International Society for Prenatal Diagnosis 2022 debate 3—Fetal genome sequencing should be offered to all pregnant patients

Prenatal trio exome sequencing (ES) has become integrated into the care for pregnant women when the fetus has structural anomalies. Details regarding optimizing indications for prenatal exome sequencing, its detection rates with different categories of fetal anomalies, and principles of interpretation of pathogenicity of sequence variants are still under investigation. However, there is now growing consensus about its benefits for finding the cause of fetal structural anomalies. What is not established, is whether exome or genome sequencing (GS) has a place in the care of all pregnant women. This report is a summary of the debate on this topic at the 26th International Conference on Prenatal Diagnosis and Therapy. Both expert debaters considered the advantages and disadvantages. Advantages include the ability to diagnose serious childhood conditions without a prenatally observable phenotype, which creates the potential of early treatments. Disadvantages include difficulties with variant classification, counseling complexities, healthcare cost, and the burden on healthcare systems and families, in particular with the discovery of adult-onset disorders or variants of uncertain significance. Although both debaters weighed the balance of these conflicting arguments differently, they agreed that more research is needed to further explore the clinical utility and ethical aspects of GS for all pregnant women.     

Consequences of behavioral vs. numerical dominance on foraging activity of desert seed-eating ants

Dominance relationships among species play a major role in the structure of animal communities. Yet, dominant species with different trade-offs in resource exploitation and monopolization could affect community structure in variable ways. In ants, dominant species could be classified into either behavioral dominants that exhibit territorial aggression or numerical dominants that exhibit high biomass or frequency of occurrence. While each class of dominance has generally been found to negatively affect the foraging activity of species in ant communities, the concurrent effect of both classes of species has never been tested. Here, we examined the effects of two behaviorally dominant species, Crematogaster inermis and Monomorium salomonis, and a numerically dominant species, Messor arenarius, on the foraging behavior of seed-eating species in a desert ant assemblage. In a 1-year study, the foraging activity of the ant species was assessed using seed baits, which were sampled during night and day. While the numerically dominant species exhibited high foraging efficiency and negatively affected the ability of other seed-eating species to obtain seeds, significantly more seeds remained at baits that were occupied the previous night by each of the two behaviorally dominant species, possibly due to aggressive exclusion of M. arenarius foragers from the baits. This exclusion also facilitated greater foraging activity of the seed-eating species. Our results demonstrate how these two types of dominance could differently affect the foraging activity of ant species in the community.     

Decoupling fragmentation from habitat loss for spiders in patchy agricultural landscapes

Habitat loss reduces species diversity, but the effect of habitat fragmentation on number of species is less clear because fragmentation generally accompanies loss of habitat. We compared four methods that aim to decouple the effects of fragmentation from the effects of habitat loss. Two methods are based on species-area relations, one on Fisher's alpha index of diversity, and one on plots of cumulative number of species detected against cumulative area sampled. We used these methods to analyze the species diversity of spiders in 2, 3.2 × 4 km agricultural landscapes in Southern Judea Lowlands, Israel. Spider diversity increased as fragmentation increased with all four methods, probably not because of the additive within-patch processes, such as edge effect and heterogeneity. The positive relation between fragmentation and species diversity might reflect that most species can disperse through the fields during the wheat-growing season. We suggest that if a given area was designated for the conservation of spiders in Southern Judea Lowlands, Israel, a set of several small patches may maximize species diversity over time.     

The role of lipids on sorption characteristics of freshwater- and wastewater-irrigated soils

The soil lipid fraction can play an important role in the sorption of organic compounds. In this study, the impact of the lipid fraction of freshwater- and wastewater-irrigated soils on the sorption of non- and relatively polar compounds was assessed. Lipid analyses revealed a clear difference between the two lipid fractions. The lipid extract from the wastewater-irrigated soil was consistent with mainly straight paraffinic chain materials; the lipid extract from freshwater-irrigated soil, on the other hand, exhibited stronger signals of aromatics, double bonds, ester, ether, and methyl, in addition to a smaller contribution from methylene protons. Our data suggest that lipid removal induced a stronger increase in the soil's sorption affinity for solutes capable of polar interactions such as atrazine (2-chloro-4-ethylamino-6-isopropylamino-1,3,5-triazine) and chlorotoluron (N'-(3-chloro-4-methylphenyl)-N,N-dimethylurea) as compared to phenanthrene. Moreover, the level of increase in sorption affinities due to lipid removal was much higher for the freshwater-irrigated soil than for its wastewater-irrigated counterpart, even though the level of lipids in the freshwater-irrigated soil was half that in the wastewater-irrigated one (6 vs. 11% of the total organic C). The higher level of polar functionalities, such as ether and ester moieties, in the lipid fraction from the freshwater-irrigated soil suggests that these extractable compounds compete successfully with the polar solutes (atrazine and chlorotoluron) for specific binding sites in the soil organic matter (SOM). It appears that the composition of the lipid fraction may be a key consideration in unraveling the sorption of organic molecules in soils.     

A model for the analysis of seasonal aspects of water quality control

A multiseasonal mathematical programming model for the analysis of water quality control within a river basin is presented. Phenomena of interseasonal variation in flow intensity and the river's pollutant assimilative capacity are introduced into the model by defining several seasons and their characterizations by seasonal parameters. An application of the model to a typical case situation is reported. The results suggest that seasonal adjustments in the treatment levels of wastewater treatment plants involve a considerable saving potential in comparison with a situation in which treatment levels are rigidly determined for the entire year.