This month in PLoS ONE: Bathroom germs, yawn contagion and more!

The  specific locations and breeds of bacteria found in public restrooms was recently revealed when researchers at the University of Colorado took samples from public restrooms on campus, and used a genetic sequencing tool to identify 19 of the most common bacteria. This article was covered by CBS News, Scientific American and NPR.

Researchers from the University of Pisa explore possible causes associated with yawn contagion. The results indicate that yawns are most contagious between family members, followed by friends and then acquaintances.  The scientists attribute this phenomenon to emotional bonds, suggesting that we empathize and thus mimic, individuals we know better. The BBC, Fox News and International Business Times covered this article.

An archaeological excursion to Dhofar, Oman reveals artifacts dating back roughly 74,000 to 128,000 years. This new evidence suggests that the exodus from Africa may have occurred significantly earlier than previously estimated, and that early humans traveled inland, across valleys, rather than along the coast line. This article was covered by CBS News, ABC News and The Examiner . The image above comes from Figure 6 in the manuscript and shows Nubian Type 1 cores from Aybut Al Auwal.

Roughly 7,500 feet under the sea, a team of scientists capture video of the recently discovered ‘Yeti Crab’ (Kiwa puravida). The lack of sun at extreme ocean depths has forced many species to develop unique feeding methods. The Yeti Crab hosts nutrient-rich bacteria on its claws, and waves them near hydrothermal vents, that release hydrogen sulfide and methane. The bacteria ‘feed’ on these compounds, which the Yeti Crab then consumes. Wired, National Geographic and Scientific American covered this article.

For more in-depth coverage on news and blog articles about PLoS ONE papers, please visit our Media Tracking Project.

The aim of this project is to collect all pertinent news articles from legitimate media outlets and research blogs covering PLoS ONE articles. So, how does it work? From now on, we’ll attempt to bookmark relevant news articles and blog posts about PLoS ONE articles using Diigo (a collaborative research and social content site). If you would like to see the articles we’ve collected so far, check out our library. On a weekly basis, we’ll collate these bookmarks and list the relevant media coverage in the commenting section of each research article. An example of the media coverage comment can be found on the article: Scientists Want More Children.

We recognize that – despite our best efforts to track media coverage – we will inevitably miss some (and we will not aim to exhaustively list all sources which simply re-print a standard release for any given article).  So, we would encourage you to participate as well.  If you read, write, see or hear media coverage on a PLoS ONE article, please don’t hesitate to link to it in the comments section of the paper. Our suggested format is as follows:

Publication:

Title of article:

Link:

For an excellent example of  an author documenting media coverage, take a look at the article, Stalking the Fourth Domain in Metagenomic Data: Searching for, Discovering, and Interpreting Novel, Deep Branches in Marker Gene Phylogenetic Trees. Jonathan Eisen, one of the authors of this manuscript,  has meticulously posted links to media coverage in the comments section of his paper.  We appreciate his involvement and encourage authors to follow his lead.

In the meantime, we’ll still post PLoS ONE News and Blog Round-Ups of the most widely covered articles on a regular basis.

Researchers find a possible cure for the common cold and more – in this week’s media digest.

Human Pathogen Shown to Cause Disease in the Threatened Eklhorn Coral Acropora palmata was covered by The NewsHour, The New York Times, NPR, and CNN.

CNET, Hindustan Times, and Okezone covered Automatic Prediction of Facial Trait Judgments: Appearance vs. Structural Models.

The paper, Predator Cat Odors Activate Sexual Arousal Pathways in Brains of Toxoplasma gondii Infected Rats, received coverage from The New York Times, Scientific American, TIME’s Healthland, and The Loom.

Broad-Spectrum Antiviral Therapeutics received media coverage from Voice of America, LA Times, and Forbes.

Large Recovery of Fish Biomass in a No-Take Marine Reserve was covered by National Geographic (nice slideshow too), The Christian Science Monitor, Nature News, and KGTV San Diego. The image above, is taken from Figure 4 of this manuscript.

80 Beats covered the article, Artificial Skin – Culturing of Different Skin Cell Lines for Generating an Artificial Skin Substitute on Cross-Weaved Spider Silk Fibres. So did Treehugger.

The article entitled, Scientists Want More Children received media coverage from The Wall Street Journal, TIME’s Ecocentric, Science Career Blog, and Inside Higher Ed.

