Lipid metabolism in fatty liver of lysine- and threonine-deficient rats

Rats were fed a low protein diet deficient in and supplemented with lysine and threonine. Liver lipids contained more lecithin, sphingomyelin, and free fatty acids, and less amino phospholipids in the deficient rats. No variations in fatty acid composition of choline- and ethanolamine-containing phospholipids were found; only palmitic acid was increased in the serine-containing phospholipids of the deficient animals. The incorporation of acetate-(14)C into phospholipids, but not into other liver lipids, was lower in deficient rats. In the plasma of deficient rats the concentration of esterified fatty acids and phospholipids was lower, of free fatty acids higher, than in the controls. The fatty acid composition of depot fat differed from that of liver neutral fat both in deficient and supplemented animals. The results presented establish that multiple metabolic defects resulting from lysine and threonine deficiency accompany the fatty liver. The design of the experiments does not permit conclusions to be drawn regarding the causal relationship between the various alterations in lipid metabolism and the fatty liver

FATTY ACID COMPOSITION OF PORTAL FATTY LIVER IN LYSINE- AND THREONINE-DEFICIENT RATS.

The fatty acid composition of total lipids, neutral fat, and phospholipids in liver of rats fed low protein rice diets deficient in and supplemented with lysine and threonine has been studied to extend the knowledge of the chemical composition of portal fatty liver. More linoleic acid and less 20:4, 20:5, and 22:6 in percentage of fatty acids was found in total liver lipids in lysine- and threonine-deficient rats. An increase in the percentage of linoleic acid in neutral fat, and a decrease of 20:5, 22:5, and 22:6 in phospholipids, was observed in the livers of the rats fed the deficient diets, suggesting a control of lysine and threonine on polyunsaturated fatty acid metabolism. The absolute amounts of linoleic, palmitic, and oleic acids in fatty livers were increased; slight changes were seen in amounts of palmitoleic, stearic, and arachidonic acids; eicosapentaenoic and docosahexaenoic acids were slightly decreased. These data seem to indicate some alterations in the metabolism of fatty acids, besides those described by other authors, that accompany fat accumulation in the liver

Reconstruction of 3D scenes from pairs of uncalibrated images : creation of an interactive system for extracting 3D data points and investigation of automatic techniques for generating dense 3D data maps from pairs of uncalibrated images for remote sensing applications

Much research effort has been devoted to producing algorithms that contribute directly or indirectly to the extraction of 3D information from a wide variety of types of scenes and conditions of image capture. The research work presented in this thesis is aimed at three distinct applications in this area: interactively extracting 3D points from a pair of uncalibrated images in a flexible way; finding corresponding points automatically in high resolution images, particularly those of archaeological scenes captured from a freely moving light aircraft; and improving a correlation approach to dense disparity mapping leading to 3D surface reconstructions. The fundamental concepts required to describe the principles of stereo vision, the camera models, and the epipolar geometry described by the fundamental matrix are introduced, followed by a detailed literature review of existing methods. An interactive system for viewing a scene via a monochrome or colour anaglyph is presented which allows the user to choose the level of compromise between amount of colour and ghosting perceived by controlling colour saturation, and to choose the depth plane of interest. An improved method of extracting 3D coordinates from disparity values when there is significant error is presented. Interactive methods, while very flexible, require significant effort from the user finding and fusing corresponding points and the thesis continues by presenting several variants of existing scale invariant feature transform methods to automatically find correspondences in uncalibrated high resolution aerial images with improved speed and memory requirements. In addition, a contribution to estimating lens distortion correction by a Levenberg Marquard based method is presented; generating data strings for straight lines which are essential input for estimating lens distortion correction. The remainder of the thesis presents correlation based methods for generating dense disparity maps based on single and multiple image rectifications using sets of automatically found correspondences and demonstrates improvements obtained using the latter method. Some example views of point clouds for 3D surfaces produced from pairs of uncalibrated images using the methods presented in the thesis are included.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceAl-Baath UniversityGBUnited Kingdo

Relationship between Crohn's disease, infection with Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis and SLC11A1 gene polymorphisms in Sardinian patients

Aim: To study the association between Crohn's disease (CD), Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (MAP), and genetic factors by examining the role of natural resistance-associated macrophage protein 1 (NRAMP1) gene polymorphisms (now SLC11A1) in Sardinian patients with CD and controls. Methods: Thirty-seven CD patients and 34 controls with no inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) were recruited at the University of Sassari after giving written consent. Six SCL11A1 polymorphisms previously reported to be the most significantly associated with IBD were searched. M. paratuberculosis was identified by IS900 PCR and sequencing. Logistic regression was used to calculate odds ratios (OR) for the associations among CD, presence of MAP, and 6 loci described above. Results: For the first time, a strong association was observed between polymorphisms at NRAMP1 locus 823C/T and CD. While CD was strongly associated with both NRAMP1 and MAP, NRAMP1 polymorphisms and MAP themselves were not correlated. Conclusion: Combined with previous work on the NOD2/CARD15 gene, it is clear that the interplay of genetic, infectious, and immunologic factors in the etiology of CD is complex. © 2006 The WJG Press. All rights reserved

Detection of Mycobacterium avium spp. paratuberculosis (Map) in samples of sheep paratuberculosis (Johne’s disease or JD) and human Crohn’s disease (CD) using liquid phase RT-PCR, in situ RT-PCR and immunohistochemistry

paratuberculosis (Map), the etiological agent of the sheep paratuberculosis (Johne’s disease or JD), has been controversial because of technical limits to detection of the microorganism. Intestinal samples from 10 sheep naturally affected with JD (5 paucibacillary and 5 multibacillary infections), 8 humans with CD and 1 sheep experimentally infected with a reference strain (ATCC 43015) of Map isolated from a patient with CD were collected. A procedure for the extraction of RNA from formalin-fixed, paraffin embedded tissues was optimized. Archived tissue samples from cases of JD and CD were examined by light microscopy using Haematoxyline and Eosin and Ziehl–Neelsen stains. Liquid phase RT-PCR, in situ RT-PCR and immunohistochemistry were also performed on the same samples. In situ RT-PCR targets were the IS900 sequence and the gene locus F57. The effectiveness of the primer–probes was demonstrated using Dot-Blot testing. A diffuse granulomatous enteritis was present in samples from all sheep with JD; lesions were categorized as subtypes 3b and 3c (Perez classification). Human CD samples appeared very similar to the lymphocytic paucimicrobial form of JD (subtype 3c) and the experimentally infected sheep had an enteritis with lesions compatible with Perez type 2. Liquid phase RT-PCR and Dot-Blot test were positive for Map in all sheep with JD and negative in all samples from CD patients as well as the experimentally infected sheep. In situ RT-PCR was positive for the presence of Map both in JD and CD infected samples. Immunohistochemistry confirmed the in situ RT-PCR results in all JD and CD samples, with the exception of the experimentally infected sheep, which resulted negative. This study demonstrated the effectiveness of the in situ RT-PCR technique in the contribution to establish Map as the etiological agent of CD