Publications by authors named "Witzmann F"

The present minireview aims to provide a context for imagination of the timespan for bone infection evolution from the origin of cellular bone tissue to modern orthopedic surgery. From a phylogenetic osteomyelitis-bracketing perspective, and due to the time of osteocyte origin, bacteria might have been able to infect the skeleton for approximately 400 million years. Thereby, bone infections happened simultaneously with central expansions of the immune system and development of terrestrial bone structure.

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Hypothesis: In this communication, we test the hypothesis that sulfotransferase 1C2 (SULT1C2, UniProt accession no. Q9WUW8) can modulate mitochondrial respiration by increasing state-III respiration.

Methods And Results: Using freshly isolated mitochondria, the addition of SULT1C2 and 3-phosphoadenosine 5 phosphosulfate (PAPS) results in an increased maximal respiratory capacity in response to the addition of succinate, ADP, and rotenone.

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Paleopathology, the study of diseases and injuries from the fossil record, allows for a unique view into the life of prehistoric animals. Pathologies have nowadays been described in nearly all groups of fossil vertebrates, especially dinosaurs. Despite the large number of skeletons, pathologies had never been reported in the sauropodomorph Plateosaurus trossingensis.

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The question of what the ancient life cycle of tetrapods was like forms a key component in understanding the origin of land vertebrates. The existence of distinct larval forms, as exemplified by many lissamphibians, and their transformation into adults is an important aspect in this field. The temnospondyls, the largest clade of Palaeozoic-Mesozoic non-amniote tetrapods, covered a wide ecomorphological range from fully aquatic to terrestrial taxa.

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Skeletal development is well known in temnospondyls, the most diverse group of Paleozoic and Mesozoic amphibians. However, the elements of carpus and tarsus (., the mesopodium) were always the last bones to ossify relative to the other limb bones and with regard to the rest of the skeleton, and are preserved only in rare cases.

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The proximal tubule (PT) is a nephron segment that is responsible for the majority of solute and water reabsorption in the kidney. Each of its sub-segments have specialized functions; however, little is known about the genes and proteins that determine the oxidative phosphorylation capacity of the PT sub-segments. This information is critical to understanding kidney function and will provide a comprehensive landscape of renal cell adaptations to injury, physiologic stressors, and development.

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Dual-energy computed tomography (DECT) is an imaging technique that combines nondestructive morphological cross-sectional imaging of objects and the quantification of their chemical composition. However, its potential to assist investigations in paleontology has not yet been explored. This study investigates quantitative DECT for the nondestructive density- and element-based material decomposition of fossilized bones.

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Lacunae and canaliculi spaces of osteocytes are remarkably well preserved in fossilized bone and serve as an established proxy for bone cells. The earliest bone in the fossil record is acellular (anosteocytic), followed by cellular (osteocytic) bone in the jawless relatives of jawed vertebrates, the osteostracans, about 400 million years ago. Virtually nothing is known about the physiological pressures that would have initially favored osteocytic over anosteocytic bone.

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Objective: A malformed pectoral joint of the middle Devonian antiarch fish Asterolepis ornata is described, and a survey of congenital malformations in the fossil record is provided.

Materials: The specimen of A. ornata (MB.

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Objective: This study discusses the challenges and possibilities of establishing a definition for Ancient Rare Diseases (ARD) in a probable case of Legg-Calvé-Perthes Disease (LCPD) from the Bronze Age cemetery Kudachurt 14, situated in the Northern Caucasus.

Materials: We investigated the skeletal remains of a male aged 35-45 years at death. For comparison we examined other males buried at Kudachurt 14 (n = 24) and reviewed 22 LCPD cases from the paleopathological literature.

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Traditional palaeontological techniques of disease characterisation are limited to the analysis of osseous fossils, requiring several lines of evidence to support diagnoses. This study presents a novel stepwise concept for comprehensive diagnosis of pathologies in fossils by computed tomography imaging for morphological assessment combined with likelihood estimation based on systematic phylogenetic disease bracketing. This approach was applied to characterise pathologies of the left fibula and fused caudal vertebrae of the non-avian dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex.