Elevated Non-Esterified Fatty Acid Concentrations during Bovine Oocyte Maturation Compromise Early Embryo Physiology was covered by Reuters, The Guardian, and The Press Association.

In the abstract, the authors write:

Background

Understanding the mechanisms underlying biological phenomena, such as evolutionarily conservative trait inheritance, is predicated on knowledge of the natural relationships among organisms. However, despite their enormous ecological significance, many of the ubiquitous soil inhabiting and plant symbiotic arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF, phylum Glomeromycota) are incorrectly classified.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Here, we focused on a frequently used model AMF registered as culture BEG47. This fungus is a descendent of the ex-type culture-lineage of Glomus epigaeum, which in 1983 was synonymised with Glomus versiforme. It has since then been used as ‘G. versiforme BEG47’. We show by morphological comparisons, based on type material, collected 1860–61, of G. versiforme and on type material and living ex-type cultures of G. epigaeum, that these two AMF species cannot be conspecific, and by molecular phylogenetics that BEG47 is a member of the genus Diversispora.

Conclusions

This study highlights that experimental works published during the last >25 years on an AMF named ‘G. versiforme’ or ‘BEG47’ refer to D. epigaea, a species that is actually evolutionarily separated by hundreds of millions of years from all members of the genera in the Glomerales and thus from most other commonly used AMF ‘laboratory strains’. Detailed redescriptions substantiate the renaming of G. epigaeum (BEG47) as D. epigaea, positioning it systematically in the order Diversisporales, thus enabling an evolutionary understanding of genetical, physiological, and ecological traits, relative to those of other AMF. Diversispora epigaea is widely cultured as a laboratory strain of AMF, whereas G. versiforme appears not to have been cultured nor found in the field since its original description.

All of PLoS ONE’s sporific papers are open access and free for you to read, rate and reuse.

Citation: Schüßler A, Krüger M, Walker C (2011) Revealing Natural Relationships among Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi: Culture Line BEG47 Represents Diversispora epigaea, Not Glomus versiforme. PLoS ONE 6(8): e23333. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0023333

On Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control announced the results of its first multi-year analysis of HIV incidence in the United States from 2006 to 2009. The paper, which published in PLoS ONE, found that though the rate of HIV infection remained steady; it disproportionately affected several racial and ethnic populations in the United States. The paper received a lot of media attention and was covered by: NPR, The New York Times, CNN, Huffington Post, Washington Post, and the San Francisco Chronicle among others.

This week, the paper Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease Based on Disease-Specific Autoantibody Profiles in Human Sera also received media coverage. Some of it came from The Times of India and The Star-Ledger.

What People Believe about How Memory Works: A Representative Survey of the U.S. Population received coverage from: Not Exactly Rocket Science, ABC News, Scientific American (blog), The Huffington Post,  and msnbc.

The paper, Adipocyte Hypertrophy, Fatty Liver and Metabolic Risk Factors in South Asians: The Molecular Study of Health and Risk in Ethnic Groups (mol-SHARE) was covered by: CTV, French Tribune, and The Globe and Mail.

The manuscript, Adaptive Evolution of the Venom-Targeted vWF Protein in Opossums that Eat Pitvipers, received media coverage from: i09, Discovery News, and The Hindu.

The Ecological Conditions That Favor Tool Use and Innovation in Wild Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops sp.) was covered by The New York Times, The Gleaming Retort, and Wired.

The paper, Functional Tooth Regeneration Using a Bioengineered Tooth Unit as a Mature Organ Replacement Regenerative Therapy received global media attention. Some of the media outlets that covered the paper include: Reuters, Times of India, and ABC News 24.

The paper, What Happened to Gray Whales during the Pleistocene? The Ecological Impact of Sea-Level Change on Benthic Feeding Areas in the North Pacific Ocean received media coverage from The New York Times,Discovery News, and LiveScience.

Fear of Darkness, the Full Moon and the Nocturnal Ecology of African Lions was covered by USA Today, Global Post, CBS News and Science News.

Image source: Trygve.u

This week’s featured image comes from the manuscript, Tradeoff between Stability and Maneuverability during Whole-Body Movements by Drs. Alaa Ahmed and Helen Huang at the University of Colorado Boulder.

