ORCID Profile
0000-0002-5581-4154
Current Organisation
University of Helsinki
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Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 23-06-2016
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 2022
DOI: 10.1093/GIGASCIENCE/GIAB097
Abstract: The Glanville fritillary (Melitaea cinxia) butterfly is a model system for metapopulation dynamics research in fragmented landscapes. Here, we provide a chromosome-level assembly of the butterfly's genome produced from Pacific Biosciences sequencing of a pool of males, combined with a linkage map from population crosses. The final assembly size of 484 Mb is an increase of 94 Mb on the previously published genome. Estimation of the completeness of the genome with BUSCO indicates that the genome contains 92–94% of the BUSCO genes in complete and single copies. We predicted 14,810 genes using the MAKER pipeline and manually curated 1,232 of these gene models. The genome and its annotated gene models are a valuable resource for future comparative genomics, molecular biology, transcriptome, and genetics studies on this species.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 16-11-2017
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 08-12-2019
DOI: 10.1101/867069
Abstract: The tuatara ( Sphenodon punctatus ), the only living member of the archaic reptilian order Rhynchocephalia (Sphenodontia) once widespread across Gondwana, is an iconic and enigmatic terrestrial vertebrate endemic to New Zealand. A key link to the now extinct stem reptiles from which dinosaurs, modern reptiles, birds and mammals evolved, the tuatara provides exclusive insights into the ancestral amniotes. The tuatara genome, at ∼5 Gbp, is among the largest vertebrate genomes assembled. Analysis of this genome and comparisons to other vertebrates reinforces the uniqueness of the tuatara. Phylogenetic analyses indicate tuatara erged from the snakes and lizards ∼250 MYA. This lineage also shows moderate rates of molecular evolution, with instances of punctuated evolution. Genome sequence analysis identifies expansions of protein, non-protein-coding RNA families, and repeat elements, the latter of which show an extraordinary amalgam of reptilian and mammalian features. Sequencing of this genome provides a valuable resource for deep comparative analyses of tetrapods, as well as for tuatara biology and conservation. It also provides important insights into both the technical challenges and the cultural obligations associated with genome sequencing.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 26-11-2019
DOI: 10.1038/S41597-019-0272-6
Abstract: Thermal discomfort is one of the main triggers for occupants’ interactions with components of the built environment such as adjustments of thermostats and/or opening windows and strongly related to the energy use in buildings. Understanding causes for thermal (dis-)comfort is crucial for design and operation of any type of building. The assessment of human thermal perception through rating scales, for ex le in post-occupancy studies, has been applied for several decades however, long-existing assumptions related to these rating scales had been questioned by several researchers. The aim of this study was to gain deeper knowledge on contextual influences on the interpretation of thermal perception scales and their verbal anchors by survey participants. A questionnaire was designed and consequently applied in 21 language versions. These surveys were conducted in 57 cities in 30 countries resulting in a dataset containing responses from 8225 participants. The database offers potential for further analysis in the areas of building design and operation, psycho-physical relationships between human perception and the built environment, and linguistic analyses.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 30-12-2021
DOI: 10.1038/S41598-021-03327-3
Abstract: Models estimate that up to 80% of all butterfly and moth species host vertically transmitted endosymbiotic microorganisms, which can affect the host fitness, metabolism, reproduction, population dynamics, and genetic ersity, among others. The supporting empirical data are however currently highly biased towards the generally more colourful butterflies, and include less information about moths. Additionally, studies of symbiotic partners of Lepidoptera predominantly focus on the common bacterium Wolbachia pipientis , while infections by other inherited microbial partners have more rarely been investigated. Here, we mine the whole genome sequence data of 47 species of Erebidae moths, with the aims to both inform on the ersity of symbionts potentially associated with this Lepidoptera group, and discuss the potential of metagenomic approaches to inform on host associated microbiome ersity. Based on the result of Kraken2 and MetaPhlAn2 analyses, we found clear evidence of the presence of Wolbachia in four species. Our result also suggests the presence of three other bacterial symbionts ( Burkholderia spp., Sodalis spp. and Arsenophonus spp.) in three other moth species. Additionally, we recovered genomic material from bracovirus in about half of our s les. The detection of the latter, usually found in mutualistic association to braconid parasitoid wasps, may inform on host-parasite interactions that take place in the natural habitat of the Erebidae moths, suggesting either contamination with material from species of the host community network, or horizontal transfer of members of the microbiome between interacting species.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 09-2018
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 18-08-2020
DOI: 10.1038/S41586-020-2661-6
Abstract: An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 30-08-2022
DOI: 10.1186/S12866-022-02602-1
Abstract: Maternally inherited bacterial symbionts are extremely widespread in insects. They owe their success to their ability to promote their own transmission through various manipulations of their hosts’ life-histories. Many symbionts however very often go undetected. Consequently, we have only a restricted idea of the true symbiont ersity in insects, which may hinder our understanding of even bigger questions in the field such as the evolution or establishment of symbiosis. In this study, we screened publicly available Lepidoptera genomic material for two of the most common insect endosymbionts, namely Wolbachia and Spiroplasma, in 1904 entries, encompassing 106 distinct species. We compared the performance of two screening software, Kraken2 and MetaPhlAn2, to identify the bacterial infections and using a baiting approach we reconstruct endosymbiont genome assemblies. Of the 106 species screened, 20 (19%) and nine (8.5%) were found to be infected with either Wolbachia or Spiroplasma , respectively. Construction of partial symbiotic genomes and phylogenetic analyses suggested the Wolbachia strains from the supergroup B were the most prevalent type of symbionts, while Spiroplasma infections were scarce in the Lepidoptera species screened here. Our results indicate that many of the host-symbiont associations remain largely unexplored, with the majority of associations we identify never being recorded before. This highlights the usefulness of public databases to explore the hidden ersity of symbiotic entities, allowing the development of hypotheses regarding host-symbiont associations. The ever-expanding genomic databases provide a erse databank from which one can characterize and explore the true ersity of symbiotic entities.
