INRA Transfert (France)

Hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) is a chronic skin disease characterized by painful, recurrent abscesses, nodules, and scarring, primarily in skin folds. The exact causes of HS are multifactorial, involving genetic, hormonal, and environmental factors. It is associated with systemic diseases like metabolic syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease. Genetic studies have identified mutations in the γ-secretase complex, which affects Notch signaling pathways critical for skin cell regulation. Despite its high heritability, most HS reported cases do not follow a simple genetic pattern. In this article, we performed a whole-exome sequencing (WES) on a cohort of 100 individuals with HS and we provide a comprehensive review of the variants known to be described or associated with HS, referencing 91 of them in the γ-secretase and 78 in other genes involved in the Notch pathway, keratinization, or immune response. From this new genetic analysis, we add ten new variants to these catalogs.

Abstract. This paper presents retrospective simulations and future projections of daily time series of discharge and stream temperature for 52 278 reaches over the Loire River basin (105 km2) in France, using a physical process-based thermal model coupled with a hydrological model. Retrospective simulations over the 1963–2019 are based on the Safran meteorological reanalysis over France. 21st century projections are based on a subset of the DRIAS2020 ensemble projection dataset, derived from the Euro Cordex data set through the ADAMONT statistical bias correction. Such a dataset at this large scale and high spatial resolution stands out from existing datasets, and is the first one in France derived from a physical process-based thermal model. The dataset is freely available for other studies and can be downloaded as NetCDF format from https://doi.org/10.57745/LBPGFS (Seyedhashemi et al., 2022a).

The key problem of improving the radiation performances or enabling additive functionalities of linear active electronically scanned arrays (AESAs), without increasing the number of radiating elements nor requiring a re-design of the radiators and/or the feeding network, is addressed by means of a suitably formulated Material-by-Design (MbD) approach. The quasi-conformal transformation optics (QCTO) technique and a customized source inversion (SI) strategy are jointly exploited to synthesize enhanced architectures, composed by a metamaterial lens and a tapered version of the original feeding network, able to match the radiation characteristics of significantly larger and/or different (from the original one) apertures. A set of representative benchmark results is reported to assess the effectiveness of the proposed MbD-designed architecture as well as to highlight the existing trade-off between achievable improvements and the complexity of the arising architectural solution.

There is a wide number of problems in electromagnetic (EM) engineering that require a real-time response or in which the input–output relationship is not a-priori known or cannot be defined due to the complexity of the scenario at hand. These issues have induced researchers toward the development and application of Learning-by-Examples (LBE) techniques thanks to their extremely high computational efficiency and to their capability to emulate the behavior of complex systems on the basis of a set of collected examples. In this framework, this paper aims to present an overview of the state-of-the-art and recently developed LBE-based strategies as applied to the solution of engineering problems in the field of Electromagnetics. Starting from a general and basic introduction to LBE techniques, the most popular LBE methods used in EM engineering will be re-called. Afterwards, a review on how the LBE methodologies have been applied by various researchers in different application contexts, including among others antennas, microwave circuits, inverse scattering and remote sensing, will be given. Finally, current research trends and envisaged developments are discussed.

The design of a sparse conformal phased array with elements located on a truncated cone shape is addressed. The antenna, supposed to be a fully-digital receiver of an air traffic control system, has to simultaneously generate multiple receiving beams along the elevation plane in order to cover a desired angular region. The synthesis problem is carried out by means of the Multi-Task Bayesian Compressive Sensing (MT-BCS) in order to define the positions of the array elements and the set of complex excitations for each individual beam. A preliminary numerical result is reported to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

BackgroundThe metagenomic analysis of gut microbiomes has emerged as a powerful strategy for the identification of biomass-degrading enzymes, which will be no doubt useful for the development of advanced biorefining processes. In the present study, we have performed a functional metagenomic analysis on comb and gut microbiomes associated with the fungus-growing termite, Pseudacanthotermes militaris.ResultsUsing whole termite abdomens and fungal-comb material respectively, two fosmid-based metagenomic libraries were created and screened for the presence of xylan-degrading enzymes. This revealed 101 positive clones, corresponding to an extremely high global hit rate of 0.49%. Many clones displayed either β-d-xylosidase (EC 3.2.1.37) or α-l-arabinofuranosidase (EC 3.2.1.55) activity, while others displayed the ability to degrade AZCL-xylan or AZCL-β-(1,3)-β-(1,4)-glucan. Using secondary screening it was possible to pinpoint clones of interest that were used to prepare fosmid DNA. Sequencing of fosmid DNA generated 1.46 Mbp of sequence data, and bioinformatics analysis revealed 63 sequences encoding putative carbohydrate-active enzymes, with many of these forming parts of sequence clusters, probably having carbohydrate degradation and metabolic functions. Taxonomic assignment of the different sequences revealed that Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes were predominant phyla in the gut sample, while microbial diversity in the comb sample resembled that of typical soil samples. Cloning and expression in E. coli of six enzyme candidates identified in the libraries provided access to individual enzyme activities, which all proved to be coherent with the primary and secondary functional screens.ConclusionsThis study shows that the gut microbiome of P. militaris possesses the potential to degrade biomass components, such as arabinoxylans and arabinans. Moreover, the data presented suggests that prokaryotic microorganisms present in the comb could also play a part in the degradation of biomass within the termite mound, although further investigation will be needed to clarify the complex synergies that might exist between the different microbiomes that constitute the termitosphere of fungus-growing termites. This study exemplifies the power of functional metagenomics for the discovery of biomass-active enzymes and has provided a collection of potentially interesting biocatalysts for further study.