The pathogen Trichomonas vaginalis (TV) made the cover of the prestigious journal Science this week. For their part in the multinational effort to sequence and tag the sexually transmitted parasite, Chang Gung Hospital's Chiu Cheng-hsun (邱政洵) and Petrus Tang (鄧致剛) received co-author credit in the article Draft Genome Sequence of the Sexually Transmitted Pathogen Trichomonas vaginalis.
The Chang Gung team worked on generating expressed sequence tags from the ribonucleic acid (RNA) of the pathogen. Eventually, more than 70,000 tags were found, corresponding to 26,000 genes.
"We were all shocked that such a tiny organism had such a huge genome," Chiu said. In comparison, the human genome only carries 17,000 to 18,000 genes, Chiu added.
PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Despite its prevalence, TV is not well-known to the general public.
"It is probably the second-most common sexually transmitted disease, with an estimated 180 million sufferers worldwide" Chiu said. "But the majority of those who have it are not even aware of the infection." Chiu said that many carriers of TV never develop any symptoms.
Although TV is treatable with the antibiotic metronidazole, diagnosis remains slow and inadequate.
"We hope our work will help develop a better, more rapid clinical test for TV and perhaps even a new cure," Chiu said. "This is especially urgent as oversea studies show metronidazole resistance is rapidly increasing."
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS