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Motivation Peptides are ubiquitous throughout life and involved in a wide range of biological processes, ranging from neural signaling in higher organisms to antimicrobial peptides in bacteria. Many peptides are generated post-translationally by cleavage of precursor proteins and can thus not be detected directly from genomics data, as the specificities of the responsible proteases are often not completely understood. Results We present DeepPeptide, a deep learning model that predicts cleaved peptides directly from the amino acid sequence. DeepPeptide shows both improved precision and recall for peptide detection compared to previous methodology. We show that the model is capable of identifying peptides in underannotated proteomes. Availability and implementation DeepPeptide is available online at ku.biolib.com/DeepPeptide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: At the individual level, it is well known that pregnancies have a short-term effect on a woman's cardiovascular system and blood pressure. The long-term effect of having children on maternal blood pressure, however, is unknown. We thus estimated the causal effect of having children on blood pressure among mothers in India, a country with a history of high fertility rates.Methods: We used nationally representative cross-sectional data from the 2015-16 India National Family and Health Survey (NFHS-4). The study population comprised 444 611 mothers aged 15-49 years. We used the sex of the first-born child as an instrumental variable (IV) for the total number of a woman's children. We estimated the effect of an additional child on systolic and diastolic blood pressure in IV (two-stage least squares) regressions. In additional analyses, we stratified the IV regressions by time since a mother last gave birth. Furthermore, we repeated our analyses using mothers' husbands and partners as the regression sample.Results: On average, mothers had 2.7 children [standard deviation (SD): 1.5], a systolic blood pressure of 116.4 mmHg (SD: 14.4) and diastolic blood pressure of 78.5 mmHg (SD: 9.4). One in seven mothers was hypertensive. In conventional ordinary least squares regression, each child was associated with 0.42 mmHg lower systolic [95% confidence interval (CI): -0.46 to -0.39, P < 0.001] and 0.13 mmHg lower diastolic (95% CI: -0.15 to -0.11, P < 0.001) blood pressure. In the IV regressions, each child decreased a mother's systolic blood pressure by an average of 1.00 mmHg (95% CI: -1.26 to -0.74, P < 0.001) and diastolic blood pressure by an average of 0.35 mmHg (95% CI: -0.52 to -0.17, P < 0.001). These decreases were sustained over more than a decade after childbirth, with effect sizes slightly declining as the time since last birth increased. Having children did not influence blood pressure in men.Conclusions: Bearing and rearing a child decreases blood pressure among mothers in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Signal peptides (SPs) are short amino acid sequences that control protein secretion and translocation in all living organisms. SPs can be predicted from sequence data, but existing algorithms are unable to detect all known types of SPs. We introduce SignalP 6.0, a machine learning model that detects all five SP types and is applicable to metagenomic data. A new version of SignalP predicts all types of signal peptides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The prevalence of overweight, obesity, and diabetes is rising rapidly in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), but there are scant empirical data on the association between body-mass index (BMI) and diabetes in these settings.Methods: In this cross-sectional study, we pooled individual-level data from nationally representative surveys across 57 LMICs. We identified all countries in which a WHO Stepwise Approach to Surveillance (STEPS) survey had been done during a year in which the country fell into an eligible World Bank income group category. For LMICs that did not have a STEPS survey, did not have valid contact information, or declined our request for data, we did a systematic search for survey datasets. Eligible surveys were done during or after 2008; had individual-level data; were done in a low-income, lower-middle-income, or upper-middle-income country; were nationally representative; had a response rate of 50% or higher; contained a diabetes biomarker (either a blood glucose measurement or glycated haemoglobin [HbA1c]); and contained data on height and weight. Diabetes was defined biologically as a fasting plasma glucose concentration of 7·0 mmol/L (126·0 mg/dL) or higher; a random plasma glucose concentration of 11·1 mmol/L (200·0 mg/dL) or higher; or a HbA1c of 6·5% (48·0 mmol/mol) or higher, or by self-reported use of diabetes medication. We included individuals aged 25 years or older with complete data on diabetes status, BMI (defined as normal [18·5-22·9 kg/m2], upper-normal [23·0-24·9 kg/m2], overweight [25·0-29·9 kg/m2], or obese [≥30·0 kg/m2]), sex, and age. Countries were categorised into six geographical regions: Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe and central Asia, east, south, and southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East and north Africa, and Oceania. We estimated the association between BMI and diabetes risk by multivariable Poisson regression and receiver operating curve analyses, stratified by sex and geographical region.Findings: Our pooled dataset from 58 nationally representative surveys in 57 LMICs included 685 616 individuals. The overall prevalence of overweight was 27·2% (95% CI 26·6-27·8), of obesity was 21·0% (19·6-22·5), and of diabetes was 9·3% (8·4-10·2). In the pooled analysis, a higher risk of diabetes was observed at a BMI of 23 kg/m2 or higher, with a 43% greater risk of diabetes for men and a 41% greater risk for women compared with a BMI of 18·5-22·9 kg/m2. Diabetes risk also increased steeply in individuals aged 35-44 years and in men aged 25-34 years in sub-Saharan Africa. In the stratified analyses, there was considerable regional variability in this association. Optimal BMI thresholds for diabetes screening ranged from 23·8 kg/m2 among men in east, south, and southeast Asia to 28·3 kg/m2 among women in the Middle East and north Africa and in Latin America and the Caribbean.Interpretation: The association between BMI and diabetes risk in LMICs is subject to substantial regional variability. Diabetes risk is greater at lower BMI thresholds and at younger ages than reflected in currently used BMI cutoffs for assessing diabetes risk. These findings offer an important insight to inform context-specific diabetes screening guidelines.Funding: Harvard T H Chan School of Public Health McLennan Fund: Dean's Challenge Grant Program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The prevalence of type 2 diabetes is rising rapidly in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), but the factors driving this rapid increase are not well understood. Adult height, in particular shorter height, has been suggested to contribute to the pathophysiology and epidemiology of diabetes and may inform how adverse environmental conditions in early life affect diabetes risk. We therefore systematically analyzed the association of adult height and diabetes across LMICs, where such conditions are prominent.Research Design and Methods: We pooled individual-level data from nationally representative surveys in LMICs that included anthropometric measurements and diabetes biomarkers. We calculated odds ratios (ORs) for the relationship between attained adult height and diabetes using multilevel mixed-effects logistic regression models. We estimated ORs for the pooled sample, major world regions, and individual countries, in addition to stratifying all analyses by sex. We examined heterogeneity by individual-level characteristics.Results: Our sample included 554,122 individuals across 25 population-based surveys. Average height was 161.7 cm (95% CI 161.2-162.3), and the crude prevalence of diabetes was 7.5% (95% CI 6.9-8.2). We found no relationship between adult height and diabetes across LMICs globally or in most world regions. When stratifying our sample by country and sex, we found an inverse association between adult height and diabetes in 5% of analyses (2 out of 50). Results were robust to alternative model specifications.Conclusions: Adult height is not associated with diabetes across LMICs. Environmental factors in early life reflected in attained adult height likely differ from those predisposing individuals for diabetes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]