1,042 research outputs found

    Establishment of a National Cord Blood Banking Network through the National Marrow Donor Program

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    Effect of Salmonella Typhimurium on the proteome of Pig Gut

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    The Aharonov-Bohm effect for massless Dirac fermions and the spectral flow of Dirac type operators with classical boundary conditions

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    We compute, in topological terms, the spectral flow of an arbitrary family of self-adjoint Dirac type operators with classical (local) boundary conditions on a compact Riemannian manifold with boundary under the assumption that the initial and terminal operators of the family are conjugate by a bundle automorphism. This result is used to study conditions for the existence of nonzero spectral flow of a family of self-adjoint Dirac type operators with local boundary conditions in a two-dimensional domain with nontrivial topology. Possible physical realizations of nonzero spectral flow are discussed.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures. Submitted to Theoretical and Mathematical Physics. v2: A change has been made to the paragraph describing the previous work of M. Prokhorov

    Dietary tryptophan deficiency and its supplementation compromises inflammatory mechanisms and disease resistance in a teleost fish

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    Tryptophan participates on several physiological mechanisms of the neuroendocrine-immune network and plays a critical role in macrophages and lymphocytes function. This study intended to evaluate the modulatory effects of dietary tryptophan on the European seabass (Dicentrarchus labrax) immune status, inflammatory response and disease resistance to Photobacterium damselae piscicida. A tryptophan deficient diet (NTRP); a control diet (CTRL); and two other diets supplemented with tryptophan at 0.13% (TRP13) and 0.17% (TRP17) of feed weight were formulated. Fish were sampled at 2 and 4 weeks of feeding and the remaining were i.p. injected with Phdp (3 × 106 cfu/fish) at 4 weeks and the inflammatory response (at 4, 24, 48 and 72 hours post-infection) as well as survival were evaluated. Results suggest that fish immune status was not altered in a tryptophan deficient scenario whereas in response to an inflammatory insult, plasma cortisol levels increased and the immune cell response was compromised, which translated in a lower disease resistance. When dietary tryptophan was offered 30% above its requirement level, plasma cortisol increased and, in response to bacterial infection, a decrease in lymphocytes, monocytes/macrophages and several immune-related genes was observed, also compromising at some degree fish disease resistance.This work was partially supported by Projects ALISSA (reference ALG-01-0247-FEDER-3520), IF/00197/2015 and INFLAMMAA (reference 02/SAICT/2017/032349), financed by Portugal and the European Union through FEDER, COMPETE 2020 and CRESC Algarve 2020, in the framework of Portugal 2020, and through the COMPETE and Operational Human Potential Programmes and national funds through Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT, Portugal). M. Machado and B. Costas were supported by FCT, Portugal (SFRH/ BD/108243/2015 and IF/00197/2015, respectively). The authors also acknowledge Dr. Nuno Santos (i3S/IBMC) for critically reviewing the manuscript

    Dietary methionine improves the european seabass (dicentrarchus labrax) immune status, inflammatory response, and disease resistance

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    Methionine presents a pivotal role in the regulation of many cellular events with crucial impact on the immune system, such as in processes involved in the control of inflammation and polyamines synthesis. Accordingly, the present study aimed to assess the modulatory effects of dietary methionine on the European seabass (Dicentrarchus labrax) immune status, inflammatory response and disease resistance to Photobacterium damselae subsp. piscicida (Phdp). For this purpose, fish were randomly distributed in three independent groups (three replicates per group) and each was fed the corresponding diet: a control diet (CTRL) formulated to meet the established amino acid requirements for the species; a diet supplemented with methionine at 0.5% of feed weight relative to the CTRL diet (8.2% of methionine concentration above CTRL); and one supplemented with methionine at 1% of feed weight to the CTRL diet (11.8% of methionine concentration above CTRL). To evaluate the immune status of fish fed with each of the diets before being submitted to bacterial infection fish were sampled from each group at 2 and 4 weeks after the beginning of feeding. Non- sampled fish were injected intraperitoneally with Phdp (5 × 103 cfu/fish) at 4 weeks after initiation of feeding and the inflammatory response (at 4, 24, and 48 h post-infection) and survival (lasting 21 days post-infection) evaluated. Fish hematological profile, peripheral cell dynamics, plasma humoral immune parameters, leucocyte migration to the inflammatory focus and head-kidney gene expression were evaluated. Results show that methionine dietary supplementation improves seabass cellular immune status without evidence of activation of pro-inflammatory mechanisms. Additionally, the observed enhanced immune status provided by methionine supplementation translated into an improved immune response to infection, as higher cellular differentiation/proliferation and recruitment toThis work was partially supported by Projects ALISSA (reference ALG-01-0247-FEDER-3520) and F/00197/2015, financed by Portugal and the European Union through FEDER, COMPETE 2020 and CRESC Algarve 2020, in the framework of Portugal 2020, and through the COMPETE and Operational Human Potential Programmes and national funds through Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT, Portugal). MM and BC were supported by FCT, Portugal (SFRH/BD/108243/2015 and IF/00197/2015, respectively). The authors also acknowledge Dr. Nuno Santos and Dr. Ana do Vale (i3S/IBMC) support during the study and for critically reviewing the manuscript

    Ethics, space, and somatic sensibilities: comparing relationships between scientific researchers and their human and animal experimental subjects

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    Drawing on geographies of affect and nature-society relations, we propose a radical rethinking of how scientists, social scientists, and regulatory agencies conceptualise human and animal participants in scientif ic research. The scientific rationale for using animal bodies to simulate what could be done in human bodies emphasises shared somatic capacities that generate comparable responses to clinical interventions. At the same time, regulatory guidelines and care practices stress the differences between human and animal subjects. In this paper we consider the implications of this differentiation between human and animal bodies in ethical and welfare protocols and practices. We show how the bioethical debates around the use of human subjects tend to focus on issues of consent and language, while recent work in animal welfare reflects an increasing focus on the affectual dimensions of ethical practice. We argue that this attention to the more-than-representational dimensions of ethics and welfare might be equally important for human subjects. We assert that paying attention to these somatic sensibilities can offer insights into how experimental environments can both facilitate and restrict the development of more care-full and response-able relations between researchers and their experimental subjects. <br/
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