Search

Glycerol combined with zinc (II) acetate catalyzed the reaction of 2-amino alcohols and 2-cyanopyridines under microwave irradiation, resulting in 2-pyridyl-2-oxazolines. Comparing the conversion to that obtained by conventional heating, a significant decrease in the reaction time was achieved. At the end of the reaction, the product was isolated and the glycerol-zinc (II) acetate catalytic system was recycled four times for the same transformation in reasonable to acceptable yields. The products were obtained in their pure form by simple filtration in a short pad of silica.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an emergent threat due to the antimicrobial resistance crisis. Bacteriophages (phages) are promising agents for phage therapy approaches against P. aeruginosa. It has been proposed that metazoans harbor phages on their mucosal surfaces, and this could be exploited for the rational design of prophylactic phage therapy. The goal of this study was to evaluate the potential of phage-mucus interaction to prevent infections caused by P. aeruginosa. We isolated two phages capable of infecting P. aeruginosa. Both are similar in morphology and closely related genetically. However, phage VAC3 is more efficient in replicating in mucin-exposed P. aeruginosa in vitro and is preferentially held in the respiratory tract of C57BL/6 mice. Pre-treatment with VAC3 phage protects mice from a lethal dose of P. aeruginosa while VAC1 does not. This shows that phages adapted to mucosal conditions have potential to be applied as prophylactic measures against an ESKAPE pathogen., Competing Interests: Competing interests: We declare that G.M.F.A. is one of the owners of a patent titled “Improved methods and culture media for production, quantification and isolation of bacteriophages” (FI20185086, PCT/FI2019/050073). All the other authors have no competing interests as defined by Nature Portfolio, or other interests that might be perceived to influence the results and/or discussion reported in this paper. Ethics statement: The Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee approved all animal experimental protocols (0041/2021) of the Federal University of Alfenas (Minas Gerais, Brazil). We have complied with all relevant ethical regulations for animal use. All eight-week-old female Mus musculus C57BL/6 mice used in this study were maintained with free access to food and water according to the local animal welfare regulations (protocol 0041/2021)., (© 2025. The Author(s).)

Mutually beneficial partnerships between genomics researchers and North American Indigenous Nations are rare yet becoming more common. Here, we present one such partnership that provides insight into the peopling of the Americas and furnishes another line of evidence that can be used to further treaty and Indigenous rights. We show that the genomics of sampled individuals from the Blackfoot Confederacy belong to a previously undescribed ancient lineage that diverged from other genomic lineages in the Americas in Late Pleistocene times. Using multiple complementary forms of knowledge, we provide a scenario for Blackfoot population history that fits with oral tradition and provides a plausible model for the evolutionary process of the peopling of the Americas.

Objectives: Since 2010, genome-wide data from hundreds of ancient Native Americans have contributed to the understanding of Americas' prehistory. However, these samples have never been studied as a single dataset, and distinct relationships among themselves and with present-day populations may have never come to light. Here, we reassess genomic diversity and population structure of 223 ancient Native Americans published between 2010 and 2019., Materials and Methods: The genomic data from ancient Americas was merged with a worldwide reference panel of 278 present-day genomes from the Simons Genome Diversity Project and then analyzed through ADMIXTURE, D -statistics, PCA, t-SNE, and UMAP., Results: We find largely similar population structures in ancient and present-day Americas. However, the population structure of contemporary Native Americans, traced here to at least 10,000 years before present, is noticeably less diverse than their ancient counterparts, a possible outcome of the European contact. Additionally, in the past there were greater levels of population structure in North than in South America, except for ancient Brazil, which harbors comparatively high degrees of structure. Moreover, we find a component of genetic ancestry in the ancient dataset that is closely related to that of present-day Oceanic populations but does not correspond to the previously reported Australasian signal. Lastly, we report an expansion of the Ancient Beringian ancestry, previously reported for only one sample., Discussion: Overall, our findings support a complex scenario for the settlement of the Americas, accommodating the occurrence of founder effects and the emergence of ancestral mixing events at the regional level., Competing Interests: CONFLICT OF INTEREST The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Despite the extreme and varying environmental conditions prevalent in the Arabian Peninsula, it has experienced several waves of human migrations following the out-of-Africa diaspora. Eventually, the inhabitants of the peninsula region adapted to the hot and dry environment. The adaptation and natural selection that shaped the extant human populations of the Arabian Peninsula region have been scarcely studied. In an attempt to explore natural selection in the region, we analyzed 662,750 variants in 583 Kuwaiti individuals. We searched for regions in the genome that display signatures of positive selection in the Kuwaiti population using an integrative approach in a conservative manner. We highlight a haplotype overlapping TNKS that showed strong signals of positive selection based on the results of the multiple selection tests conducted (integrated Haplotype Score, Cross Population Extended Haplotype Homozygosity, Population Branch Statistics, and log-likelihood ratio scores). Notably, the TNKS haplotype under selection potentially conferred a fitness advantage to the Kuwaiti ancestors for surviving in the harsh environment while posing a major health risk to present-day Kuwaitis., (© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution.)