. To be more specific, METH increased the expression of the D3R gene in most brain regions of WT mice, decreased D1R and D2R gene expression both in the NAc and CPu of WT mice and in CPu of D3R-/- mice. Conclusions: These results suggested that D3R may play a positive regulatory role in the locomotor effects of METH, and five DA receptors, especially D1R, D2R, and D3R, may concurrently participate in the adaptive changes and the regulation of METH-induced behavioural sensitization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lineage-based haplotype markers (e.g., Y chromosome STRs and mitochondrial DNA sequences) are important adjunct tools to the autosomal markers for kinship analysis and for specialized kinship applications such as database searching. Traditionally, the prosecution or kinship hypothesis considers the haplotypes in the same lineage and the probability of genotype data given the lineage hypothesis is simply set at 1 if the number of mismatched loci or nucleotides between the questioned person and the references is less than a predefined threshold. In this study, a kinship hypothesis based on a fixed relationship of the questioned person in the reference family is introduced. A graphical model is proposed to calculate the probability of the genotype data given the kinship hypothesis, which is the product of haplotype frequency of the founder in the pedigree and the transmission probability from the founder to all descendants. Proper mutation models are suggested for Y chromosome STRs and mitochondrial DNA sequence variants (i.e., SNPs) to calculate the transmission probability. The methods to infer the genotypes of the untyped individuals in the pedigree and the computational complexity of handling these untyped individuals are also addressed. Lastly, numerical examples of the applications are given to demonstrate the kinship hypothesis and the algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since their arrival in the Tibetan Plateau during the Neolithic Age, Tibetans have been well-adapted to extreme environmental conditions and possess genetic variation that reflect their living environment and migratory history. To investigate the origin of Tibetans and the genetic basis of adaptation in a rigorous environment, we genotyped 30 Tibetan individuals with more than one million SNP markers. Our findings suggested that Tibetans, together with the Yi people, were descendants of Tibeto-Burmans who diverged from ancient settlers of East Asia. The valleys of the Hengduan Mountain range may be a major migration route. We also identified a set of positively-selected genes that belong to functional classes of the embryonic, female gonad, and blood vessel developments, as well as response to hypoxia. Most of these genes were highly correlated with population-specific and beneficial phenotypes, such as high infant survival rate and the absence of chronic mountain sickness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The pathogenesis of severe acute respiratory disease syndrome (SARS) is not fully understood. One case-control study has reported an association between susceptibility to SARS and mannan-binding lectin (MBL) in China. As the downstream protein of MBL, variants of the MBL-associated serine protease-2 (MASP2) gene may be associated with SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV) infection in the same population. Methods: Thirty individuals with SARS were chosen for analysis of MASP2 polymorphisms by means of PCR direct sequencing. Tag single nucleotide polymorphisms (tagSNPs) were chosen using pairwise tagging algorithms. The frequencies of four tag SNPs (rs12711521, rs2261695, rs2273346 and rs7548659) were ascertained in 376 SARS patients and 523 control subjects, using the Beckman SNPstream Ultra High Throughput genotyping platform. Results: There is no significant association between alleles or genotypes of the MASP2 tagSNP and susceptibility to SARS-CoV in both Beijing and Guangzhou populations. Diplotype (rs2273346 and rs12711521)were analyzed for association with susceptibility to SARS, no statistically significant evidence of association was observed. The Beijing and Guangzhou sample groups were homogeneous regarding demographic and genetic parameters, a joined analysis also showed no statistically significant evidence of association. Conclusion: Our data do not suggest a role for MASP2 polymorphisms in SARS susceptibility in northern and southern China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]