No abstract

Tapeworm infection continues to be an important cause of morbidity worldwide. Recent metagenomics studies have established a link between gut microbiota and parasite infection. The identification of gut probiotics is of foremost importance to explore its relationship and function with the parasite in the host. In this study, the gut content of hosts infected with tapeworm Hymenolepis diminuta and non-infected host gut were disected out to determine their Lactic acid bacterial (LAB) population in MRS agar and microbial community was analysed by metagenomics. The bacterial count was calculated on a bacterial counting chamber and their morphology was determined microscopically and biochemically. Further, to determine the safety profile antibiotic resistance test, antimicrobial, hemolytic activity, and adhesion capability were calculated. We found six dominant probiotic strains and a decrease in LAB load from 1.7–2.3 × 107 CFU/mL in the uninfected group to a range of 8.4 × 105 CFU/mL to 3.2 × 105 CFU/mL in the infected groups with respect to an increase in the parasite number from 10–18. In addition, we found a depletion in the probiotic relative abundance of Lactobacillus and an enrichment in potentially pathogenic Proteobacteria, Fusobacteria, and Streptococcus. Phylogenetic analysis of the six probiotics revealed a close similarity with different strains of L. brevis, L. johnsonii, L. taiwansis, L. reuteri, L. plantarum, and L. pentosus. Thus, this study suggests that the parasite inhibits probiotic colonization in the gut during its early establishment of infection inside the host.

Cell proliferation often experiences a density-dependent intrinsic proliferation rate (IPR) and negative feedback from growth-inhibiting molecules in culture media. The lack of flexible models with explanatory parameters fails to capture such a proliferation mechanism. We propose an extended logistic growth law with the density-dependent IPR and additional negative feedback. The extended parameters of the proposed model can be interpreted as density-dependent cell-cell cooperation and negative feedback on cell proliferation. Moreover, we incorporate further density regulation for flexibility in the model through environmental resistance on cells. The proposed growth law has similarities with the strong Allee model and harvesting phenomenon. We also develop the stochastic analog of the deterministic model by representing possible heterogeneity in growth-inhibiting molecules and environmental perturbation of the culture setup as correlated multiplicative and additive noises. The model provides a conditional maximum sustainable stable cell density (MSSCD) and a new fitness measure for proliferative cells. The proposed model shows superiority to the logistic law after fitting to real cell culture datasets. We illustrate both conditional MSSCD and the new cell fitness for a range of parameters. The cell density distributions reveal the chance of overproliferation, underproliferation, or decay for different parameter sets under the deterministic and stochastic setups.

No abstract

Cooperation is a fundamental requirement for the sustainability of group-living organisms. Despite the substantial research work in cooperative breeding birds, the dependence of the populations' sustainability young or adult helpers in migratory populations is unidentified. The mathematical models for predicting the birds' cooperative dynamics so far mostly ignore the migratory property. The cooperative breeding birds have three groups in their population, viz, immature or primary helpers, mature or secondary helpers, and breeders. We ask three questions to study migratory cooperative birds' sustainability through mathematical modeling under changing environments. Which group is the key to the sustainability of cooperative migratory birds? Does the maturate helper compensate young helpers' helping? Does the hierarchical structure of the population vary for variable migratory rates? We explore the answers based on the mathematical model's simulation experiment, a potential alternative to the game theory approach. This study estimates the parameters associated with the proposed model through the field survey and obtains the rest from existing literature. Although the study uses blue-tailed bee-eater as the test-bed species, the model is useful for analyzing other avian species' behavioral property. The model as a tool can determine whether the primary helpers of blue-tailed bee-eater are the key to sustainability. The model can also classify the adults' help as an addition or compensate to primary helpers' help. The model can predict any alteration in the cooperative breeding birds' hierarchy sizes for variable migration rates under changing climate.