The prelude to industrial whaling: identifying the targets of ancient European whaling using zooarchaeology and collagen mass-peptide fingerprinting.

Taxonomic identification of whale bones found during archaeological excavations is problematic due to their typically fragmented state. This difficulty limits understanding of both the past spatio-temporal distributions of whale populations and of possible early whaling activities. To overcome this challenge, we performed zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry on an unprecedented 719 archaeological and palaeontological specimens of probable whale bone from Atlantic European contexts, predominantly dating from 3500 BCE to the eighteenth century CE.

Emergence of nociceptive functionality and opioid signaling in human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived sensory neurons.

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have enabled the generation of various difficult-to-access cell types such as human nociceptors. A key challenge associated with human iPSC-derived nociceptors (hiPSCdNs) is their prolonged functional maturation. While numerous studies have addressed the expression of classic neuronal markers and ion channels in hiPSCdNs, the temporal development of key signaling cascades regulating nociceptor activity has remained largely unexplored.

High-content phenotyping of Parkinson's disease patient stem cell-derived midbrain dopaminergic neurons using machine learning classification.

Combining multiple Parkinson's disease (PD) relevant cellular phenotypes might increase the accuracy of midbrain dopaminergic neuron (mDAN) in vitro models. We differentiated patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) with a LRRK2 G2019S mutation, isogenic control, and genetically unrelated iPSCs into mDANs. Using automated fluorescence microscopy in 384-well-plate format, we identified elevated levels of α-synuclein (αSyn) and serine 129 phosphorylation, reduced dendritic complexity, and mitochondrial dysfunction.

Dynamics of Metabolic Pathways and Stress Response Patterns during Human Neural Stem Cell Proliferation and Differentiation.

Understanding early nervous system stress response mechanisms is crucial for studying developmental neurotoxicity and devising neuroprotective treatments. We used hiPSC-derived long-term self-renewing neuroepithelial stem (lt-NES) cells differentiated for up to 12 weeks as an in vitro model of human neural development. Following a transcriptome analysis to identify pathway alterations, we induced acute oxidative stress (OS) using tert-butyl hydroperoxide (TBHP) and assessed cell viability at different stages of neural differentiation.

Suppression of kindling epileptogenesis by adenosine releasing stem cell-derived brain implants.

Epilepsy therapy is largely symptomatic and no effective therapy is available to prevent epileptogenesis. We therefore analysed the potential of stem cell-derived brain implants and of paracrine adenosine release to suppress the progressive development of seizures in the rat kindling-model. Embryonic stem (ES) cells, engineered to release the inhibitory neuromodulator adenosine by biallelic genetic disruption of the adenosine kinase gene (Adk-/-), and respective wild-type (wt) cells, were differentiated into neural precursor cells (NPs) and injected into the hippocampus of rats prior to kindling.