Coagulation/fibrinolysis and laboratory characteristics of pregnant women with severely depressed antithrombin activity.

Objective: To examine the pathophysiology of reductions in antithrombin (AT) activity during pregnancy and to better characterize the laboratory features of pregnant women with severely depressed AT activity.

Methods: Laboratory variables for blood samples obtained within 5 d prior to delivery were compared among three women groups with severely depressed (<45%, n = 6), modestly depressed (45-69%, n = 10), and normal AT activity levels (>70%, n = 134).

Results: Pregnancy-induced hypertension was present in 16.

Antenna and all gnathal appendages are similarly transformed by homothorax knock-down in the cricket Gryllus bimaculatus.

Our understanding of the developmental mechanisms underlying the vast diversity of arthropod appendages largely rests on the peculiar case of the dipteran Drosophila melanogaster. In this insect, homothorax (hth) and extradenticle (exd) together play a pivotal role in appendage patterning and identity. We investigated the role of the hth homologue in the cricket Gryllus bimaculatus by parental RNA interference.

Divergent and conserved roles of extradenticle in body segmentation and appendage formation, respectively, in the cricket Gryllus bimaculatus.

The cricket Gryllus bimaculatus is a typical hemimetabolous intermediate germ insect, in which the processes of segmentation and appendage formation differ from those in Drosophila, a holometabolous long germ insect. In order to compare their developmental mechanisms, we have focused on Gryllus orthologs of the Drosophila developmental regulatory genes and studied their functions. Here, we report a functional analysis of the Gryllus ortholog of extradenticle (Gb'exd) using embryonic and parental RNA interference (RNAi) techniques.

brachyenteron is necessary for morphogenesis of the posterior gut but not for anteroposterior axial elongation from the posterior growth zone in the intermediate-germband cricket Gryllus bimaculatus.

In the long-germband insect Drosophila, all body segments and posterior terminal structures, including the posterior gut and anal pads, are specified at the blastoderm stage. In short- and intermediate-germband insects, however, posterior segments are sequentially produced from the posterior growth zone, a process resembling somitogenesis in vertebrates, and invagination of the posterior gut starts after anteroposterior (AP) axial elongation from the growth zone. The mechanisms underlying posterior segmentation and terminal patterning in these insects are poorly understood.