Project description:The free available eutherian genomic sequence data sets advanced scientific field of genomics. Of note, future revisions of gene data sets were expected, due to incompleteness of public eutherian genomic sequence assemblies and potential genomic sequence errors. The eutherian comparative genomic analysis protocol was proposed as guidance in protection against potential genomic sequence errors in public eutherian genomic sequences. The protocol was applicable in updates of 7 major eutherian gene data sets, including 812 complete coding sequences deposited in European Nucleotide Archive as curated third party data gene data sets.
Project description:Among 146 potential coding sequences, the most comprehensive eutherian growth hormone gene data set annotated 100 complete coding sequences. The eutherian comparative genomic analysis protocol first described 5 major gene clusters of eutherian growth hormone genes. The present updated gene classification and nomenclature of eutherian growth hormone genes integrated gene annotations, phylogenetic analysis and protein molecular evolution analysis into new framework of future experiments. The curated third party data gene data set of eutherian growth hormone genes was deposited in European Nucleotide Archive under accession numbers LM644135-LM644234.
Project description:The eutherian comparative genomic analysis protocol annotated most comprehensive eutherian lysozyme gene data set. Among 209 potential coding sequences, the third party annotation gene data set of eutherian lysozyme genes included 116 complete coding sequences that first described seven major gene clusters. As one new framework of future experiments, the present integrated gene annotations, phylogenetic analysis and protein molecular evolution analysis proposed new classification and nomenclature of eutherian lysozyme genes.
Project description:Gene expression profiling (GEP) of ARL patient samples was done to determine whether gene expression signatures derived from HIV- lymphomas retained their ability to molecularly classify HIV+ lymphomas. The GEP-based predictors robustly classified ARL tumors, distinguishing molecular Burkitt lymphoma (BL) and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), as well as activated B-cell-like (ABC) and germinal center B-cell-like (GCB) molecular subtypes of DLBCL. Gene expression profiles were used to identify coordinately regulated gene sets and pathways that differ between HIV+ and HIV- lymphomas of corresponding molecular subtype. Frozen tumor biopsies were obtained from 20 HIV-positive patients with an AIDS-defining lymphoma. Cases were ascertained at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and through the NCI AIDS and Cancer Specimen Resource tumor bank. Sufficient RNA for hybridization to Affymetrix U133 plus 2 arrays was obtained on 17 ARL cases. Details of all 20 HIV-positive patients can be found in the supplementary file below. Third party array data from HIV- lymphomas of corresponding molecular subtype were used for the comparison and molecular classification of the HIV+ cases in this study. The third party HIV- lymphoma samples include the following. [1] HIV- lymphoma, BL cases: 84 samples profiled on the Affymetrix HG U133 Plus 2 array. The data are publicly available on the website companion to Dave et al. NEJM 2006; Volume 354:13-24 (http://llmpp.nih.gov/BL/) and were used 'as is' (ie, not reanalyzed). [2] HIV- lymphoma, DLBCL cases: 200 of the 414 cases in Series GSE10846 (listed in the supplementary file below). These included all R-CHOP treated cases of either ABC or GCB subtype. These data were also used as is. These data were published in Lenz et al. NEJM 2008; Volume 359: 2313-2323.
Project description:Gene expression profiling (GEP) of ARL patient samples was done to determine whether gene expression signatures derived from HIV- lymphomas retained their ability to molecularly classify HIV+ lymphomas. The GEP-based predictors robustly classified ARL tumors, distinguishing molecular Burkitt lymphoma (BL) and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), as well as activated B-cell-like (ABC) and germinal center B-cell-like (GCB) molecular subtypes of DLBCL. Gene expression profiles were used to identify coordinately regulated gene sets and pathways that differ between HIV+ and HIV- lymphomas of corresponding molecular subtype.