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 04-11-2020
DOI: 10.1101/2020.11.03.364950
Abstract: The Glanville fritillary ( Melitaea cinxia ) butterfly is a long-term model system for metapopulation dynamics research in fragmented landscapes. Here, we provide a chromosome level assembly of the butterfly’s genome produced from Pacific Biosciences sequencing of a pool of males, combined with a linkage map from population crosses. The final assembly size of 484 Mb is an increase of 94 Mb on the previously published genome. Estimation of the completeness of the genome with BUSCO, indicates that the genome contains 93 - 95% of the BUSCO genes in complete and single copies. We predicted 14,830 gene models using the MAKER pipeline and manually curated 1,232 of these gene models. The genome and its annotated gene models are a valuable resource for future comparative genomics, molecular biology, transcriptome and genetics studies on this species.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 06-01-2020
DOI: 10.1038/S41597-019-0348-3
Abstract: An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.
Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 13-11-2017
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 05-08-2020
DOI: 10.1038/S41586-020-2561-9
Abstract: The tuatara ( Sphenodon punctatus )—the only living member of the reptilian order Rhynchocephalia (Sphenodontia), once widespread across Gondwana 1,2 —is an iconic species that is endemic to New Zealand 2,3 . A key link to the now-extinct stem reptiles (from which dinosaurs, modern reptiles, birds and mammals evolved), the tuatara provides key insights into the ancestral amniotes 2,4 . Here we analyse the genome of the tuatara, which—at approximately 5 Gb—is among the largest of the vertebrate genomes yet assembled. Our analyses of this genome, along with comparisons with other vertebrate genomes, reinforce the uniqueness of the tuatara. Phylogenetic analyses indicate that the tuatara lineage erged from that of snakes and lizards around 250 million years ago. This lineage also shows moderate rates of molecular evolution, with instances of punctuated evolution. Our genome sequence analysis identifies expansions of proteins, non-protein-coding RNA families and repeat elements, the latter of which show an amalgam of reptilian and mammalian features. The sequencing of the tuatara genome provides a valuable resource for deep comparative analyses of tetrapods, as well as for tuatara biology and conservation. Our study also provides important insights into both the technical challenges and the cultural obligations that are associated with genome sequencing.
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 03-09-2021
DOI: 10.1101/2021.09.02.458197
Abstract: Models estimate that up to 80% of all butterfly and moth species host vertically transmitted endosymbiotic microorganisms, which can affect the host fitness, metabolism, reproduction, population dynamics, and genetic ersity, among others. The supporting empirical data are however currently highly biased towards the generally more colourful butterflies, and include less information about moths. Additionally, studies of symbiotic partners of Lepidoptera predominantly focus on the common bacterium Wolbachia pipientis , while infections by other inherited microbial partners have more rarely been investigated. Here, we mine the whole genome sequence data of 47 species of Erebidae moths, with the aims to both inform on the ersity of symbionts potentially associated with this Lepidoptera group, and discuss the potential of metagenomic approaches to inform on their associated microbiome ersity. Based on the result of Kraken2 and MetaPhlAn2 analyses, we found clear evidence of the presence of Wolbachia in four species. Our result also suggests the presence of three other bacterial symbionts ( Burkholderia spp., Sodalis spp. and Arsenophonus spp.), in three other moth species. Additionally, we recovered genomic material from bracovirus in about half of our s les. The detection of the latter, usually found in mutualistic association to braconid parasitoid wasps, may inform on host-parasite interactions that take place in the natural habitat of the Erebidae moths, suggesting either contamination with material from species of the host community network, or horizontal transfer of members of the microbiome between interacting species.
No related grants have been discovered for Victoria Twort.