TASK DEFINITION: In this task, you're given a paragraph from the research paper and your task is to generate a suitable title for the research paper based on the given paper. Under 100 words is a good title length.
PROBLEM: The chicken upper respiratory tract is the portal of entry for respiratory pathogens, such as avian influenza virus (AIV). The presence of microorganisms is sensed by pathogen recognition receptors (such as Toll-like receptors (TLRs)) of the innate immune defenses. Innate responses are essential for subsequent induction of potent adaptive immune responses, but little information is available about innate antiviral responses of the chicken trachea. We hypothesized that TLR ligands induce innate antiviral responses in the chicken trachea. Tracheal organ cultures (TOC) were used to investigate localized innate responses to TLR ligands. Expression of candidate genes, which play a role in antiviral responses, was quantified. To confirm the antiviral responses of stimulated TOC, chicken macrophages were treated with supernatants from stimulated TOC, prior to infection with AIV. The results demonstrated that TLR ligands induced the expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines, type I interferons and interferon stimulated genes in the chicken trachea. In conclusion, TLR ligands induce functional antiviral responses in the chicken trachea, which may act against some pathogens, such as AIV.

SOLUTION: Local Innate Responses to TLR Ligands in the Chicken Trachea

PROBLEM: We summarize herein the results of various virologic studies of acute otitis media (AOM) conducted at our site over a ten -year period. Among 566 children with AOM, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) was the most common virus identified in either middle ear fluid or nasal wash; it was found in 16% of all children and 38% of virus-positive children. Seventy-one percent of the children with RSV were one year of age or older, which was significantly older than all other viruses combined (P = 0.045). RSV infection was associated with the common bacterial pathogens causing AOM. Past efforts to develop vaccines for RSV have emphasized prevention of lower respiratory tract infection in infants, which is a more serious problem but less common than AOM. Our results suggest that RSV vaccines that work only against infection in older children may have value in preventing AOM, the most common pediatric disease.

SOLUTION: ROLE OF RESPIRATORY SYNCYTIAL VIRUS IN ACUTE OTITIS MEDIA: IMPLICATIONS FOR VACCINE DEVELOPMENT

PROBLEM: A pattern in which nucleotide transitions are favored several fold over transversions is common in molecular evolution. When this pattern occurs among amino acid replacements, explanations often invoke an effect of selection, on the grounds that transitions are more conservative in their effects on proteins. However, the underlying hypothesis of conservative transitions has never been tested directly. Here we assess support for this hypothesis using direct evidence: the fitness effects of mutations in actual proteins measured via individual or paired growth experiments. We assembled data from 8 published studies, ranging in size from 24 to 757 single-nucleotide mutations that change an amino acid. Every study has the statistical power to reveal significant effects of amino acid exchangeability, and most studies have the power to discern a binary conservative-vs-radical distinction. However, only one study suggests that transitions are significantly more conservative than transversions. In the combined set of 1,239 replacements (544 transitions, 695 transversions), the chance that a transition is more conservative than a transversion is 53 % (95 % confidence interval 50 to 56) compared with the null expectation of 50 %. We show that this effect is not large compared with that of most biochemical factors, and is not large enough to explain the several-fold bias observed in evolution. In short, the available data have the power to verify the "conservative transitions" hypothesis if true, but suggest instead that selection on proteins plays at best a minor role in the observed bias.

SOLUTION:
Article Fast Track On the Causes of Evolutionary Transition:Transversion Bias