Project description:The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology estimates that 96% of all U.S. hospitals use a basic electronic health record, but only 62% are able to exchange health information with outside providers. Barriers to information exchange across EHR systems challenge data aggregation and analysis that hospitals need to evaluate healthcare quality and safety. A growing number of hospital systems are partnering with third-party companies to provide these services. In exchange, companies reserve the rights to sell the aggregated data and analyses produced therefrom, often without the knowledge of patients from whom the data were sourced. Such partnerships fall in a regulatory grey area and raise new ethical questions about whether health, consumer, or health and consumer privacy protections apply. The current opinion probes this question in the context of consumer privacy reform in California. It analyzes protections for health information recently expanded under the California Consumer Privacy Act ("CA Privacy Act") in 2020 and compares them to protections outlined in the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act ("Federal Privacy Rule"). Four perspectives are considered in this ethical analysis: 1) standards of data deidentification; 2) rights of patients and consumers in relation to their health information; 3) entities covered by the CA Privacy Act; 4) scope and complementarity of federal and state regulations. The opinion concludes that the CCPA is limited in its application when health information is processed by a third-party data aggregation company that is contractually designated as a business associate; when health information is deidentified; and when hospital data are sourced from publicly owned and operated hospitals. Lastly, the opinion offers practical recommendations for facilitating parity between state and federal health data privacy laws and for how a more equitable distribution of informational risks and benefits from the sale of aggregated hospital data could be fostered and presents ways both for-profit and nonprofit hospitals can sustain patient trust when negotiating partnerships with third-party data aggregation companies.
Project description:The question of how cooperation evolves and is maintained among nonkin is central to the biological, social, and behavioral sciences. Previous research has focused on explaining how cooperation in social dilemmas can be maintained by direct and indirect reciprocity among the participants of the social dilemma. However, in complex human societies, both modern and ancient, cooperation is frequently maintained by means of specialized third-party enforcement. We provide an evolutionary-game-theoretic model that explains how specialized third-party enforcement of cooperation (specialized reciprocity) can emerge. A population consists of producers and enforcers. First, producers engage in a joint undertaking represented by a prisoner's dilemma. They are paired randomly and receive no information about their partner's history, which precludes direct and indirect reciprocity. Then, enforcers tax producers and may punish their clients. Finally, the enforcers are randomly paired and may try to grab resources from each other. In order to sustain producer cooperation, enforcers must punish defecting producers, but punishing is costly to enforcers. We show that the threat of potential intraenforcer conflict can incentivize enforcers to engage in costly punishment of producers, provided they are sufficiently informed to maintain a reputation system. That is, the "guards" are guarded by the guards themselves. We demonstrate the key mechanisms analytically and corroborate our results with numerical simulations.
Project description:Punishment can help maintain cooperation by deterring free-riding and cheating. Of particular importance in large-scale human societies is third-party punishment in which individuals punish a transgressor or norm violator even when they themselves are not affected. Nonhuman primates and other animals aggress against conspecifics with some regularity, but it is unclear whether this is ever aimed at punishing others for noncooperation, and whether third-party punishment occurs at all. Here we report an experimental study in which one of humans' closest living relatives, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), could punish an individual who stole food. Dominants retaliated when their own food was stolen, but they did not punish when the food of third-parties was stolen, even when the victim was related to them. Third-party punishment as a means of enforcing cooperation, as humans do, might therefore be a derived trait in the human lineage.
Project description:Third-party punishment of antisocial others is unique to humans and seems to be universal across cultures. However, its emergence in ontogeny remains unknown. We developed a participatory cognitive paradigm using gaze-contingency techniques, in which infants can use their gaze to affect agents displayed on a monitor. In this paradigm, fixation on an agent triggers the event of a stone crushing the agent. Throughout five experiments (total N = 120), we show that eight-month-old infants punished antisocial others. Specifically, infants increased their selective looks at the aggressor after watching aggressive interactions. Additionally, three control experiments excluded alternative interpretations of their selective gaze, suggesting that punishment-related decision-making influenced looking behaviour. These findings indicate that a disposition for third-party punishment of antisocial others emerges in early infancy and emphasize the importance of third-party punishment for human cooperation. This behavioural tendency may be a human trait acquired over the course of evolution.