In the paper, the authors tested if a person’s maneuverability comes at the expense of his or her stability.  Standing on a balancing board, the subjects were asked to lean forward and use their center of pressure (CoP) to move a cursor toward a target on a computer monitor. The image above (Figure 1) illustrates the set-up and protocol of this experiment.

From the abstract:

Background

Understanding how stability and/or maneuverability affects motor control strategies can provide insight on moving about safely in an unpredictable world. Stability in human movement has been well-studied while maneuverability has not. Further, a tradeoff between stability and maneuverability during movement seems apparent, yet has not been quantified. We proposed that greater maneuverability, the ability to rapidly and purposefully change movement direction and speed, is beneficial in uncertain environments. We also hypothesized that gaining maneuverability comes at the expense of stability and perhaps also corresponds with decreased muscle coactivation.

Materials and Methods

We used a goal-directed forward lean movement task that integrated both stability and maneuverability. Subjects (n = 11) used their center of pressure to control a cursor on a computer monitor to reach a target. We added task uncertainty by shifting the target anterior-posterior position mid-movement. We used a balance board with a narrow beam that reduced the base of support in the medio-lateral direction and defined stability as the probability that subjects could keep the balance board level during the task.

Results

During the uncertainty condition, subjects were able to change direction of their anterior-posterior center of pressure more rapidly, indicating that subjects were more maneuverable. Furthermore, medio-lateral center of pressure excursions also approached the edges of the beam and reduced stability margins, implying that subjects were less stable (i.e. less able to keep the board level). On the narrow beam board, subjects increased muscle coactivation of lateral muscle pairs and had greater muscle activity in the left leg. However, there were no statistically significant differences in muscle activity amplitudes or coactivation with uncertainty.

Conclusions/Significance

These results demonstrate that there is a tradeoff between stability and maneuverability during a goal-directed whole-body movement. Tasks with added uncertainty could help individuals learn to be more maneuverable yet sufficiently stable.

Citation: Huang HJ, Ahmed AA (2011) Tradeoff between Stability and Maneuverability during Whole-Body Movements. PLoS ONE 6(7): e21815. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0021815

In the paper, Epigenetic Predictor of Age, researchers from UCLA discovered that they could predict someone’s age using the DNA from their saliva.  There were many articles written on the paper. Some of these media outlets included Time, 80 beats, and CNET.

Neural Correlates of Natural Human Echolocation in Early and Late Blind Echolocation Experts received coverage from the BBC, The Body Odd, and US News & World Reports.

The paper, Coordinated Movements Prevent Jamming in an Emperor Penguin Huddle, by Daniel Zitterbart et al., received media coverage from The New York Times, News for Your Neurons and LiveScience.

The paper, A National and International Analysis of Changing Forest Density was covered by Xinhua, Press TV, and Reuters.

The New York Times, Health Pop, and Healthland wrote pieces on the paper, Trends over 5 Decades in U.S. Occupation-Related Physical Activity and Their Associations with Obesity.

Propagation of Respiratory Aerosols by the Vuvuzela was covered in Wired’s Playbook, BBC, and Seattle Post Intelligencer (sports blog).

The Advantage of Standing Up to Fight and the Evolution of Habitual Bipedalism in Hominins received coverage from Gene Expression, io9, MSN, and Science a GoGo.

Size and Usage Patterns of Private TB Drug Markets in the High Burden Countries was covered by The Times of India, The Economic Times, and TopNews.

The BBC, Times of India, and AFP covered Effectiveness of Action in India to Reduce Exposure of Gyps Vultures to the Toxic Veterinary Drug Diclofenac.

The paper, Common Functional Correlates of Head-Strike Behavior in the Pachycephalosaur Stegoceras validum (Ornithischia, Dinosauria) and Combative Artiodactyls, received media coverage from News for Your Neurons, CBC, and The Guardian.

This week’s featured image comes from a paper by Frank DiMaio et al. entitled, Modeling Symmetric Macromolecular Structures in Rosetta3.

Most homomeric protein assemblies are symmetric and the authors of this paper use Rosetta 3 to implement “a general framework for modeling arbitrary symmetric systems.”  The figure above illustrates a variety of symmetry groups found in the Protein Data Bank.

