Muscle growth and changes in chemical composition of spotted wolffish juveniles (Anarhichas minor) fed diets with and without microalgae (Scenedesmus obliquus)

Spotted wolffish (Anarhichas minor) is a promising new candidate for cold-water fish farming, but knowledge is needed about its physiology and its capacity to utilize alternative feed ingredients. The aim of the study was to investigate fast muscle growth dynamics, changes in chemical composition as well as growth performance of spotted wolffish when fed diets with or without the microalgae Scenedesmus obliquus incorporated. Juvenile spotted wolffish were fed four diets containing fishmeal as the primary source of protein (CTR diet) or microalgae (Scenedesmus obliquus) replacing 4% (AL4 diet), 8% (AL8 diet) or 12% (AL12 diet) of the fishmeal. During the 12 week experiment, fish grew from an average weight of 140 g to 250 g. The results showed indications of fast muscle cellularity of spotted wolffish being affected by dietary algae inclusion as the control and AL4 groups appeared to be more strongly favored by hypertrophic growth compared to the AL8 and AL12 groups. The CTR and AL4 groups tended towards increased muscle fiber diameters and higher proportions of larger muscle fibers, while the AL8 and AL12 group tended towards similar or increased proportions of smaller muscle fibers at the end of the trial. Probability density functions showed no difference in fast muscle fiber size distributions between dietary groups. Muscle crude protein and fat content tended to increase with growth in all treatment groups and muscle mineral content was reduced in all groups fed diets containing Scenedesmus. At the end of the trial, hepatosomatic index was reduced in all treatment groups. Dietary replacement of fishmeal with Scenedesmus also affected skin coloration, with increasing yellowness observed with increasing microalgae replacement. This study indicates that spotted wolffish has the potential to use microalgae as an alternative to fishmeal in the diet. Keywords: nutrition, sustainable aquafeed, muscle fiber cellularity, muscle growth, proximate composition, histology, alternative feed ingredient

Screening for copy-number alterations and loss of heterozygosity in chronic lymphocytic leukemia--a comparative study of four differently designed, high resolution microarray platforms

Screening for gene copy-number alterations (CNAs) has improved by applying genome-wide microarrays, where SNP arrays also allow analysis of loss of heterozygozity (LOH). We here analyzed 10 chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) samples using four different high-resolution platforms: BAC arrays (32K), oligonucleotide arrays (185K, Agilent), and two SNP arrays (250K, Affymetrix and 317K, Illumina). Cross-platform comparison revealed 29 concordantly detected CNAs, including known recurrent alterations, which confirmed that all platforms are powerful tools when screening for large aberrations. However, detection of 32 additional regions present in 2-3 platforms illustrated a discrepancy in detection of small CNAs, which often involved reported copy-number variations. LOH analysis using dChip revealed concordance of mainly large regions, but showed numerous, small nonoverlapping regions and LOH escaping detection. Evaluation of baseline variation and copy-number ratio response showed the best performance for the Agilent platform and confirmed the robustness of BAC arrays. Accordingly, these platforms demonstrated a higher degree of platform-specific CNAs. The SNP arrays displayed higher technical variation, although this was compensated by high density of elements. Affymetrix detected a higher degree of CNAs compared to Illumina, while the latter showed a lower noise level and higher detection rate in the LOH analysis. Large-scale studies of genomic aberrations are now feasible, but new tools for LOH analysis are requested

Granulomatous hypersensitivity to Schistosoma mansoni egg antigens in human schistosomiasis. IV. A role for prostaglandin-induced inhibition of in vitro granuloma formation.

The prostaglandins (PG) are known to regulate immune cell function (s) and participate in the progression of both acute and chronic inflammatory reactions. Using an in vitro model of Schistosoma mansoni egg-induced hypersensitivity granulomas, we have delineated the role of immune complexes (IC) in the induction andrelease of PG and their inhibitory effects on granuloma development. The hypersensitivity- type granuloma reaction to soluble egg antigen (SEA) was examined using a model of in vitro granuloma ,formation. Our results show that granuloma formation was dramatically suppressed by the addition to the granuloma cultures of IC, PGE,, PGE2, while PGF, alpha had no significant effect. The inhibition of the PG function was achieved by the introduction of anti-PG antibodies that blocked suppression of granuloma,formation. It appears in this model system that IC may inhibit the activity of granuloma formation by stimulating the monocyte-macrophage lineage to release inhibitory mediators. Our results suggest that the prostaglandins E series may be important in the generation and maintenance of suppression of the granulomatous inflammatory response to S. mansoni egg antigens