Occurrence of Ocular Disorders in California Sea Lions Under Human Care: Comparing Freshwater and Saltwater Housing Conditions.

California sea lions () are susceptible to various ocular diseases, with some literature suggesting a heightened risk for those kept in freshwater pools as opposed to saltwater. Given the potential implications of housing conditions on animal health, we wanted to analyze the ocular health of two distinct groups of California sea lions kept at Nuremberg Zoo, one housed in freshwater and the other in saltwater. Data extracted from the animals' medical records during a ten-year period were used to compare the incidence of eye conditions and other medical conditions observed.

Teleost IgM+ plasma-like cells: beyond antibody secretion.

Upon antigen encounter, B cells start a differentiation process toward antibody-secreting cells (ASCs), initially plasmablasts, and eventually long-lived plasma cells. All these ASCs specialize in secreting important amounts of antibodies and usually lose other functionalities of naïve B cells. This differentiation process is scarcely characterized in teleost fish, in which B cells have been shown to share many functional and phenotypic characteristics of mammalian B1 innate subsets.

Esr1-Dependent Signaling and Transcriptional Maturation in the Medial Preoptic Area of the Hypothalamus Shapes the Development of Mating Behavior during Adolescence.

Unlabelled: Mating and other behaviors emerge during adolescence through the coordinated actions of steroid hormone signaling throughout the nervous system and periphery. In this study, we investigated the transcriptional dynamics of the medial preoptic area (MPOA), a critical region for reproductive behavior, using single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNAseq) and hybridization techniques in male and female mice throughout adolescence development. Our findings reveal that estrogen receptor 1 (Esr1) plays a pivotal role in the transcriptional maturation of GABAergic neurons within the MPOA during adolescence.

Genomic relatedness of colonizing and invasive disease Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates in South African infants.

Klebsiella pneumoniae (KPn) colonizes multiple anatomical sites and is a leading cause of invasive disease and death in African children; however, there is no comparative genomic analysis between colonizing and invasive strains. This study investigated the genomic relatedness of KPn colonizing and invasive isolates in South African infants; and evaluated the relative invasiveness of KPn isolates based on sequence types (ST), capsular (KL), and lipopolysaccharide (O) loci by calculating case-carrier ratios (CCRs). There was less genomic diversity amongst invasive (22 ST, 17 K-loci) than colonizing isolates (31 ST, 29 K-loci), with invasive isolates being 8.

Surface-coated silica microparticles: In vitro and ex vivo evaluation of a preclinical extended release platform conceived for intravitreal injection.

Current standard pharmacological treatment of retinal vascular diseases requires frequent intravitreal injection every 4-12 weeks. Active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) with better pharmacokinetics (PK), allowing less frequent administrations, remain to be discovered and developed. In preclinical stage mostly small molecule New Chemical Entities (NCEs) and peptides represent promising candidates.