Digestible lysine effects on gene expression by Japanese quails in the pre-laying phase

This study aimed to determine the effects of digestible lysine levels in the diets of Japanese quail (Coturnix coturnix japonica) on performance, blood parameters and the expression of insulin-like growth factor I, and growth hormone receptor (GHR), apolipoprotein A-I (APOA-I), acetyl-CoA-carboxylase (ACC), and fatty acid synthase (FAS) genes. A total of 288 seven-day-old female Japanese quails were randomly assigned to one of three diets that contained 0.8%, 1.10%, or 1.40% digestible lysine. The birds were slaughtered at 42 days old, and relative gene expression was evaluated in the liver by qRT-PCR using the 2-ΔCT method. Lysine supplementation had no effect on weight gain and feed conversion. Abdominal fat was lower in birds supplemented with 0.8% digestible lysine than those supplemented with 1.10% and 1.40%. Increased total cholesterol and triglycerides were elevated in quails that received supplementation of 1.10% digestible lysine compared with the other diets. High density lipoproteins were decreased in birds that received 0.8% digestible lysine. Quails fed with 1.40% digestible lysine had greater expression of GHR and APOA-I than quails fed diets with 0.8 and 1.10% (P <0.05). The greatest expressions of ACC and FAS were observed in the liver of quails fed with 0.8% digestible lysine. The current results suggest that lysine supplementation in the pre-laying phase allows birds to deposit muscle mass to reach the optimal conformation and body fatness that provides an energetic reserve for the productive phase by modulating the expression of genes related to growth and lipid metabolism. Keywords: Coturnix coturnix japonica, growth, growth hormone, lipid synthesis, lipid metabolis

Human toxocariasis: contribution by Brazilian researchers

In the present paper the main aspects of the natural history of human infection by Toxocara larvae that occasionally result in the occurrence of visceral and/or ocular larva migrans syndrome were reviewed. The contribution by Brazilian researchers was emphasized, especially the staff of the Tropical Medicine Institute of São Paulo (IMT)

ENIGMA and global neuroscience: A decade of large-scale studies of the brain in health and disease across more than 40 countries

This review summarizes the last decade of work by the ENIGMA (Enhancing NeuroImaging Genetics through Meta Analysis) Consortium, a global alliance of over 1400 scientists across 43 countries, studying the human brain in health and disease. Building on large-scale genetic studies that discovered the first robustly replicated genetic loci associated with brain metrics, ENIGMA has diversified into over 50 working groups (WGs), pooling worldwide data and expertise to answer fundamental questions in neuroscience, psychiatry, neurology, and genetics. Most ENIGMA WGs focus on specific psychiatric and neurological conditions, other WGs study normal variation due to sex and gender differences, or development and aging; still other WGs develop methodological pipelines and tools to facilitate harmonized analyses of "big data" (i.e., genetic and epigenetic data, multimodal MRI, and electroencephalography data). These international efforts have yielded the largest neuroimaging studies to date in schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance use disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism spectrum disorders, epilepsy, and 22q11.2 deletion syndrome. More recent ENIGMA WGs have formed to study anxiety disorders, suicidal thoughts and behavior, sleep and insomnia, eating disorders, irritability, brain injury, antisocial personality and conduct disorder, and dissociative identity disorder. Here, we summarize the first decade of ENIGMA's activities and ongoing projects, and describe the successes and challenges encountered along the way. We highlight the advantages of collaborative large-scale coordinated data analyses for testing reproducibility and robustness of findings, offering the opportunity to identify brain systems involved in clinical syndromes across diverse samples and associated genetic, environmental, demographic, cognitive, and psychosocial factors

Search for jet extinction in the inclusive jet-pT spectrum from proton-proton collisions at s=8 TeV

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published articles title, journal citation, and DOI.The first search at the LHC for the extinction of QCD jet production is presented, using data collected with the CMS detector corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 10.7  fb−1 of proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 8 TeV. The extinction model studied in this analysis is motivated by the search for signatures of strong gravity at the TeV scale (terascale gravity) and assumes the existence of string couplings in the strong-coupling limit. In this limit, the string model predicts the suppression of all high-transverse-momentum standard model processes, including jet production, beyond a certain energy scale. To test this prediction, the measured transverse-momentum spectrum is compared to the theoretical prediction of the standard model. No significant deficit of events is found at high transverse momentum. A 95% confidence level lower limit of 3.3 TeV is set on the extinction mass scale