Resilin and chitinous cuticle form a composite structure for energy storage in jumping by froghopper insects

RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are.Abstract Background Many insects jump by storing and releasing energy in elastic structures within their bodies. This allows them to release large amounts of energy in a very short time to jump at very high speeds. The fastest of the insect jumpers, the froghopper, uses a catapult-like elastic mechanism to achieve their jumping prowess in which energy, generated by the slow contraction of muscles, is released suddenly to power rapid and synchronous movements of the hind legs. How is this energy stored? Results The hind coxae of the froghopper are linked to the hinges of the ipsilateral hind wings by pleural arches, complex bow-shaped internal skeletal structures. They are built of chitinous cuticle and the rubber-like protein, resilin, which fluoresces bright blue when illuminated with ultra-violet light. The ventral and posterior end of this fluorescent region forms the thoracic part of the pivot with a hind coxa. No other structures in the thorax or hind legs show this blue fluorescence and it is not found in larvae which do not jump. Stimulating one trochanteral depressor muscle in a pattern that simulates its normal action, results in a distortion and forward movement of the posterior part of a pleural arch by 40 μm, but in natural jumping, the movement is at least 100 μm. Conclusion Calculations showed that the resilin itself could only store 1% to 2% of the energy required for jumping. The stiffer cuticular parts of the pleural arches could, however, easily meet all the energy storage needs. The composite structure therefore, combines the stiffness of the chitinous cuticle with the elasticity of resilin. Muscle contractions bend the chitinous cuticle with little deformation and therefore, store the energy needed for jumping, while the resilin rapidly returns its stored energy and thus restores the body to its original shape after a jump and allows repeated jumping

Gelatin potentiates lead toxicity due to improper preparation of a Chinese tea drug, choreito. A study based on our previously published case report of long-term choreito use

A woman who had used a Chinese tea drug, choreito, for treatment of chronic renal diseases over years, experienced lead poisoning with blood lead concentration over 600 μg/l on admission to the hospital. We found that one of the ingredients in choreito, kasseki, was commonly contaminated by lead (30–50 μg/g of kasseki), but this level of lead contamination in the drug had never caused poisoning previously. Our experiment indicates that another ingredient, gelatin, has lead-extracting ability and an adhesive quality on the walls of teapots. Thus, the possible causes of the toxicity seemed to be: (1) the lead in the kasseki, which was extracted by gelatin that had adhered to the wall of the pot, accumulated in large quantities for a long period of time (the patient used the same pot for more than a year without washing); and (2) a large quantity of the accumulated lead was released into the decoted drug day by day and induced the intoxication. In all, 37.2 mg of lead was extracted by 10 extractions of 4% acetic acid from the patient's pot. Repeated extraction (four times) of lead from the pot which was made by the same manufacturer in the same lot of the patient's pot with acetic acid, only totally 18.5 μg of lead was detected

Quantitative MRI radiomics in the prediction of molecular classifications of breast cancer subtypes in the TCGA/TCIA data set

Using quantitative radiomics, we demonstrate that computer-extracted magnetic resonance (MR) image-based tumor phenotypes can be predictive of the molecular classification of invasive breast cancers. Radiomics analysis was performed on 91 MRIs of biopsy-proven invasive breast cancers from National Cancer Institute’s multi-institutional TCGA/TCIA. Immunohistochemistry molecular classification was performed including estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2, and for 84 cases, the molecular subtype (normal-like, luminal A, luminal B, HER2-enriched, and basal-like). Computerized quantitative image analysis included: three-dimensional lesion segmentation, phenotype extraction, and leave-one-case-out cross validation involving stepwise feature selection and linear discriminant analysis. The performance of the classifier model for molecular subtyping was evaluated using receiver operating characteristic analysis. The computer-extracted tumor phenotypes were able to distinguish between molecular prognostic indicators; area under the ROC curve values of 0.89, 0.69, 0.65, and 0.67 in the tasks of distinguishing between ER+ versus ER−, PR+ versus PR−, HER2+ versus HER2−, and triple-negative versus others, respectively. Statistically significant associations between tumor phenotypes and receptor status were observed. More aggressive cancers are likely to be larger in size with more heterogeneity in their contrast enhancement. Even after controlling for tumor size, a statistically significant trend was observed within each size group (P=0.04 for lesions ⩽2 cm; P=0.02 for lesions >2 to ⩽5 cm) as with the entire data set (P-value=0.006) for the relationship between enhancement texture (entropy) and molecular subtypes (normal-like, luminal A, luminal B, HER2-enriched, basal-like). In conclusion, computer-extracted image phenotypes show promise for high-throughput discrimination of breast cancer subtypes and may yield a quantitative predictive signature for advancing precision medicine

The United Kingdom Childhood Cancer Study: objectives, materials and methods. UK Childhood Cancer Study Investigators.

An investigation into the possible causes of childhood cancer has been carried out throughout England, Scotland and Wales over the period 1991-1998. All children known to be suffering from one or other type of the disease over periods of 4-5 years have been included, and control children matched for sex, age and area of residence have been selected at random from population registers. Information about both groups of children (with and without cancer) has been obtained from parental questionnaires, general practitioners' and hospital records, and from measurement of the extent of exposure to radon gas, terrestrial gamma radiation, and electric and magnetic fields. Samples of blood have also been obtained from the affected children and their parents and stored. Altogether 3,838 children with cancer, including 1,736 with leukaemia, and 7,629 unaffected children have been studied. Detailed accounts are given of the nature of the information obtained in sections describing the general methodology of the study, the measurement of exposure to ionizing and non-ionizing radiation, the classification of solid tumours and leukaemias, and the biological material available for genetic analysis