Search bioRxiv⌕ Search

bioRxiv · 10.1101/2022.02.27.482141

Acinetobase: the comprehensive database and repository of Acinetobacter strains.

Abstract

BackgroundAcinetobacter baumannii is one of the most problematic nosocomial pathogens that can efficiently thrive within hospital settings, mainly due to resistances towards antibiotics, desiccation, disinfectants, human serum and oxidative stress. Recently, increased resistance against last resort antibiotics earns this bacterium the highest priority concern classified by the CDC and the WHO. An obvious hallmark of this bacterium is the high heterogeneity observed amongst A. baumannii isolates, with a limited core genome. This feature complexifies the study of A. baumannii bacteria as an entity, subsequently reflected in a diversity of phenotypes of not only antimicrobial and environmental resistance but also virulence. Main bodyHigh degree of genome plasticity, along with the use of a limited subset of established reference strains, can lead to strain-specific observations, decreasing the global understanding of this pathogenic agent. Phenotypic variability of A. baumannii strains is easily observable such as with the macrocolony morphologies, in vitro and in vivo virulence, natural competence level, production of different capsular polysaccharide structures and cellular densities. Some strains encode an extensive amount of virulence factors while other, including the reference strains, lack several key ones. The lack/excess of genes or specific physiological processes might interfere with in vivo and in vitro experiments, thus providing limited impact on the global understanding of Acinetobacter bacteria as a whole. ConclusionAs an answer to the high heterogeneity amongst A. baumannii strains, we propose a first comprehensive database that includes the bacterial strains and the associated phenotypic and genetic data. This new repository, freely accessible to the entire scientific community, allow selecting the best bacterial isolate(s) related to any biological question, using an efficient and fast exchange platform.

Source connections

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Valcek, A., Collier, J., Botzki, A., Van der Henst, C.. 2022-03-01. Acinetobase: the comprehensive database and repository of Acinetobacter strains.. https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.02.27.482141

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related preprints

StableProt: Structure-Aware Deep Learning for Protein Thermostability (Tm) and Environmental Adaptation (OGT) Prediction

Predicting protein melting temperature (Tm) and organismal optimal growth temperature (OGT) is essential for enzyme engineering, biocatalyst design, and metagenomic bioprospecting, yet computational prediction faces several fundamental bottlenecks: sequence-only representations miss tertiary packing; dual-task coupling induces destructive gradient conflict; natural database skew (>87% mesophiles) drives mesophilic collapse; and existing tools produce uncalibrated point predictions. To address these challenges, we present StableProt, a structure-aware framework that couples amino acid sequences with Foldseek 3Di structural tokens via a frozen SaProt backbone to capture 3D contacts. Disjoint heads condition thermodynamic stability on ecological context without gradient conflict, while targeted 14% mesophilic subsampling expands thermophile representation to eliminate mesophilic collapse. Calibrated ensemble modeling reduces calibration error to 1.92%, providing dependable 95% confidence intervals. Evaluating models across 10{degrees}C temperature intervals reveals severe baseline collapse at thermal extremes, whereas StableProt maintains robust accuracy across regimes. On ProThermDB and zero-shot FireProtDB, StableProt achieves state-of-the-art probabilistic accuracy (CRPS = 4.52{degrees}C and 8.71{degrees}C) while recovering 92.0% of hyperthermophiles ([≥]80{degrees}C), and in prospective validation, its calibrated intervals capture both enzyme stability (75.3% coverage) and host environmental growth temperatures (78.1% coverage). StableProt is freely accessible as an interactive web server at https://stableprot.dixitlab.org/.

bioinformatics↗

RoDPAA: A Robust Dissimilarity-Based Principal Angle Analysis Framework for Multi-View Microbiome Data Integration

Multiview microbiome studies profile the same participants across body sites or molecular layers, but integration is hampered by sparse, compositional data, modest sample sizes and methods that recognize only exact sharing. We present RoDPAA (Robust Dissimilarity-based Principal Angle Analysis), a framework that represents each view through any data-appropriate dissimilarity, such as Bray--Curtis, without log-ratio transformation or likelihood assumptions. RoDPAA aligns view-specific signal subspaces through principal angles, captures complete and partial sharing, and tests by permutation how many components are shared, using only eigendecomposition and little tuning. In Gaussian simulations, RoDPAA matched JIVE and MOFA given true ranks, ran faster and alone recovered the shared dimension in every replicate. In two inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) cohorts with sparse, zero-inflated data, Bray--Curtis-based RoDPAA recovered shared structure that was stable to prevalence filtering, whereas log-ratio-based alternatives were not. Its leading microbiome--metabolome factors, learned without disease labels, were the only ones associated with IBD.

bioinformatics↗

Deducing splicing events from transcript sets with splicelogic

Long-read RNA sequencing captures a greater proportion of full-length transcripts, enabling more accurate isoform identification, discovery of novel isoforms, and more precise differential transcript usage analysis. However, comparing transcripts, whether between conditions or between sets such as novel and annotated isoforms, yields complex isoform changes that are hard to manipulate, summarize, and visualize. This is compounded by vertical integration of some tools, where downstream analysis depends on the specific output of a particular upstream tool. To address this gap, we have developed splicelogic, an R/Bioconductor package that makes transcript-set comparisons biologically interpretable by turning them into discrete splicing events, such as exon skipping, alternative splice sites, intron retention, and alternative transcription start and end sites. We designed splicelogic to integrate easily with existing RNA-seq workflows and tools. The splicelogic functions are modular, readable, and extensible, making it easy for users to adapt core logic to their own custom scientific questions or novel splicing definitions. By obtaining interpretable splicing events from transcript changes, splicelogic enables downstream analyses, including annotation of RNA-binding protein recognition sites, alongside summary statistics and visualization. The splicelogic package is publicly available and distributed through Bioconductor.

bioinformatics↗