The accelerating growth of the public microbial genomic data imposes substantial bur-den on the research community that uses such resources. Building databases for non-redundant ref-erence sequences from massive microbial genomic data based on clustering analysis is essential. However, existing clustering algorithms perform poorly on long genomic sequences. In this article, we present Gclust, a parallel program for clustering complete or draft genomic sequences, where clustering is accelerated with a novel parallelization strategy and a fast sequence comparison algo-rithm using sparse suffix arrays (SSAs). Moreover, genome identity measures between two sequences are calculated based on their maximal exact matches (MEMs). In this paper, we demon-strate the high speed and clustering quality of Gclust by examining four genome sequence datasets. Gclust is freely available for non-commercial use at https://github.com/niu-lab/gclust. We also introduce a web server for clustering user-uploaded genomes at http://niulab.scgrid.cn/gclust.

Objective To analyze the basic characteristics of the therapy discontinued patients with multi -drug resistant pulmonary tuberculosis (MDR -TB)and to find the causes of therapy discontinuing.Methods Using case -control study method,a questionnaire survey was conducted to analyze the causes of MDR -TB in the treatment of interruption,and to compare the characteristics with the treatment completed patients,and to analyze the risk factors of discontinued therapy among MDR -TB patients.Results The study included 45 cases of therapy discontinued MDR -TB patients,and 45 cases of MDR -TB patients who had completed the treatment as the control.Multivariate logistic regression analysis results showed that patients with over 65 years old(OR =8.69,95% CI =1.12,67.57),leak medication or drug withdrawal experience (OR =53.18,95% CI =5.90,479.27),were the risk factors of discontinued therapy(P <0.05).Patients with hospitalization for over 15 days was the protective factors for discontinued therpy(OR =0.09,95% CI =0.01,0.58), (P <0.05).Conclusion advanced age≥65 years old,low income,leak medication or drug withdrawal experience short hospitalization periods were related to the risk of MDR -TB patients therapy discontinuing.were the key targets for patient management in the future.

OBJECTIVETo examine the association of genetic variants with characteristic symptoms of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM).

METHODSA matched case-control study was performed to investigate the association between common variants in four genes (CDKAL1, GLIS3, GRK5, and TCF7L2) and symptoms of T2DM. Symptoms were examined with questionnaire for 710 subjects. Genomic DNA was extracted from peripheral blood mononuclear cell by salting-out procedure. Genotyping was carried out by direct sequencing of the unpurified polymerase chain reaction products.

RESULTMost of the T2DM patients pressented characteristic symptoms, such as feeling weak in limbs (P =0.0057), hand tremor (P =0.0208), bradymasesis (P =0.0234), and polyuria (P =0.0051). Some of the T2DM patients shared characteristic symptoms, such as desire for cold drinks (P =0.0304), polyphagia (P =0.0051), and furred tongue (P =0.028). The impaired glucose regulation (IGR) cases took only one characteristic symptom of frequent micturition (P =0.0422). GLIS3 rs7034200 and GRK5 rs10886471 were significantly associated with increased T2DM risk (GLIS3 rs7034200 under dominant model: P=0.0307; GRK5 rs10886471 under recessive model: P=0.0092). However, only the rs10886471 polymorphism in GRK5 showed a significant effect on both differentiated symptoms and T2DM risk. The C-allele was involved in both dampness-heat encumbering Pi (Spleen) syndrome (P =0.047) and qi-yin deficiency syndrome (P =0.002) via increased GRK5 expression.

CONCLUSIONSBoth T2DM and IGR exhibited its corresponding characteristic symptoms. The variants of GRK5 were involved with both qi-yin deficiency syndrome and dampness-heat encumbering Pi syndrome.

BACKGROUNDScreening on multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) has been limited to the serious TB subpopulations excluding the new TB patients. This study aimed to examine MDR-TB burden among the new TB patients.

METHODSWe conducted a study in Zhejiang Province during 2009-2013 to screen for MDR-TB patients among the low MDR-TB risk patients and five subpopulations of high MDR-TB risk patients. The number, prevalence, and trend of MDR-TB were compared while the logistic regression model was used to examine risk factors related to MDR-TB.

RESULTSA total of 200 and 791 MDR-TB cases were, respectively, identified from the 9830 new TB cases and 2372 high-risk suspects who took MDR-TB screening from 2009 to 2013. The MDR-TB rates went down in both of the new TB patients and five MDR-TB high-risk groups over the study time, but the percentage of MDR-TB patients identified from the new TB patients in all diagnosed MDR-TB cases kept stable from 28.3% in 2011 to 27.0% in 2012 to 26.0% in 2013.

CONCLUSIONSThe study indicated that MDR-TB burden among new TB patients was high, thus screening for MDR-TB among the new TB patients should be recommended in China as well as in the similar situation worldwide.