Publications by authors named "Ryan Y Wong"

A clinical isolate, R131, was isolated from the peritoneal swab of a patient who suffered from ruptured appendicitis with abscess and gangrene in Hong Kong in 2018. Cells are facultatively anaerobic, non-motile, Gram-positive coccobacilli. Colonies were small, grey, semi-translucent, low convex and alpha-haemolytic.

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Article Synopsis
  • Social stress can increase oxidative stress in the brain, potentially leading to mental health disorders, with previous studies showing that social hierarchies impact this stress.
  • In a study of cichlid fish, researchers found that dominant males (who are territorial and reproductively active) had lower oxidative DNA damage in the midbrain and greater antioxidant capacity compared to subordinate males.
  • The findings suggest that social status and reproductive activity influence oxidative balance in the brain, but the effects vary across different brain areas.
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The reproducibility crisis in bioscience, characterized by inconsistent study results, impedes our understanding of biological processes and global collaborative studies offer a unique solution. This study is the first global collaboration using the zebrafish () novel tank test, a behavioral assay for anxiety-like responses. We analyzed data from 20 laboratories worldwide, focusing on housing conditions and experimental setups.

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Although bold and shy behavioral phenotypes in zebrafish () have been selectively bred and maintained over multiple generations, it is unclear if they are underscored by different gut microbiota. Using the microbiota-gut-brain concept, we examined the relationship between gut microbiota and the behavioral phenotypes within this model animal system to assess possible gut microbe-mediated effects on host behavior. To this end, we amplified and sequenced 16S rRNA gene amplicons from the guts of bold and shy zebrafish individuals using the Illumina Miseq platform.

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Different animal behavioral phenotypes maintained and selectively bred over multiple generations may be underscored by dissimilar gut microbial community compositions or not have any significant dissimilarity in community composition. Operating within the microbiota-gut-brain axis framework, we anticipated differences in gut microbiome profiles between zebrafish () selectively bred to display the bold and shy personality types. This would highlight gut microbe-mediated effects on host behavior.

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Olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) are constantly exposed to pathogens, including viruses. However, serious brain infection via the olfactory route rarely occurs. When OSNs detect a virus, they coordinate local antiviral immune responses to stop virus progression to the brain.

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Bacterial pathogens that cannot be identified using matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) are occasionally encountered in clinical laboratories. The 16S rRNA gene is often used for sequence-based analysis to identify these bacterial species. Nevertheless, traditional Sanger sequencing is laborious, time-consuming, and low throughput.

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Learning to anticipate potentially dangerous contexts is an adaptive behavioral response to coping with stressors. An animal's stress coping style (e.g.

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Variation in stress responses between individuals are linked to factors ranging from stress coping styles to sensitivity of neurotransmitter systems. Many anxiolytic compounds (e.g.

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Animals frequently overcome stressors and the ability to learn and recall these salient experiences is essential to an individual's survival. As part of an animal's stress coping style, behavioral and physiological responses to stressors are often consistent across contexts and time. However, we are only beginning to understand how cognitive traits can be biased by different coping styles.

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Animals experience stress in a variety of contexts and the behavioural and neuroendocrine responses to stress can vary among conspecifics. The responses across stressors often covary within an individual and are consistently different between individuals, which represent distinct stress coping styles (e.g.

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Behavioral responses to novel situations often vary and can belong to a suite of correlated behaviors. Characteristic behaviors of different personality types (e.g.

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Behavioral displays or physiological responses are often influenced by intrinsic and extrinsic mechanisms in the context of the organism's evolutionary history. Understanding differences in transcriptome profiles can give insight into adaptive or pathological responses. We utilize high throughput sequencing (RNA-sequencing) to characterize the neurotranscriptome profiles in both males and females across four strains of zebrafish ().

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Background: Animals experience stress in many contexts and often successfully cope. Individuals exhibiting the proactive versus reactive stress coping styles display qualitatively different behavioral and neuroendocrine responses to stressors. The predisposition to exhibiting a particular coping style is due to genetic and environmental factors.

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Background: Male and female vertebrates typically differ in a range of characteristics, from morphology to physiology to behavior, which are influenced by factors such as the social environment and the internal hormonal and genetic milieu. However, sex differences in gene expression profiles in the brains of vertebrates are only beginning to be understood. Fishes provide a unique complement to studies of sex differences in mammals and birds given that fish show extreme plasticity and lability of sexually dimorphic characters and behaviors during development and even adulthood.

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Choosing mates is a commonly shared behavior across many organisms, with important fitness consequences. Variations in female preferences can be due in part to differences in neural and cellular activity during mate selection. Initial studies have begun to identify putative brain regions involved in mate preference, yet the understanding of the neural processes regulating these behaviors is still nascent.

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Background: Stress and anxiety-related behaviors are seen in many organisms. Studies have shown that in humans and other animals, treatment with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (e.g.

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Female mate choice behavior is a critical component of sexual selection, yet identifying the neural basis of this behavior is largely unresolved. Previous studies have implicated sensory processing and hypothalamic brain regions during female mate choice and there is a conserved network of brain regions (Social Behavior Network, SBN) that underlies sexual behaviors. However, we are only beginning to understand the role this network has in pre-copulatory female mate choice.

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Sensory and social inputs interact with underlying gene suites to coordinate social behavior. Here we use a naturally complex system in sexual selection studies, the swordtail, to explore how genes associated with mate preference, receptivity, and social affiliation interact in the female brain under specific social conditions. We focused on 11 genes associated with mate preference in this species (neuroserpin, neuroligin-3, NMDA receptor, tPA, stathmin-2, β-1 adrenergic receptor) or with female sociosexual behaviors in other taxa (vasotocin, isotocin, brain aromatase, α-1 adrenergic receptor, tyrosine hydroxylase).

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Estrogen is associated with female sexual behaviors, particularly receptive behaviors during the reproductive cycle. Less is known about the relationship between estrogen and female preference behaviors that may precede receptivity and copulation. Separating the mechanisms underlying preference from receptivity is often confounded by the tightly coupled cycle- or estrogen-dependent expression of female sexual behaviors.

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Background: In recent years, there has been a significant increase in the number of non-plastic surgeons performing cosmetic procedures. This has the potential to have an impact on the plastic surgery practitioner by increasing competition and bringing into question the assurance of patient safety. In this study, a demographic analysis was performed of providers of invasive and minimally invasive cosmetic treatments in the Southern California region.

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Sensory physiology has been shown to influence female mate choice, yet little is known about the mechanisms within the brain that regulate this critical behaviour. Here we examine preference behaviour of 58 female swordtails, Xiphophorus nigrensis, in four different social environments (attractive and unattractive males, females only, non-attractive males only and asocial conditions) followed by neural gene expression profiling. We used a brain-specific cDNA microarray to identify patterns of genomic response and candidate genes, followed by quantitative PCR (qPCR) examination of gene expression with variation in behaviour.

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Mormyrid electric fish rely on the waveform of their electric organ discharges (EODs) for communicating species, sex, and social status, while they use the sequences of pulse intervals (SPIs) for communicating rapidly changing behavioral states and motivation. Little is known of electric signaling during courtship behavior because of two major difficulties: (1) the fish are not easily bred in captivity and (2) there is no reliable means of separating electric signals from several individuals in natural communication settings. Through simulating artificial rain conditions, we have successfully induced courtship and succeeded in breeding a mormyrid electric fish (Brienomyrus brachyistius) in the laboratory.

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