Genetic suppression occurs when the phenotypic defects caused by a deleterious mutation are rescued by another mutation. Suppression interactions are of particular interest for genetic diseases, as they identify ways to reduce disease severity, thereby potentially highlighting avenues for therapeutic intervention. To what extent suppression interactions are influenced by the genetic background in which they operate remains largely unknown.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhile landing on flowers, pollinating insects often have to deal with flower movement caused by wind. Here, we determined the landing performance of bumblebees on a moving artificial flower, and how they use their visual-motor system to control their landings. To do this, we built an experimental setup containing a physical model of a flower, moving sideways using sinusoidal kinematics at various oscillation frequencies (up to 0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRecently, avacopan has been approved for the treatment of ANCA-associated vasculitis (AAV). Avacopan is an inhibitor of the C5a-receptor, which plays an important role in chemotaxis and the amplification loop of inflammation in AAV. In the most recent, international guidelines avacopan is recommended as steroid-sparing agents for the management of AAV.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMost teleost fish propel themselves with lateral body waves powered by their axial muscles. These muscles also power suction feeding through rapid expansion of the mouth cavity. They consist of muscle segments (myomeres), separated by connective tissue sheets (myosepts).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMultipotent bone marrow mesenchymal stromal/stem cells (MSCs) respond to mechanical forces. MSCs perceive static and dynamic forces through focal adhesions, as well as cytoskeletal and intranuclear actin. Dynamic strain stimulates nuclear β-catenin (Ctnnb1) that controls gene expression and suppresses osteogenesis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIndividuals with the genetic disorder neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) are typically diagnosed in a medical hospital setting strongly relying on the presence of well-defined physical symptoms such as neurofibromas or pigmentary spots (known as café-au-lait spots). In mental health care settings, however, aside from a few highly specialized centres, the diagnosis and treatment of individuals with NF1 receives little attention, while the need for psychological treatment is increasingly identified, both in clinical practice and in the scientific literature. Occasional referrals of individuals with NF1 to the mental health services are often only targeted at psychological assessment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVasorin (Vasn) is a pleiotropic molecule involved in various physiological and pathological conditions, including cancer. Vasn has also been detected in bone cells of developing skeletal tissues but no function for Vasn in bone metabolism has been implicated yet. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate if Vasn plays a significant role in bone biology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe importance of understanding the long-lasting legacy of past land use on modern ecosystems has long been acknowledged. However, the magnitude and persistence of such legacies have been assessed only occasionally. Northern Greece has been a gateway of farming into mainland Europe during the Neolithic, thus providing a perfect setting to assess the potential impact of land-use history on present-day ecosystems.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe reliable application of field deployable fluorescent dissolved organic matter (fDOM) probes is hindered by several influencing factors which need to be compensated. This manuscript describes the corrections of temperature, pH, turbidity and inner filter effect on fluorescence signal of a commercial fDOM probe (fDOM). For this, Australian waters with wide ranging qualities were selected, e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOne of the main regulators of phosphate homeostasis is fibroblast growth factor 23 (FGF23), secreted by osteocytes. The effects of organic versus inorganic dietary phosphate on this homeostasis are unclear. This study used MC3T3-E1 FGF23-producing cells to examine the transcriptomic responses to these phosphates.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFlying animals often encounter winds during visually guided landings. However, how winds affect their flight control strategy during landing is unknown. Here, we investigated how sidewind affects the landing performance and sensorimotor control of foraging bumblebees (Bombus terrestris).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCoercive mating is a sexual selection strategy that is likely to influence female cognition. Female harassment levels have been linked to altered brain gene expression patterns and brain size evolution, suggesting females may respond to coercive mating by investing energy into "outsmarting" males. However, females exposed to coercive males have decreased foraging efficiency and likely increased stress levels, suggesting their brain function might instead be impaired.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Education and self-management plans enhance parents' self-efficacy in managing their child's asthma symptoms. By understanding how parents recognize and interpret acute asthma symptoms, we can compile patient information using terms that are familiar to parents.
