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Abstract: Pepino mosaic virus (PepMV) has caused great concern in the greenhouse tomato industry after it was found causing a new disease in tomato in 1999. The objective of this paper is to investigate alternative hosts and compare important biological characteristics of the three PepMV strains occurring in Europe when tested under different environmental conditions. To this end we compared the infectivity and symptom development of three, well characterized isolates belonging to three different PepMV strains, EU-tom, Ch2 and US1, by inoculating them on tomato, possible alternative host plants in the family Solanaceae and selected test plants. The inoculation experiments were done in 10 countries from south to north in Europe. The importance of alternative hosts among the solanaceous crops and the usefulness of test plants in the biological characterization of PepMV isolates are discussed. Our data for the three strains tested at 10 different European locations with both international and local cultivars showed that eggplant is an alternative host of PepMV. Sweet pepper is not an important host of PepMV, but potato can be infected when the right isolate is matched with a specific cultivar. Nicotiana occidentalis 37B is a useful indicator plant for PepMV studies, since it reacts with a different symptomatology to each one of the PepMV strains.
Keywords: Pepino mosaic virus, potexvirus, strains, host plants, test plants
Published in DiRROS: 26.07.2024; Views: 58; Downloads: 35
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Abstract: The durability of shotcrete tunnel linings is significantly affected by restrained shrinkage cracking. Given the unique characteristics of shotcrete applied in tunnel linings, especially when dealing with accelerated shotcrete containing reinforcement fibres, it is necessary to upscale the ring test commonly used. This paper presents a comprehensive experiment using large ring tests with cast concrete to investigate the impact of upscaling ring test geometry. The two ring specimens demonstrated comparable cracking age (22 days) and strain measured in the steel ring, suggesting that consistent results can be obtained through the proposed instrumentation, calibration, and correction methods. Moreover, the estimated induced tensile stresses of the concrete rings (2.8 and 2.7 MPa) are slightly lower than the predicted tensile strength (3.3 MPa) at the age of cracking, which indicates that some driving forces contributing to restrained shrinkage cracking were not indicated in the strain gauge readings. Furthermore, the study identified multi-crack formation and additional potential causes for crack initiation, which include self-restraint due to the moisture gradient in the vertical direction, deflection of the concrete ring caused by its self-weight, and friction on the contact surface of the support. Therefore, optimising the geometry of the ring specimens and the apparatus is imperative to minimise additional driving forces and unmeasurable restraints for crack initiation, especially when employing the stress rate method to assess cracking potential.
Keywords: concrete, restrained shrinkage, tunnel lining, large ring test
Published in DiRROS: 22.07.2024; Views: 84; Downloads: 31
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Abstract: High-throughput sequencing (HTS) technologies and bioinformatic analyses are of growing interest to be used as a routine diagnostic tool in the field of plant viruses. The reliability of HTS workflows from sample preparation to data analysis and results interpretation for plant virus detection and identification must be evaluated (verified and validated) to approve this tool for diagnostics. Many different extraction methods, library preparation protocols, and sequence and bioinformatic pipelines are available for virus sequence detection. To assess the performance of plant virology diagnostic laboratories in using the HTS of ribosomal RNA depleted total RNA (ribodepleted totRNA) as a diagnostic tool, we carried out an interlaboratory comparison study in which eight participants were required to use the same samples, (RNA) extraction kit, ribosomal RNA depletion kit, and commercial sequencing provider, but also their own bioinformatics pipeline, for analysis. The accuracy of virus detection ranged from 65% to 100%. The false-positive detection rate was very low and was related to the misinterpretation of results as well as to possible cross-contaminations in the lab or sequencing provider. The bioinformatic pipeline used by each laboratory influenced the correct detection of the viruses of this study. The main difficulty was the detection of a novel virus as its sequence was not available in a publicly accessible database at the time. The raw data were reanalysed using Virtool to assess its ability for virus detection. All virus sequences were detected using Virtool in the different pools. This study revealed that the ribodepletion target enrichment for sample preparation is a reliable approach for the detection of plant viruses with different genomes. A significant level of virology expertise is needed to correctly interpret the results. It is also important to improve and complete the reference data.
Keywords: high-throughput sequencing, ribodepletion, interlaboratory comparison, test performance study, proficiency test, Virtool
Published in DiRROS: 19.07.2024; Views: 79; Downloads: 39
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Abstract: Tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) are designed for targeted cancer therapy. The consumption of these drugs during the last 20 years has been constantly rising. In the zebrafish (Danio rerio) embryo toxicity test, we assessed the toxicity of six TKIs: imatinib mesylate, erlotinib, nilotinib, dasatinib, sorafenib and regorafenib. Imatinib mesylate and dasatinib induced lethal effects, while regorafenib, sorfenib and dasatinib caused a significant increase of sub-lethal effects, predominantly oedema, no blood circulation and formation of blood aggregates. The analyses of the changes in the expression of selected genes associated with the hormone system after the exposure to imatinib mesylate, dasatinib and regorafenib demonstrated that all three tested TKIs deregulated the expression of oestrogen receptor esr1, cytochrome P450 aromatase (cypa19b) and hydroxysteroid-dehydrogenase (hsd3b), regorafenib, and also thyroglobulin (tg). The expression of genes involved in the DNA damage response (gadd45 and mcm6) and apoptosis (bcl2) was deregulated only by exposure to regorafenib. The data indicate that common mechanisms, namely antiangiogenic activity and interference with steroidogenesis are involved in the TKI induced sub-lethal effects and potential hormone disrupting activity, respectively. The residues of TKIs may represent an environmental hazard; therefore, further ecotoxicological studies focusing also on the effects of their mixtures are warranted.
Keywords: aquatic toxicity, tyrosine kinase inhibitors, zebrafish embryo toxicity test, gene expression, environmental hazard
Published in DiRROS: 16.07.2024; Views: 91; Downloads: 42
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Abstract: We assessed the incidence and characteristics of interval cancers after faecal immunochemical occult blood test and calculated the test sensitivity in Slovenian colorectal cancer screening programme. Patients and methods. The analysis included the population aged between 50 to 69 years, which was invited for screening between April 2011 and December 2012. The persons were followed-up until the next foreseen invitation, in average for 2 years. The data on interval cancers and cancers in non-responders were obtained from cancer registry. Gender, age, years of schooling, the cancer site and stage were compared among three observed groups. We used the proportional incidence method to calculate the screening test sensitivity. Results. Among 502,488 persons invited for screening, 493 cancers were detected after positive screening test, 79 interval cancers after negative faecal immunochemical test and 395 in non-responders. The proportion of interval cancers was 13.8%. Among the three observed groups cancers were more frequent in men (p = 0.009) and in persons aged 60+ years (p < 0.001). Comparing screen detected and cancers in non-responders with interval cancers more interval cancers were detected in persons with 10 years of schooling or more (p = 0.029 and p = 0.001), in stage III (p = 0.027) and IV (p < 0.001), and in right hemicolon (p < 0.001). Interval cancers were more frequently in stage I than non-responders cancers (p = 0.004). Test sensitivity of faecal immunochemical test was 88.45%. Conclusions. Interval cancers in Slovenian screening programme were detected in expected proportions as in similar programmes. Test sensitivity was among the highest when compared to similar programmes and was accomplished using test kit for two stool samples.
Keywords: cancer screening, colorectal cancer, faecal immunochemical test, test sensitivity
Published in DiRROS: 10.06.2024; Views: 113; Downloads: 34
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