METS-IR is a novel score to evaluate cardiometabolic risk in healthy and at-risk subjects and a promising tool for screening of insulin sensitivity.

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Many pathogens colonize different anatomical sites, but the selective pressures contributing to survival in the diverse niches are poorly understood. Group A Streptococcus (GAS) is a humanadapted bacterium that causes a range of infections. Much effort has been expended to dissect the molecular basis of invasive (sterilesite) infections, but little is known about the genomes of strains causing pharyngitis (streptococcal "sore throat"). Additionally, there is essentially nothing known about the genetic relationships between populations of invasive and pharyngitis strains. In particular, it is unclear if invasive strains represent a distinct genetic subpopulation of strains that cause pharyngitis. We compared the genomes of 86 serotype M3 GAS pharyngitis strains with those of 215 invasive M3 strains from the same geographical location. The pharyngitis and invasive groups were highly related to each other and had virtually identical phylogenetic structures, indicating they belong to the same genetic pool. Despite the overall high degree of genetic similarity, we discovered that strains from different host environments (i.e., throat, normally sterile sites) have distinct patterns of diversifying selection at the nucleotide level. In particular, the pattern of polymorphisms in the hyaluronic acid capsule synthesis operon was especially different between the two strain populations. This finding was mirrored by data obtained from fullgenome analysis of strains sequentially cultured from nonhuman primates. Our results answer the long-standing question of the genetic relationship between GAS pharyngitis and invasive strains. The data provide previously undescribed information about the evolutionary history of pathogenic microbes that cause disease in different anatomical sites.genomics | infectious disease | microevolution | pathogenomics | population genetics

Summary The functional conversion of white adipose tissue (WAT) into a tissue with brown adipose tissue (BAT)-like activity, often referred to a ‘browning’, represents an intriguing strategy to combat obesity and metabolic disease. We demonstrate that thyroid hormone receptor (TR) activation by a synthetic agonist markedly induces a program of adaptive thermogenesis in subcutaneous WAT that coincides with a restoration of cold tolerance to cold-intolerant mice. Distinct from most other browning agents, pharmacological TR activation dissociates the browning of WAT from activation of classical BAT. TR agonism also induces the browning of white adipocytes in vitro, indicating that TR mediated browning is cell autonomous. These data establish TR agonists as a class of browning agents, implicate the TRs in the browning of WAT, and suggest a profound pharmacological potential of this action.