BOL: Related items

Ebola virus disease (EVD)or Ebola haemorrhagic fever !!!

Rahul Nayak — Sun, 10 Aug 2014 13:08:13 -0500

Ebola virus disease (EVD)or Ebola haemorrhagic fever is a severe and often deadly illness in humans, caused by the Ebola virus. The disease has high mortality rate, killing upto 90% of people who are infected.

The ongoing 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak is considered to be the largest and longest outbreak ever recorded of Ebola, killing at least 932 people and infecting more than 1,700 till date since March in Sierra Leone, Guinea, Nigeria and Liberia.

Hence, the World Health Organisation (WHO) on 8 August, 2014 declared the killer Ebola epidemic ravaging parts of West Africa an international health emergency.

Causes

EVD is caused by infection with a virus of the family Filoviridae, genus Ebolavirus. While there are five identified sub-species of Ebolavirus, four viruses cause disease in humans. They are Bundibugyo virus (BDBV), Ebola virus (EBOV), Sudan virus (SUDV), Taï Forest virus (TAFV).

The fifth virus, Reston virus (RESTV), is not considered to be disease-causing in humans.

According to WHO, EVD first appeared in 1976 in two simultaneous outbreaks, in Nzara, Sudan, and in Yambuku, Democratic Republic of Congo. The latter was in a village situated near the Ebola River from which the disease takes its name.

How does it spread?

It is still unclear how Ebola spreads. However, it is believed that the first pateint becomes infected through contact with an infected animal's body fluids.

Human-to-human transmission can occur through direct contact with blood, organs or other body fluids of infected people or exposure to objects such as needles and syringes that have been contaminated with infected secretions.

Ebola can also be transmitted from men who have recovered from the disease through semen as it is infectious for up to 7 weeks.

Infected dead bodies can spread Ebola as they are still infectious. So mourners who have direct contact with the body of deceased person can also get the disease.

Who is most at risk?

Health-care workers who do not wear appropriate protective clothing and family members who are in close contact with infected people or deceased patients.

Signs and symptoms:

Symptoms may occur between 2 and 21 days after contracting the infection. Common signs of Ebola include:

Fever

Headache

Muscle, abdominal and joint pain

Sore throat

Weakness

Diarrhea

Vomit or cough up blood

Chest pain

Difficulty in breathing and swallowing

Rash

Hiccups

Bleeding inside and outside the body

Prevention

Currently there is no vaccine available for humans. But the infection can be controlled through the use of recommended protective measures such as:

Avoid contacting infected blood or secretions, including from those who are dead .

Using standard precautions for all patients in the healthcare setting.

Sterilizing equipment, and wearing protective clothing including masks, gloves, gowns and goggles.

Washing your hands with soaps or detergents.

Disinfecting your surroundings.

Isolate people who have Ebola symptoms.

Culling of infected animals, with close supervision of burial or incineration of carcasses.

Yet, not travelling to the areas or countries where the virus is found is the best way to avoid Ebola.

Project Fellow at Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology

Fri, 15 Aug 2014 06:50:08 -0500

Research Associate/ Project FellowDate of posting:14 Aug

Eligibility : MSc, M Phil / Phd, BE/B.Tech
Location : Himachal Pradesh-other
Job Category : Govt Jobs, Research, Walkin
Last Date : 20 Aug 2014

Advertisement No.6/2014

Post : Project Fellow
Research Associate/ Project Fellow Jobs opportunity in CSIR-Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology
M.Sc. in Bioinformatics/Computer Science with 55% marks and (ii) M.Sc. Bioinformatics/ Computational biology/ P.G. Diploma in Bioinformatics/B.Tech. or higher Degree in Bioinformatics with 55% marks

Date of Interview: 29.08.2014.

More at http://www.ihbt.res.in/recruit/AdvtNo6_2014.pdf

Corona Virus Literature !

Abhi — Sun, 12 Dec 2021 23:30:56 -0600

LitCovid is a curated literature hub for tracking up-to-date scientific information about the 2019 novel Coronavirus. It is the most comprehensive resource on the subject, providing a central access to 201482 (and growing) relevant articles in PubMed. The articles are updated daily and are further categorized by different research topics (e.g. Long Covid) and geographic locations for improved access. You can learn more at Chen et al. Nature (2020) or our FAQ, and download our data here.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/research/coronavirus/

Address of the bookmark: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/research/coronavirus/

Biology, Computers Collide in High-Demand Field of Bioinformatics

Mon, 25 Aug 2014 00:56:10 -0500

Dr. Shivas Amin calls bioinformatics a "collision of biology and computers." Students learn how to use computers and skills in math and biology to analyze genome and proteome projects to prepare for high-demand jobs in the life sciences. Learn more about Amin and hear from student Medina Baitemirova and alumnus Lukas Simon about the fast-growing field of bioinformatics.