From the abstract:

Symmetric protein assemblies play important roles in many biochemical processes. However, the large size of such systems is challenging for traditional structure modeling methods. This paper describes the implementation of a general framework for modeling arbitrary symmetric systems in Rosetta3. We describe the various types of symmetries relevant to the study of protein structure that may be modeled using Rosetta’s symmetric framework. We then describe how this symmetric framework is efficiently implemented within Rosetta, which restricts the conformational search space by sampling only symmetric degrees of freedom, and explicitly simulates only a subset of the interacting monomers. Finally, we describe structure prediction and design applications that utilize the Rosetta3 symmetric modeling capabilities, and provide a guide to running simulations on symmetric systems.

To celebrate publication of their recent research, “Mitotic Spindle Proteomics in Chinese Hamster Ovary Cells,” Dr. Ahna Skop, whose second passion is food, baked a batch of fudgy chocolate cupcakes topped with mocha ganache and decorated them with isolated mitotic spindles inspired by those in Figure 2 of the article. Here is Dr. Skop’s summary of the research:

Segregation of genetic material is indispensible for the propagation of all species. Each cell relies on a dynamic microtubule-based machine called the mitotic spindle to facilitate the cell division process. Failures in mitosis can lead to birth defects, various leukemias, and tissue-specific tumors, suggesting that knowledge of the molecular make-up of the mitotic spindle is central to our understanding of a variety of human diseases. To identify new proteins that comprise the mitotic spindle, we subjected isolated mitotic spindles to Multi-dimensional Protein Identification Technology (MudPIT) analysis and tandem mass spectrometry. We identified 1155 proteins, which represent the largest number of spindle-associated proteins identified to date. Our initial protein profile of mitosis has implications for cancer research, as major spindle components have been identified as targets for cancer therapeutics.

Seen below Figure 2, the cupcakes provide a beautiful, and delicious, depiction of isolated mitotic spindles, especially similar to those stained green in Figure 2 (A). If you would like to bake mitotic spindle cupcakes at home, the recipe can be found on Dr. Skop’s blog. Yum!

In this issue of PLoS ONE Nick Wald and colleagues challenge us again. [1] After having developed the triple test for Down syndrome, [2] the polypill, [3] and teleoanalysis, [4] they go as far as to question the practical role of risk prognostication with one of the pillars of cardiovascular medicine, the Framingham risk score. [5] In their elegant simulation work, Wald et al show that using only age as a screening tool in a hypothetical sample of 500,000 subjects at risk for cardiovascular disease provides largely similar results in comparison to screening based on the Framingham risk score. For instance, the area under the curve (AUC) of the receiver operator characteristic (ROC) of the two tests suggested similar discriminatory performance: 89% for age screening, 90% for Framingham risk score assessment every 5 years, and 91% for Framingham risk score assessment every year.

The first key message of this work is that we are not in an era of personalized medicine, after all. As even the respected and validated Framingham risk score fails to provide meaningful incremental insight on top of age screening alone, [7] we should not put too much faith in other more complex and expensive tests such as those focusing on genotyping or platelet responsiveness. [7] [8] The second key message of this paper is more practical, but nonetheless crucial. We can maximize patient wellbeing and minimize cost by applying simple risk stratification tools and universally treating (in the context of primary prevention) all those at risk of cardiovascular disease. [3] For instance, we should propose treatment with a statin and a combination of anti-hypertension agents for everyone older than 55 or 60 years. Accordingly, we should be reserve a more personalized, complex, and expensive approach (e.g. C-reactive protein assessment) to those failing basic preventive means (thus in the context of secondary prevention) or with uncommon and rare conditions. [9]

Of course this paper has, despite the careful work of the authors, several shortcomings. First, it is a Monte Carlo simulation study and thus does not include any real person. Second, even a 1% improvement in prognostic performance might be worthwhile to some or most decision makers, especially if accompanied by improved reclassification: aren’t we happy when gasoline price decrease even if by 1%? [10] Third, the Framingham risk score is the best known prediction tool for cardiovascular disease, but others, possibly more precise ones, are also available, such as the QRISK2. [11] Fourth, any prediction tool may perform well for some end-points, and worse for other. For instance, the EuroSCORE predicts reasonably well death after coronary revascularization, but its performance when focusing on myocardial infarction or repeat revascularization is much poorer. [12] Nonetheless, we find the message conveyed by Wald et al very intriguing, and in keeping with similar efforts conducted by anesthesiologists and intensive care specialists. [13]

In conclusion, Wald and colleagues should be commended for demonstrating that, even in the 21^st century, Occam’s razor and the law of parsimony still remain valid: less is indeed more. Or in other words: go get your polypill if over 55 years!

