Cereal transformation and gene editing can be a complex and costly undertaking. It is therefore important to validate and understand the performance of the components to achieve high rates of transformation and gene editing. Here, we have made a direct comparison of different CRISPR/Cas9 guide systems to target the genome in three cereal species.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Findings from a person-level meta-analysis of online alcohol intervention trials suggest that women disproportionately seek out such interventions (Riper et al., 2018). Although women may be a "hidden population" that is particularly drawn to online alcohol interventions, trial design features may explain women's apparent over-representation in these trials.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: A common and disruptive symptom of multiple sclerosis is difficulty in walking. Deficits in ankle proprioception and in plantarflexor muscle function may contribute to these mobility issues. In this study, ankle proprioceptive ability and plantarflexor performance of people with multiple sclerosis (PwMS) were compared to healthy controls to determine whether multiple sclerosis causes impairments in these systems.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSeptic arthritis and prosthetic joint infection (PJI) are conditions commonly associated with Gram-positive cocci, however, a drastic increase in cases derived from enterobacterial species has been observed. Recently it has been reported by multiple groups that staphylococci rapidly form free-floating aggregates in the presence of synovial fluid. These aggregates are comparatively more resistant to antimicrobial challenge than their planktonic counterparts, and thus may play a role in the pathogenesis of joint infection.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe ability to track the time-varying postures of our hands and the forces they exert plays a key role in our ability to dexterously interact with objects. However, how precisely and accurately we sense hand kinematics and kinetics has not been completely characterized. Furthermore, the dominant source of information about hand postures stems from muscle spindles, whose responses can also signal isometric force and are modulated by fusimotor input.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWeak electrocutaneous stimuli applied to the forearm are erroneously localized toward its middle (Steenbergen P, Buitenweg JR, Trojan J, Veltink PH. Exp Brain Res 232: 597-607, 2014). We asked whether mechanical touch stimuli exhibit a similar bias and whether the bias is toward the middle of the forearm or toward the middle of the recent stimulus distribution.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Neurophysiol
February 2018
Odor discrimination is a complex task that may be improved by increasing sampling time to facilitate evidence accumulation. However, experiments testing this phenomenon in olfaction have produced conflicting results. To resolve this disparity, Frederick et al.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA reliable mechanism to predict the heaviness of an object is important for manipulating an object under environmental uncertainty. Recently, Cashaback et al. (Cashaback JGA, McGregor HR, Pun HCH, Buckingham G, Gribble PL.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe investigated the influence of motion context on tactile localization, using a paradigm similar to the cutaneous rabbit or sensory saltation (Geldard FA, Sherrick CE. Science 178: 178-179, 1972). In one of its forms, the rabbit stimulus consists of a tap in one location quickly followed by another tap elsewhere, creating the illusion that the two taps are near each other.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe present-day view of the neural basis for the senses of muscle force and heaviness is that they are generated centrally, within the brain, from copies of motor commands. A corollary of the motor discharge generates a sense of effort which underlies these sensations. In recent experiments on force and heaviness sensations using thumb flexor muscles, a rather different explanation has been invoked: Subjects were proposed to rely predominantly on inputs of a peripheral origin, in particular, the signals of muscle spindles.
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