Rapid advancements in automated genomic technologies have uncovered many unique findings about the turtle genome and its associated features including olfactory gene expansions and duplications of toll-like receptors. However, despite the advent of large-scale sequencing, assembly, and annotation, about 40–50% of genes in eukaryotic genomes are left without functional annotation, severely limiting our knowledge of the biological information of genes. Additionally, these automated processes are prone to errors since draft genomes consist of several disconnected scaffolds whose order is unknown; erroneous draft assemblies may also be contaminated with foreign sequences and propagate to cause errors in annotation. Many of these automated annotations are thus incomplete and inaccurate, highlighting the need for functional annotation to link gene sequences to biological identity. In this study, we have functionally annotated two genes of the red-bellied short-neck turtle (Emydura subglobosa), a member of the relatively understudied pleurodire lineage of turtles. We improved upon initial ab initio gene predictions through homology-based evidence and generated refined consensus gene models. Through functional, localization, and structural analyses of the predicted proteins, we discovered conserved putative genes encoding mitochondrial proteins that play a role in C21-steroid hormone biosynthetic processes and fatty acid catabolism—both of which are distantly related by the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle and share similar metabolic pathways. Overall, these findings further our knowledge about the genetic features underlying turtle physiology, morphology, and longevity, which have important implications for the treatment of human diseases and evolutionary studies.

Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) unveil the stark disparities to health equity between developed countries across the globe. Although prevention, treatment, and research of certain NCDs are well-established and funded, others, specifically gastric cancer (GC), do not share the same notoriety. In particular, GC killed more than 768,793 people globally with 1.09 million GC diagnoses in 2020 alone (The Global Cancer Observatory, 2020). This data elucidates the merit of GC for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) initiatives. By examining social determinants between two economically similar countries through an evidence-based case methodology, the results may gleen into avoidable mortality and economic burden, successful prevention, and more favorable prognosis in decreasing the prevalence of GC. This review aims to compare South Korea and France which have one of the highest and lowest prevalence of GC, respectively. The concluding model will serve as a recommendation for countries with high prevalence of GC towards achieving SDG 3, which promotes health and wellbeing across the life course, while advocating for the declaration of health as a human right (United Nations, 2020). Pragmatic, tangible recommendations include partnerships with media to reduce alcohol consumption, sodium reduction campaigns and nutrition programs to promote healthy diets, and expansion of medical clinics in rural areas to reach those who lack access to proper healthcare.

Human vision has a remarkable ability to recognize complex 3D objects such as faces that appear with any size and 3D orientations at any 3D location. If we initially memorize a face only with a normalized size and viewed from directly head on, the direct comparison between the one-sized memory and a new incoming image would demand tremendous mental frame translations in 7D. How can we perform such a demanding task so promptly and reliably as we experience the objects in the world around us?Intriguingly, our primary visual cortex exhibits a 2D retinotopy with a log-polar coordinate system, where scaling up/down of shape is converted to linear frame translation. As a result, mental scaling can be performed by linearly translating the memory or the perceptual image until they overlap with each other. According to our new model of NHT (Neural Holography Tomography), alpha brainwaves traveling at a constant speed can conduct this linear translation. With this scheme, every scaling up/down by a factor of two should take the same amount of extra mental time to recognize a smaller/larger face.To test this hypothesis, we designed a reaction time (RT) experiment, where participants were first asked to memorize sets of unfamiliar faces with a given specific size (4° or 8°). Following the memorization phase, similar stimuli with a wide range of sizes (from 1° to 32°) were presented, and RTs were recorded. As predicted, the increase in RT was proportional to the scaling factor in the log scale. Furthermore, we observed that RTs were fastest for 8° faces even if the memorized face was 4°. This supports our hypothesis that we always memorize faces at the exact size of ~8 °. To our surprise, the increases in RT were also consistent with the mentally-estimated depth sensation, which indicates that the apparent size of the recognized face can create a proper depth sensation.

Rapid advancements in automated genomic technologies have uncovered many unique findings about the turtle genome and its associated features including olfactory gene expansions and duplications of toll-like receptors. However, automated technologies often result in a high frequency of errors through the process of assembly and annotation and highlight the need for manual annotation. In this study, we have manually annotated four genes of the red-bellied short-neck turtle (Emydura subglobosa), an understudied outgroup of turtles representing a diverse lineage. We improved upon initial ab initio gene predictions through homology-based evidence and generated refined consensus models. Through functional, localization, and structural analyses of the predicted proteins, we have discovered conserved genes encoding proteins that play a role in C21-steroid hormone biosynthetic processes, Vitamin A uptake, collagen/elastin integrity, tumor suppression, and fatty acid catabolism. Overall, these findings further our knowledge about the genetic features underlying turtle physiology, morphology, and longevity, which could have important implications for the treatment of human diseases and evolutionary studies.