Publications by authors named "K Lackey"
Canonical models of intestinal regeneration emphasize the critical role of the crypt stem cell niche to generate enterocytes that migrate to villus ends. Burmese pythons possess extreme intestinal regenerative capacity yet lack crypts, thus providing opportunities to identify noncanonical but potentially conserved mechanisms that expand our understanding of regenerative capacity in vertebrates, including humans. Here, we leverage single-nucleus RNA sequencing of fasted and postprandial python small intestine to identify the signaling pathways and cell-cell interactions underlying the python's regenerative response.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCirculating tumor cells (CTCs) are some of the key culprits that cause cancer metastasis and metastasis-related deaths. These cells exist in a dynamic microenvironment where they experience fluid shear stress (FSS), and the CTCs that survive FSS are considered to be highly metastatic and stem cell-like. Biophysical stresses such as FSS are also known to cause the production of extracellular vesicles (EVs) that can facilitate cell-cell communication by carrying biomolecular cargos such as microRNAs.
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- - A study analyzed the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in the feces of lactating women diagnosed with COVID-19 and their breastfed infants, focusing on potential associations with symptoms and fecal shedding.
- - Involving 57 maternal-infant pairs, the research found that SARS-CoV-2 RNA was present in 25% of mothers and 30% of infants, with fecal shedding lasting between 1-4 weeks.
- - Despite mothers experiencing various symptoms, the prevalence of symptoms in their infants was similar to healthy control infants, and there was no correlation between the fecal shedding frequency of mothers and their infants, although maternal fever increased the likelihood of infant fecal shedding.
Article Synopsis
- - The study addresses challenges in traditional hydrogel systems for delivering small hydrophilic molecules, such as early drug release and short shelf life due to large mesh sizes and high water content in hydrogels.
- - A new type of hydrogel, called hydration-induced void-containing hydrogel (HVH), is developed using a specific polymer blend that allows for 100% drug encapsulation and sustained release, thanks to micron-sized voids and a dense polymer matrix.
- - The HVH hydrogel is injectably delivered and has shown effective results in animal tests, where a single injection blocking pain in rats lasted up to 10 hours without causing toxicity issues.
Objectives: Breastfeeding is an energetically costly and intense form of human parental investment, providing sole-source nutrition in early infancy and bioactive components, including immune factors. Given the energetic cost of lactation, milk factors may be subject to tradeoffs, and variation in concentrations have been explored utilizing the Trivers-Willard hypothesis. As human milk immune factors are critical to developing immune system and protect infants against pathogens, we tested whether concentrations of milk immune factors (IgA, IgM, IgG, EGF, TGFβ2, and IL-10) vary in response to infant sex and maternal condition (proxied by maternal diet diversity [DD] and body mass index [BMI]) as posited in the Trivers-Willard hypothesis and consider the application of the hypothesis to milk composition.
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