UnCoVar: Workflow for Transparent and Robust Virus Variant Calling, Genome Reconstruction and Lineage Assignment

BioStar — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 23:01:29 -0500

UnCoVar: Workflow for Transparent and Robust Virus Variant Calling, Genome Reconstruction and Lineage Assignment

Using state of the art tools, easily extended for other viruses
Tool and database updates for critical components via Conda
Built using modern design patterns with Conda and Snakemake
Extensible and easy to customize
Submission Ready Genomes
Customizable reporting with comprehensive visualization

https://ikim-essen.github.io/uncovar/

Github https://github.com/IKIM-Essen/uncovar

Address of the bookmark: https://ikim-essen.github.io/uncovar/

A comprehensive atlas of human gene activity released !!!

Abhimanyu Singh — Tue, 02 Sep 2014 14:20:24 -0500

A large international consortium of researchers has produced the first comprehensive, detailed map of the way genes work across the major cells and tissues of the human body. The findings describe the complex networks that govern gene activity, and the new information could play a crucial role in identifying the genes involved with disease.

We are able to pinpoint the regions of the genome that can be active in a disease and in normal activity, whether it’s in a brain cell, the skin, in blood stem cells or in hair follicles. This is a major advance that will greatly increase our ability to understand the causes of disease across the body.

The research is outlined in a series of papers published March 27, 2014, two in the journal Nature and 16 in other scholarly journals. The work is the result of years of concerted effort among 250 experts from more than 20 countries as part of FANTOM 5 (Functional Annotation of the Mammalian Genome). The FANTOM project, led by the Japanese institution RIKEN, is aimed at building a complete library of human genes.

Researchers studied human and mouse cells using a new technology called Cap Analysis of Gene Expression (CAGE), developed at RIKEN, to discover how 95% of all human genes are switched on and off. These “switches” — called “promoters” and “enhancers” — are the regions of DNA that manage gene activity. The researchers mapped the activity of 180,000 promoters and 44,000 enhancers across a wide range of human cell types and tissues and, in most cases, found they were linked with specific cell types.

Referene : www.kurzweilai.net/first-comprehensive-atlas-of-human-gene-activity-released

Complete genome sequence of Wuhan seafood market pneumonia virus is out !

Jit — Fri, 31 Jan 2020 02:36:59 -0600

Wuhan-Hu-1 claimed at least 40 lives and infected at least 1300 others in China. Cases are now being reported from Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Nepal, France, Australia and even as far as the US. On Jan 10 2020, while news of the first fatality was barely trickling in, the 29,903 letters constituting the viral genome from an affected individual in Wuhan had already been elucidated (even though a few corrections were made subsequently). All the viral genome sequences from affected individuals are very very close to each other. Several are identical and none has more than 5 differences (99.983% similarity). This strongly suggests that transmission into humans came from a single pointed source and happened very recently, between Sep-Dec 2019.

Check out the detail at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/MN908947

Which of the following programming language is best for a bioinformatics beginner?

Manisha Mishra — Thu, 04 Sep 2014 07:51:16 -0500

I will be doing NGS in the course of my research work and I will like to learn a programming language which is compatible with most bioinformatics tools or software. I basically want to do de-novo assembly, map reads, align reads, and expression analysis. Recommendations welcomed. Which languages would you recommend to a student wishing to enter the world of bioinformatics?

Calling variants in non-diploid systems

Neel — Sat, 26 Jun 2021 15:37:49 -0500

The main challenge associated with non-diploid variant calling is the difficulty in distinguishing between the sequencing noise (abundant in all NGS platforms) and true low frequency variants. Some of the early attempts to do this well have been accomplished on human mitochondrial DNA although the same approaches will work equally good on viral and bacterial genomes (Rebolledo-Jaramillo et al. 2014, Li et al. 2015).

Address of the bookmark: https://training.galaxyproject.org/training-material/topics/variant-analysis/tutorials/non-dip/tutorial.html

Research Scientist – Bioinformatics at Sidra Medical and Research Center

Wed, 10 Sep 2014 14:35:35 -0500

Sidra Medical and Research Center(Doha, Qatar) is looking for talented Research Scientists (Bioinformatics / NGS Data Analysis).

Research Scientists within the Bioinformatics Program are involved in research related to cutting edge genomics and analysis of omics data. The research will utilize concepts, theories and best practices obtained from bioinformatics discipline and applied to biological and other biomedical data for analysis. The role may also involve designing databases, algorithm and/or computation methods for analyzing genomics and other omics data. The scientist will be working closely with the Translational Medicine Program within a state-of-the art research setting.

Please check the details of the opening and apply here: http://careers.sidra.org/sidra/Vacan...acancyID=60181