Search

The Northern house mosquito, Culex pipiens pallens, serves as important temperate vectors of several diseases, particularly the epidemic encephalitis and lymphatic filariasis. Reference genome of the Cx. pipiens pallens is helpful to understand its genomic basis underlying the complexity of mosquito biology. Using 142 Gb (∼250×) of the PacBio long reads, we assembled a draft genome of 567.56 Mb. The assembly includes 1,714 contigs with a N50 length of 0.84 Mb and a Benchmarking Universal Single-Copy Orthologs (BUSCO) completeness of 95.6% (n = 1,367). We masked 60.63% (344.11 Mb) of the genome as repetitive elements and identified 2,032 noncoding RNAs. A total of 18,122 protein-coding genes captured a 94.1% of BUSCO gene set. Gene family evolution and function enrichment analyses revealed that significantly expanded gene families mainly involved in immunity, gustatory and olfactory chemosensation, and DNA replication/repair.

Additional file 5: Figure S4. Effects of the E. hormaechei and P. vermicola on the growth and development of housefly larvae. The housefly larvae were fed with sterile water (Wa), Lb-cultured P. vermicola (Pv), sterilized Lb-cultured E. hormaechei (wEh), co-fed with Lb-cultured E. hormaechei and Lb-cultured P. vermicola (Eh + Pv), sterilized Lb-cultured E. hormaechei and P. vermicola (wEh + Pv), Lb-cultured E. hormaechei and sterilized Lb-cultured P. vermicola (Eh + wPv) and sterilized Lb-cultured E. hormaechei and sterilized Lb-cultured P. vermicola (wEh + wPv). Repeated measures ANOVA followed by Sidak correction was used for multiple comparisons. Asterisks indicate significant differences at *P

Additional file 1: Figure S1. Microbiome analysis of housefly larvae from different samples at different classification levels. (a) and (b) represent the relative abundances of bacteria at the phylum and family classification levels, respectively. Wa: sterile water; Lb: Luria-Bertani medium; Eh: Enterobacter hormaechei. Day1, Day2, Day3 and Day4 represent the development time of housefly larvae.

Additional file 3: Figure S3. Antagonistic experiment between cultivable bacteria in the intestines of housefly larvae. (a) Antagonism experiment of Enterobacter hormaechei and other cultivable bacteria in the housefly larval intestine. (b) Antagonism experiment between P. aeruginosa, P. stuartii, P. vermicola and E. hormaechei.

Additional file 2: Figure S2. Linear regression analysis of OTU number of key bacteria in different groups over time.

Additional file 4: Table S1. Bacteriostatic effects of P. aeruginosa, P. stuartii, P. vermicola and E. hormaechei on the intestines of housefly larvae.

As a technology that can prevent the information from being disclosed, the reversible data hiding in encrypted images (RDHEI) acts as an important role in privacy protection and information security. To make use of the image redundancy and further improve the embedding performance, a high-capacity RDHEI method based on bit-plane compression of prediction error is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the whole prediction error is calculated and divided into blocks of the same size. Then, the content owner rearranges the bit-plane of prediction error by block and compresses the bitstream with the joint encoding algorithm to reserve room. Finally, the image is encrypted and the information can be embedded into the reserved room. On the receiver side, the information extraction and the image recovery are performed separably. Experimental results show that the proposed method brings higher embedding capacity than state-of-the-art RDHEI works.

To compete with online shopping, retailers are constantly looking for ways to improve the display of their products and to track customers to obtain shopping patterns. We propose a general framework that exploits simple color sensors on ceilings to tackle the above-mentioned challenges. Our first contribution is a tunable lighting system that estimates accurately the true color of a product, and then, adjusts automatically the type of lighting to increase the product's appeal. Based on this accurate estimation of color, our second contribution is a system to track people anonymously. Relying solely on the reflections coming from people's clothes, hair and skin, we use color sensors to generate unique optical signatures for individuals. Our evaluation shows that, in spite of the limited information provided by color sensors, the optical signatures are precise enough to differentiate people with very similar appearance except for some minor differences in their clothing.

Alcohol dependence is a global public health problem, yet the mechanisms of alcohol dependence are incompletely understood. The traditional view has been that ethanol alters various neurotransmitters and their receptors in the brain and causes the addiction. However, an increasing amount of experimental evidence suggests that gut microbiota also influence brain functions via gut-to-brain interactions, and may therefore induce the development of alcohol use disorders. In this study, a rat model of alcohol dependence and withdrawal was employed, the gut microbiota composition was analyzed by high-throughput 16S rRNA gene sequencing, and the metagenome function was predicted by PICRUSt software. The results suggested that chronic alcohol consumption did not significantly alter the diversity and richness of gut microbiota in the jejunum and colon, but rather markedly changed the microbiota composition structure in the colon. The phyla Bacteroidetes and eight genera including Bacteroidales S24-7, Ruminococcaceae, Parabacteroides, Butyricimonas, et al were drastically increased, however the genus Lactobacillus and gauvreauii in the colon were significantly decreased in the alcohol dependence group compared with the withdrawal and control groups. The microbial functional prediction analysis revealed that the proportions of amino acid metabolism, polyketide sugar unit biosynthesis and peroxisome were significantly increased in the AD group. This study demonstrated that chronic alcohol consumption has a dramatic effect on the microbiota composition structure in the colon but few effects on the jejunum. Inducement of colonic microbiota dysbiosis due to alcohol abuse seems to be a factor of alcohol dependence, which suggests that modulating colonic microbiota composition might be a potentially new target for treating alcohol addiction.

Aedes albopictus has been described as one of the 100 worst invasive species in the world. This mosquito originated from southeastern Asia and currently has a widespread presence in every continent except Antarctica. The rapid global expansion of Ae. albopictus has increased public health concerns about arbovirus-related disease threats. Adaptation, adaption to novel areas is a biological challenge for invasive species, and the underlying processes can be studied at the molecular level. In this study, genetic analysis was performed using mitochondrial gene NADH dehydrogenase subunit 5 (ND5), based on both native and invasive populations. Altogether, 38 haplotypes were detected with H1 being the dominant and widely distributed in 21 countries. Both phylogenetic and network analyses supported the existence of five clades, with only clade I being involved in the subsequent global spread of Asian tiger mosquito. The other four clades (II, III, IV and V) were restricted to their original regions, which could be ancestral populations that had diverged from clade I in the early stages of evolution. Neutrality tests suggested that most of the populations had experienced recent expansion. Analysis of molecular variance and the population-pair statistic FST revealed that most populations lacked genetic structure, while high variability was detected within populations. Multiple and independent human-mediated introductions may explain the present results.