Aneuploidy in oocytes from women of advanced maternal age: analysis of the causal meiotic errors and impact on embryo development.

Study Question: In oocytes of advanced maternal age (AMA) women, what are the mechanisms leading to aneuploidy and what is the association of aneuploidy with embryo development?

Summary Answer: Known chromosome segregation errors such as precocious separation of sister chromatids explained 90.4% of abnormal chromosome copy numbers in polar bodies (PBs), underlying impaired embryo development.

What Is Known Already: Meiotic chromosomal aneuploidies in oocytes correlate with AMA (>35 years) and can affect over half of oocytes in this age group.

NTRK fusion events and targeted treatment of advanced radioiodine refractory thyroid cancer.

Purpose: Pathogenic fusion events involving neurotrophic receptor tyrosine kinase (NTRK) have been described in ~ 2% of differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC). The selective tropomyosin receptor kinase (TRK) inhibitors entrectinib and larotrectinib have been approved in a tumor agnostic manner based on phase 1/2 clinical trials. In a real-world setting at five referral centers, we aimed to describe the prevalence of NTRK gene fusions and the efficacy and safety of TRK inhibitor treatment for non-medullary, advanced thyroid cancer (TC).

Probing phenotypic growth in expanding Bacillus subtilis biofilms.

We develop an optical imaging technique for spatially and temporally tracking biofilm growth and the distribution of the main phenotypes of a Bacillus subtilis strain with a triple-fluorescent reporter for motility, matrix production, and sporulation. We develop a calibration procedure for determining the biofilm thickness from the transmission images, which is based on Beer-Lambert's law and involves cross-sectioning of biofilms. To obtain the phenotype distribution, we assume a linear relationship between the number of cells and their fluorescence and determine the best combination of calibration coefficients that matches the total number of cells for all three phenotypes and with the total number of cells from the transmission images.