1. Wald NJ, Simmonds M, Morris JK (2011) Screening for Future Cardiovascular Disease Using Age Alone Compared with Multiple Risk Factors and Age. PLoS ONE 6(4): e18742. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0018742

2. Wald NJ (2010) Prenatal screening for open neural tube defects and Down syndrome: three decades of progress. Prenat Diagn 30(7): 619-21.

3. Wald NJ, Law MR (2003) A strategy to reduce cardiovascular disease by more than 80%. BMJ 326(7404): 1419.

4. Wald NJ, Morris JK (2003) Teleoanalysis: combining data from different types of study. BMJ 327(7415): 616-8.

5. Lloyd-Jones DM, Wilson PWF, Larson MG, Beiser A, Leip EP, D’Agostino RB, Levy D. Framingham risk score and prediction of lifetime risk for coronary heart disease. Am J Cardiol 94(1): 20-4.

6. Tzoulaki I, Liberopoulos G, Ioannidis JP (2009) Assessment of claims of improved prediction beyond the Framingham risk score. JAMA 302(21): 2345-52.

7. Mega JL, Simon T, Collet JP, Anderson JL, Antman EM, Bliden K, Cannon CP, Danchin N, Giusti B, Gurbel P, Horne BD, Hulot JS, Kastrati A, Montalescot G, Neumann FJ, Shen L, Sibbing D, Steg PG, Trenk D, Wiviott SD, Sabatine MS (2010) Reduced-function CYP2C19 genotype and risk of adverse clinical outcomes among patients treated with clopidogrel predominantly for PCI: a meta-analysis. JAMA 304(16): 1821-30.

8. Biondi-Zoccai G, Lotrionte M (2008) Aspirin resistance in cardiovascular disease. BMJ 336(7637): 166-7.

9. Schnabel RB, Schulz A, Messow CM, Lubos E, Wild PS, Zeller T, Sinning CR, Rupprecht HJ, Bickel C, Peetz D, Cambien F, Kempf T, Wollert KC, Benjamin EJ, Lackner KJ, Münzel TF, Tiret L, Vasan RS, Blankenberg S (2010) Multiple marker approach to risk stratification in patients with stable coronary artery disease. Eur Heart J 31(24): 3024-31.

10. Capodanno D, Tamburino C (2011) Integrating the Synergy between percutaneous coronary intervention with Taxus and Cardiac Surgery (SYNTAX) score into practice: use, pitfalls, and new directions. Am Heart J 161(3): 462-70.

11. Hippisley-Cox J, Coupland C, Vinogradova Y, Robson J, Minhas R, Sheikh A, Brindle P (2008) Predicting cardiovascular risk in England and Wales: prospective derivation and validation of QRISK2. BMJ 336(7659): 1475-82.

12. Biondi-Zoccai GG, Lotrionte M, Moretti C, Meliga E, Agostoni P, Valgimigli M, Migliorini A, Antoniucci D, Carrie´ D, Sangiorgi G, Chieffo A, Colombo A, Price MJ, Teirstein PS, Christiansen EH, Abbate A, Testa L, Gunn JP, Burzotta F, Laudito A, Trevi GP, Sheiban I (2008) A collaborative systematic review and meta-analysis on 1278 patients undergoing percutaneous drug-eluting stenting for unprotected left main coronary artery disease. Am Heart J 155:274–283.

13. Ranucci M, Castelvecchio S, Menicanti L, Frigiola A, Pelissero G (2009) Risk of assessing mortality risk in elective cardiac operations: age, creatinine, ejection fraction, and the law of parsimony. Circulation 119(24): 3053-61.

By: Giuseppe Biondi-Zoccai, MD, FSICI-GISE

Division of Cardiology, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, and Meta-analysis and Evidence based medicine Training in Cardiology (METCARDIO), Ospedaletti, both in Italy

Funding: none

Conflicts of interest: none

Address for correspondence: Division of Cardiology, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Via Del Pozzo 71, 41124 Modena Italy. Email: gbiondizoccai@gmail.com