Foreword: Pacific Fragments.

IgE-binding reactivity of peptide fragments of Bla g 1.02, a major German cockroach allergen.

Cockroaches cause allergic diseases and are closely linked with the development of asthma. Bla g 1 is one of the major allergen proteins produced by German cockroaches. It consists of tandem repeats of approximately 100 amino acids. The aim of the present study was to identify linear IgE-binding epitopes of Bla g 1.02. RT-PCR was used to clone a cDNA sequence encoding Bla g 1.02 (EF202179) whic...

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Benchmarking BLAST Accuracy of Genus/Phyla Classification of Metagenomic Reads

Metagenomics is the study of environmental samples. Because few tools exist for metagenomic analysis, a natural step has been to utilize the popular homology tool, BLAST, to search for sequence similarity between sample fragments and an administered database. Most biologists use this method today without knowing BLAST's accuracy, especially when a particular taxonomic class is under-represented...

The Quantitative Distribution and Characteristics of Neuston Plastic in the North Pacific Ocean, 1985-88

The distribution, abundance, and characteristics of neuston plastic in the North Pacific, Bering Sea, and Japan Sea were studied during the 4-year period 1985-88 at 203 neuston stations encompassing ca. 91,000 m2 of sampling. The highest total density of neuston plastic was 316,800 pieces/km2 at lat. 35"59'N, long. 152"OO'E in Transitional Water east of Japan. The highest total concentration of...

Comparing Bacterial Communities Inferred from 16s Rrna Gene Sequencing and Shotgun Metagenomics

16S rRNA gene sequencing has been widely used for probing the species structure of a variety of environmental bacterial communities. Alternatively, 16S rRNA gene fragments can be retrieved from shotgun metagenomic sequences (metagenomes) and used for species profiling. Both approaches have their limitations-16S rRNA sequencing may be biased because of unequal amplification of species' 16S rRNA ...