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Introduction: We have previously found that papillary histopathology differs greatly between calcium oxalate and brushite stone formers (SF); the latter have much more papillary mineral deposition, tubular cell injury, and tissue fibrosis.

Methods: In this study, we applied unbiased orthogonal approaches on biopsied renal papillae and extracted stones from patients with brushite or calcium oxalate (CaOx) stones. Our goal was to discover stone type-specific molecular signatures to advance our understanding of the underlying pathogenesis.

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High serum concentrations of kidney-derived protein uromodulin [Tamm-Horsfall protein (THP)] have recently been shown to be independently associated with low mortality in both older adults and cardiac patients, but the underlying mechanism remains unclear. Here, we show that THP inhibits the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) both in the kidney and systemically. Consistent with this experimental data, the concentration of circulating THP in patients with surgery-induced acute kidney injury (AKI) correlated with systemic oxidative damage.

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Teeth are often thought of as structures that line the margins of the mouth; however, tooth-like structures called odontodes are commonly found on the dermal bones of many Palaeozoic vertebrates including early jawless fishes. 'Odontode' is a generalized term for all tooth-like dentine structures that have homologous tissues and development. This definition includes true teeth and the odontodes of early 'fishes', which have been recently examined to gain new insights into the still unresolved origin of teeth.

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Bone remodeling is an essential physiological process in growth and healing. In modern systems deviations from normal bone physiology in the form of pathologies aid in the understanding of normal bone metabolism. Here we use external morphology and X-ray microtomography to diagnose and describe a metabolic bone disease in an amniote from the early Permian.

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In frogs and salamanders, movements of the eyeballs in association with an open palate have often been proposed to play a functional role in lung breathing. In this "palatal buccal pump," the eyeballs are elevated during the lowering of the buccal floor to suck air in through the nares, and the eyeballs are lowered during elevation of the buccal floor to help press air into the lungs. Here, we used X-Ray Reconstruction of Moving Morphology to investigate eye movements during lung breathing and feeding in bullfrogs and axolotls.

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This case study documents osteosarcoma in 240-million-year-old stem-turtle, which suggests that cancer is not a modern physiological defect.

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Applications of nanomaterials in biomedical, industrial, and consumer goods areas are expanding rapidly because of their unique physicochemical properties. Hazard assessment of nanosubstances is necessary for the protection of human and ecological health. We studied the proteomics patterns of three cell lines: co-culture of Caco-2 and HT29-MTX cells, primary small airway epithelial cells, and THP-1macrophage-like cells.

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Background: Sustained β-adrenergic receptor (β-AR) stimulation causes pathophysiological changes during heart failure (HF), including inhibition of the slow component of the delayed rectifier potassium current (I). Aberrant calcium handling, including increased activation of calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII), contributes to arrhythmia development during HF.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate CaMKII regulation of KCNQ1 (pore-forming subunit of I) during sustained β-AR stimulation and associated functional implications on I.

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Ischemic preconditioning confers organ-wide protection against subsequent ischemic stress. A substantial body of evidence underscores the importance of mitochondria adaptation as a critical component of cell protection from ischemia. To identify changes in mitochondria protein expression in response to ischemic preconditioning, we isolated mitochondria from ischemic preconditioned kidneys and sham-treated kidneys as a basis for comparison.

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A variety of vertebral centrum morphologies have evolved within early tetrapods which range from multipartite centra consisting of intercentra and pleurocentra in stem-tetrapods, temnospondyls, seymouriamorphs, and anthracosaurs up to monospondylous centra in lepospondyls. With the present study, we aim to determine the formation of both intercentrum and pleurocentrum and asked whether these can be homologized based on their bone histology. Both intercentra and pleurocentra ossified endochondrally and periosteal bone was subsequently deposited on the outer surface of the centra.

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A diagnostic feature of temnospondyls is the presence of an open palate with large interpterygoid vacuities, unlike the closed palate of most other early tetrapods, in which the vacuities are either slit-like or completely absent. Attachment sites on neurocranium and palatal bones in temnospondyls allow the reconstruction of a powerful m. retractor bulbi and a large, sheet-like m.

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