Lactobacillus plantarum EM is a probiotic strain with antimicrobial activity, cholesterol-lowering effects, and tolerance to acid and bile. To understand the genetic basis of the probiotic characteristics of this strain, genome sequencing and probiotic-related genetic analysis were performed. The genomic characteristics of L. plantarum EM were confirmed by comparative genomic analysis with 41 probiotic lactic acid bacteria, including 10 L. plantarum strains. L. plantarum EM was shown to contain a circular chromosome of 3,184,808 bp and eight plasmids with various lengths from 5,027 to 76,369 bp. The L. plantarum EM genome had a total of 3560 protein-coding genes, including probiotic-related genes, such as tolerance to acid and bile, temperature stress, and oxidative stress. Comparative genomic analysis showed that L. plantarum EM contained plantaricin and bovicin gene clusters, which are related to antimicrobial activity, and five bile salt hydrolase genes related to serum cholesterol-lowering effects. The genomic analysis confirmed the probiotic properties of L. plantarum EM, and our results indicated that this strain has potential application for use as an industrially important probiotic.In polytheistic antiquity, people went to the temples, which were dedicated to different gods and goddesses, to seek healing for their diseases. There were also anatomical votive offerings that symbolized their affected organs. In this article, votive offerings in the field of urology and the diseases they point to are presented.Many events in biology are triggered when a diffusing searcher finds a target, which is called a first passage time (FPT). The overwhelming majority of FPT studies have analyzed the time it takes a single searcher to find a target. However, the more relevant timescale in many biological systems is the time it takes the fastest searcher(s) out of many searchers to find a target, which is called an extreme FPT. In this paper, we apply extreme value theory to find a tractable approximation for the full probability distribution of extreme FPTs of diffusion. This approximation can be easily applied in many diverse scenarios, as it depends on only a few properties of the short time behavior of the survival probability of a single FPT. We find this distribution by proving that a careful rescaling of extreme FPTs converges in distribution as the number of searchers grows. This limiting distribution is a type of Gumbel distribution and involves the LambertW function. This analysis yields new explicit formulas for approximations of statistics of extreme FPTs (mean, variance, moments, etc.) which are highly accurate and are accompanied by rigorous error estimates.Surrogate measures of infectious exposures have been consistently associated with lower childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) risk. However, recent reports have suggested that physician-diagnosed early life infections increase ALL risk, thereby raising the possibility that stronger responses to infections may promote risk. We examined whether medically diagnosed infections were related to childhood ALL risk in an integrated health care system in the United States. Cases of ALL (n=435) diagnosed between 1994-2014 at age 0-14 years along with matched controls (n=2170) were identified at Kaiser Permanente Northern California. Conditional logistic regression was used to estimate risk of ALL associated with history of infections during first year of life and across the lifetime (up to diagnosis). History of infection during first year of life was not associated with ALL risk (odds ratio [OR] 0.85, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.60, 1.21). However, infections with at least one medication prescribed (i.e., more "severe" infections) were inversely associated with risk (OR 0.42, 95% CI 0.20, 0.88). Similar associations were observed when the exposure window was expanded to include medication-prescribed infections throughout the subjects' lifetime (OR=0.52, 95% CI 0.32, 0.85). © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail journals.permissions@oup.com.Tick-borne disease surveillance in North America has long focused on Lyme disease, though there is currently a significant shift towards comprehensive pathogen surveillance in ticks. Central California has often been overlooked in regular tick-borne pathogen surveillance despite the presence of numerous medically important tick species. The bacterial genus Rickettsia contains tick-borne species that are known pathogens, such as those in the spotted fever group; nonpathogenic endosymbionts; and many species with unknown pathogenic potential. Five common tick species (Ixodes pacificus Cooley and Kohls [Acari Ixodidae], Dermacentor occidentalis Marx [Acari Ixodidae], D. variabilis Say, Rhipicephalus sanguineus Latreille [Acari Ixodidae], and Ornithodoros parkeri Cooley [Acari Argasidae]) of California were collected by both traditional and modern techniques, and subsequently screened for Rickettsia spp. Many individuals from all five tick species were PCR positive for Rickettsia spp., and a combination of species-specific primers, a restriction fragment length polymorphism assay, and DNA sequencing was used to further characterize the species composition in these ticks. Probable Rickettsia philipii (Rickettsia 364D) was detected in one (1.56%) D. occidentalis collected in Fresno County; R. rhipicephali was detected in 23.4% of D. occidentalis from Fresno Co.; R. bellii was detected in 88.2% of D. variabilis, 7.8% of D. occidentalis, and in one R. rhipicephalus (1.1%) from Fresno Co.; R. monacensis str. Humboldt was detected in three (100%) of I. pacificus collected in both Fresno and Madera Co.; and an uncharacterized Rickettsia was detected in (26.4%) of O. parkeri collected in both Fresno and Madera Co. The findings in this study highlight the need for ongoing surveillance in this region of California. © The Author(s) 2020.  https://www.selleckchem.com/products/mavoglurant.html  Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Entomological Society of America.All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail journals.permissions@oup.com.