Method: Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 27 parents of children with asthma aged 2-12 years.
The alignment between visual pathway signaling and pupil dynamics offers a promising non-invasive method to further illuminate the mechanisms of human color perception. However, only limited research has been done in this area and the effects of healthy aging on pupil responses to the different color components have not been studied yet. Here we aim to address this by modelling the effects of color lightness and chroma (colorfulness) on pupil responses in young and older adults, in a closely controlled passive viewing experiment with 26 broad-spectrum digital color fields.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Because anti-neutrophil cytoplasmatic antibody (ANCA)-associated vasculitis (AAV) is a rare, life-threatening, auto-immune disease, conducting research is difficult but essential. A long-lasting challenge is to identify rare AAV patients within the electronic-health-record (EHR)-system to facilitate real-world research. Artificial intelligence (AI)-search tools using natural language processing (NLP) for text-mining are increasingly postulated as a solution.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPublic certification standards have received limited scholarly attention, especially the institutional capacity of public authorities that develop and implement these standards to address complex challenges, such as the promotion of industrial ecology and industrial symbiosis for enhancing resource use efficiency. This research uses an institutional capacity assessment framework to examine the ways in which a voluntary public standard for certifying eco-industrial parks affected the Vietnamese state's capacity to coordinate and implement industrial ecology. The article draws upon the interviews and a review of official documentation to show that the benefits of public standards extend beyond compliance to the enhancement of state capacities to coordinate complex policy domains such as industrial ecology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMicroplastics require a risk assessment framework that takes their multidimensionality into account while exclusively considering robust data. Therefore, effect tests should use a diverse, environmentally relevant microplastic (ERMP) standard material that adheres to high-quality requirements. In this study, we provide chronic dose-effect relationships and effect thresholds for 16 benthic species exposed to ERMP.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: MYC is a central regulator of gene transcription and is frequently dysregulated in human cancers. As targeting MYC directly is challenging, an alternative strategy is to identify specific proteins or processes required for MYC to function as a potent cancer driver that can be targeted to result in synthetic lethality. To identify potential targets in MYC-driven cancers, we performed a genome-wide CRISPR knockout screen using an isogenic pair of breast cancer cell lines in which MYC dysregulation is the switch from benign to transformed tumor growth.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFront Bioeng Biotechnol
October 2023
Squid use eight arms and two slender tentacles to capture prey. The muscular stalks of the tentacles are elongated approximately 80% in 20-40 ms towards the prey, which is adhered to the terminal clubs by arrays of suckers. Using a previously developed forward dynamics model of the extension of the tentacles of the squid (formerly ), we predict how spatial muscle-activation patterns result in a distribution of muscular power, muscle work, and kinetic and elastic energy along the tentacle.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLife Sci Alliance
January 2024
Genes have been historically classified as essential or non-essential based on their requirement for viability. However, genomic mutations can sometimes bypass the requirement for an essential gene, challenging the binary classification of gene essentiality. Such dispensable essential genes represent a valuable model for understanding the incomplete penetrance of loss-of-function mutations often observed in natural populations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAs Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in adolescents significantly impacts their well-being, effective treatment is of great importance. Little is known, however, about the novel, multi-modal virtual reality supported, exposure-based psychotherapeutic interventions such as 3MDR in this population. To describe the 3MDR treatment of an adolescent with PTSD who did not respond to previous exposure-based PTSD interventions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClinical studies revealed detrimental skeletal and vascular effects of the insulin sensitizer rosiglitazone. We have shown earlier that rosiglitazone accelerates osteoblast differentiation from human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSC) at the expense of increased oxidative stress and cell death. In calcifying human vascular cells, rosiglitazone stimulates pathological mineralization, an effect diminished by the antioxidant resveratrol.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF