Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

About: Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine is a healthcare organization based out in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Cancer. The organization has 44277 authors who have published 79222 publications receiving 4788882 citations.

Genetic variation in IL28B predicts hepatitis C treatment-induced viral clearance.

Abstract: Chronic infection with hepatitis C virus (HCV) affects 170 million people worldwide and is the leading cause of cirrhosis in North America. Although the recommended treatment for chronic infection involves a 48-week course of peginterferon-alpha-2b (PegIFN-alpha-2b) or -alpha-2a (PegIFN-alpha-2a) combined with ribavirin (RBV), it is well known that many patients will not be cured by treatment, and that patients of European ancestry have a significantly higher probability of being cured than patients of African ancestry. In addition to limited efficacy, treatment is often poorly tolerated because of side effects that prevent some patients from completing therapy. For these reasons, identification of the determinants of response to treatment is a high priority. Here we report that a genetic polymorphism near the IL28B gene, encoding interferon-lambda-3 (IFN-lambda-3), is associated with an approximately twofold change in response to treatment, both among patients of European ancestry (P = 1.06 x 10(-25)) and African-Americans (P = 2.06 x 10(-3)). Because the genotype leading to better response is in substantially greater frequency in European than African populations, this genetic polymorphism also explains approximately half of the difference in response rates between African-Americans and patients of European ancestry.

Designer deletion strains derived from Saccharomyces cerevisiae S288C: a useful set of strains and plasmids for PCR-mediated gene disruption and other applications.

Abstract: A set of yeast strains based on Saccharomyces cerevisiae S288C in which commonly used selectable marker genes are deleted by design based on the yeast genome sequence has been constructed and analysed. These strains minimize or eliminate the homology to the corresponding marker genes in commonly used vectors without significantly affecting adjacent gene expression. Because the homology between commonly used auxotrophic marker gene segments and genomic sequences has been largely or completely abolished, these strains will also reduce plasmid integration events which can interfere with a wide variety of molecular genetic applications. We also report the construction of new members of the pRS400 series of vectors, containing the kanMX, ADE2 and MET15 genes.

Untangling the Concepts of Disability, Frailty, and Comorbidity: Implications for Improved Targeting and Care

Abstract: Three terms are commonly used interchangeably to identify vulnerable older adults: comorbidity, or multiple chronicconditions,frailty, anddisability. However, in geriatricmedicine,there isagrowingconsensusthatthese are distinct clinical entities that are causally related. Each, individually, occurs frequently and has high import clinically. This article provides a narrative review of current understanding of the definitions and distinguishing characteristics of each of these conditions,including theirclinical relevance and distinct prevention and therapeutic issues, and how they are related. Review of the current state of published knowledge is supplemented by targeted analysesin selectedareas where no current publisheddataexists. Overall,the goalof this articleis to providea basis fordistinguishingbetweenthesethreeimportantclinicalconditionsinolderadultsandshowinghowuseofseparate, distinct definitions of each can improve our understanding of the problems affecting older patients and lead to development of improved strategies for diagnosis, care, research, and medical education in this area.

Kraken: ultrafast metagenomic sequence classification using exact alignments

Abstract: Kraken is an ultrafast and highly accurate program for assigning taxonomic labels to metagenomic DNA sequences. Previous programs designed for this task have been relatively slow and computationally expensive, forcing researchers to use faster abundance estimation programs, which only classify small subsets of metagenomic data. Using exact alignment of k-mers, Kraken achieves classification accuracy comparable to the fastest BLAST program. In its fastest mode, Kraken classifies 100 base pair reads at a rate of over 4.1 million reads per minute, 909 times faster than Megablast and 11 times faster than the abundance estimation program MetaPhlAn. Kraken is available at http://ccb.jhu.edu/software/kraken/.