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Schizophrenia-spectrum disorders are characterized by deficits in social domains. Extant research has reported an impaired ability to perceive emotional faces in schizophrenia. Yet, it is unclear if these deficits occur already in the access to visual awareness. To investigate this question, 23 people with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and 22 healthy controls performed a breaking continuous flash suppression task with fearful, happy, and neutral faces. Response times were analysed with generalized linear mixed models. People with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders were slower than controls in detecting faces, but did not show emotion-specific impairments. Moreover, happy faces were detected faster than neutral and fearful faces, across all participants. Although caution is needed when interpreting the main effect of group, our findings may suggest an elevated threshold for visual awareness in schizophrenia-spectrum disorders, but an intact implicit emotion perception. Our study provides a new insight into the mechanisms underlying emotion perception in schizophrenia-spectrum disorders., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Mycoplasma genitalium is an obligate intracellular bacterium that is responsible for several sexually transmitted infections, including non-gonococcal urethritis in men and several inflammatory reproductive tract syndromes in women. Here, we applied subtractive genomics and reverse vaccinology approaches for in silico prediction of potential vaccine and drug targets against five strains of M. genitalium. We identified 403 genes shared by all five strains, from which 104 non-host homologous proteins were selected, comprising of 44 exposed/secreted/membrane proteins and 60 cytoplasmic proteins. Based on the essentiality, functionality, and structure-based binding affinity, we finally predicted 19 (14 novel) putative vaccine and 7 (2 novel) candidate drug targets. The docking analysis showed six molecules from the ZINC database as promising drug candidates against the identified targets. Altogether, both vaccine candidates and drug targets identified here may contribute to the future development of therapeutic strategies to control the spread of M. genitalium worldwide., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Francisella noatunensis subsp. orientalis (FNO) is an important emerging pathogen associated with disease outbreaks in farm-raised Nile tilapia. FNO genetic diversity using PCR-based typing, no intra-species discrimination was achieved among isolates/strains from different countries, thus demonstrating a clonal behaviour pattern. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the population structure of FNO isolates by comparing whole-genome sequencing data. The analysis of recombination showed that Brazilian isolates group formed a clonal population; whereas other lineages are also supported by this analysis for isolates from foreign countries. The whole-genome multilocus sequence typing (wgMLST) analysis showed varying numbers of dissimilar alleles, suggesting that the Brazilian clonal population are in expansion. Each Brazilian isolate could be identified as a single node by high-resolution gene-by-gene approach, presenting slight genetic differences associated to mutational events. The common ancestry node suggests a single entry into the country before 2012, and the rapid dissemination of this infectious agent may be linked to market sales of infected fingerlings., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Executive control and its modulation of attentional mechanisms allow us to detect and adapt to conflicting information. According to recent studies, executive control functions may be modulated by unconsciously perceived information, although the available evidence is not consistent. In this study, we used a Flanker Task and employed Chromatic Flicker Fusion, a suppression technique that has been proposed as more adequate to elicit executive control functions, to assess conflict and conflict adaptation effects. Our results showed that, when suppressed, flankers did not evoke conflict related effects on performance. However, in trials where most flankers were incongruent, longer response times in congruent trials were observed, consistent with orienting responses. Our results help to support earlier theories regarding the inherent limitations of unconsciously perceived information, though future studies should further investigate why and under which conditions is the executive control system modulated by unconscious information., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Benchtop NGS platforms are constantly evolving to follow new advances in genomics. Thus, the manufacturers are making improvements, such as the recent Ion PGM Hi-Q chemistry. We evaluate the efficacy of this new Hi-Q approach by comparing it with the former Ion PGM kit and the Illumina MiSEQ Nextera 3rd version. The Hi-Q chemistry showed improvement on mapping reads, with 49 errors for 10kbp mapped; in contrast, the former kit had 89 errors. Additionally, there was a reduction of 80% in erroneous variant detection with the Torrent Variant Caller. Also, an enhancement was observed in de novo assembly with a more confident result in whole-genome MLST, with up to 96% of the alleles assembled correctly for both tested microbial genomes. All of these advantages result in a final genome sequence closer to the performance with MiSEQ and will contribute to turn comparative genomic analysis a reliable task., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Leishmaniasis is an overlooked tropical disease affecting approximately 1 million people in several countries. Clinical manifestation depends on the interaction between Leishmania and the host's immune response. Currently available treatment options for leishmaniasis are limited and induce severe side effects. In this research, we tested nitro-heterocyclic compounds (BSF series) as a new alternative against Leishmania. Its activity was measured in Leishmania (Leishmania) infantum promastigotes and intracellular amastigotes using MTT colorimetric assay. Additionally, we assessed the phosphatidylserine exposure by promastigotes, measured by flow cytometry, as well as nitric oxide production, measured by Griess' method. The nitro-heterocyclic compounds (BSF series) showed activity against L. (L.) infantum promastigotes, inducting the phosphatidylserine exposition by promastigotes, decreasing intracellular amastigotes and increasing oxide nitric production. The selectivity index was more prominent to Leishmania than to macrophages. Compared to amphotericin b, our compounds presented higher IC50, however the selectivity index was more specific to parasite than to amphotericin b. In conclusion, these nitro-heterocyclic compounds showed to be promising as an anti-Leishmania drug, in in vitro studies., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)