Acute oral sodium propionate supplementation raises resting energy expenditure and lipid oxidation in fasted humans

Short chain fatty acids (SCFAs), produced from fermentation of dietary fibre by the gut microbiota, have been suggested to modulate energy metabolism. Previous work using rodent models have demonstrated that oral supplementation of the SCFA propionate raises resting energy expenditure (REE) by promoting lipid oxidation. The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of oral sodium propionate on REE and substrate metabolism in humans. Eighteen healthy volunteers (9 females and 9 males; Age: 25±1 y; Body Mass Index: 24.1±1.2 kg/m2) completed two study visits following an overnight fast. Tablets containing a total of 6845mg sodium propionate or 4164mg sodium chloride were provided over the 180 min study period in a random order. REE and substrate oxidation was assessed by indirect calorimetry. Oral sodium propionate administration increased REE (0.045±0.020 kcal/min; P=0.036) accompanied with elevated rates of whole-body lipid oxidation (0.012 ± 0.006 g/min; P=0.048) and independent of changes in glucose and insulin concentrations. Future studies are warranted to determine whether the acute effects of oral sodium propionate on REE translate into positive improvements in long-term energy balance in humans

Precessing jets from a moving source and bright X-ray filaments in galaxy clusters

We present hydrodynamical calculations carried out with the 3D yguazu-a code of a precessing jet model, which interacts with a plane parallel wind. This scenario describes an extragalactic jet, in which the jet source is in motion with respect to the surrounding intra-cluster medium. From the numerical results, synthetic emission maps and spectra in X-ray band were obtained. We compare these predictions with observations of the radio jets emanating from the radio-galaxy 4C 26.42 (in the Abell 1795 galaxy cluster). We find that the general morphology of the radio jets can be described by a point-symmetric precessing jet system interacting with a plane parallel wind (i.e., the intra-cluster medium flowing past the galaxy). We also find that our synthetic X-ray emission maps reproduce the observed large scale structures (with sizes of the order of tens of kpc).Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A - 7 Pages, 6 figure

Isospin-Violating Meson-Nucleon Vertices as an Alternate Mechanism of Charge-Symmetry Breaking

We compute isospin-violating meson-nucleon coupling constants and their consequent charge-symmetry-breaking nucleon-nucleon potentials. The couplings result from evaluating matrix elements of quark currents between nucleon states in a nonrelativistic constituent quark model; the isospin violations arise from the difference in the up and down constituent quark masses. We find, in particular, that isospin violation in the omega-meson--nucleon vertex dominates the class IV CSB potential obtained from these considerations. We evaluate the resulting spin-singlet--triplet mixing angles, the quantities germane to the difference of neutron and proton analyzing powers measured in elastic $\vec{n}-\vec{p}$ scattering, and find them commensurate to those computed originally using the on-shell value of the $\rho$-$\omega$ mixing amplitude. The use of the on-shell $\rho$-$\omega$ mixing amplitude at $q^2=0$ has been called into question; rather, the amplitude is zero in a wide class of models. Our model possesses no contribution from $\rho$-$\omega$ mixing at $q^2=0$, and we find that omega-meson exchange suffices to explain the measured $n-p$ analyzing power difference~at~183 MeV.Comment: 20 pages, revtex, 3 uuencoded PostScript figure

El tejido adiposo: algo más que un reservorio de energía

Adipose tissue is a reservoir of energy and also an organ that contributes to the aesthetics and health of human body working as an endocrine tissue. White adipose tissue, which is formed by unilocular adipose cells, can modify organic homeostasis by controlling energy expenditure and consumption and by producing adipokines that regulate food consumption, and carbohydrate and lipid metabolic utilization. Brown adipose tissue is structured by multilocular cells containing many small fat drops that can be easily hydrolyzed. This tissue is involved in adaptative or facultative thermogenesis because it contains the uncoupling-1 protein (UCP-1) which by inhibiting ATP synthesis releases heat. The size of brow adipose tissue is reduced with aging and the most recent future strategies to fight obesity may be by transforming white cells into brown adipose tissue. The present work reviews the main structural and functional characteristics of white and brown adipose tissue with emphasis in its endocrine and regulatory function.<br><br>El tejido adiposo es un reservorio de grasa y también un órgano que contribuye a la estética y a la salud de las personas, tarea que cumple funcionando como un tejido endocrino. El tejido adiposo blanco, formado por células adiposas uniloculares puede regular la homeostasis orgánica entre el gasto y el consumo de energía. Produce una serie de adipokinas que regulan el consumo de alimentos, la utilización de glucosa y de lípidos por parte del organismo. El tejido adiposo pardo o marrón, estructurado por células multiloculares, contiene numerosas gotas de grasa de pequeño tamaño, las que pueden ser hidrolizadas con mayor facilidad. El tejido participa en la termogénesis adaptativa o facultativa debido a la proteína desacoplante-1 (UCP-1) que inhibe la síntesis de ATP produciendo calor. Con la edad, este tejido se reduce y por ello actualmente se considera que una forma de combatir la obesidad es lograr que el tejido adiposo blanco adquiera característica de pardo. Este trabajo revisa las principales características estructurales y funcionales del tejido adiposo blanco y pardo, con énfasis en sus funciones reguladoras y endocrinas

Spatially resolved transcriptomics reveals genes associated with the vulnerability of middle temporal gyrus in Alzheimer’s disease

Human middle temporal gyrus (MTG) is a vulnerable brain region in early Alzheimer’s disease (AD), but little is known about the molecular mechanisms underlying this regional vulnerability. Here we utilize the 10 × Visium platform to define the spatial transcriptomic profile in both AD and control (CT) MTG. We identify unique marker genes for cortical layers and the white matter, and layer-specific differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in human AD compared to CT. Deconvolution of the Visium spots showcases the significant difference in particular cell types among cortical layers and the white matter. Gene co-expression analyses reveal eight gene modules, four of which have significantly altered co-expression patterns in the presence of AD pathology. The co-expression patterns of hub genes and enriched pathways in the presence of AD pathology indicate an important role of cell–cell-communications among microglia, oligodendrocytes, astrocytes, and neurons, which may contribute to the cellular and regional vulnerability in early AD. Using single-molecule fluorescent in situ hybridization, we validated the cell-type-specific expression of three novel DEGs (e.g., KIF5A, PAQR6, and SLC1A3) and eleven previously reported DEGs associated with AD pathology (i.e., amyloid beta plaques and intraneuronal neurofibrillary tangles or neuropil threads) at the single cell level. Our results may contribute to the understanding of the complex architecture and neuronal and glial response to AD pathology of this vulnerable brain region

Identification of Giardia lamblia DHHC Proteins and the Role of Protein S-palmitoylation in the Encystation Process

Protein S-palmitoylation, a hydrophobic post-translational modification, is performed by protein acyltransferases that have a common DHHC Cys-rich domain (DHHC proteins), and provides a regulatory switch for protein membrane association. In this work, we analyzed the presence of DHHC proteins in the protozoa parasite Giardia lamblia and the function of the reversible S-palmitoylation of proteins during parasite differentiation into cyst. Two specific events were observed: encysting cells displayed a larger amount of palmitoylated proteins, and parasites treated with palmitoylation inhibitors produced a reduced number of mature cysts. With bioinformatics tools, we found nine DHHC proteins, potential protein acyltransferases, in the Giardia proteome. These proteins displayed a conserved structure when compared to different organisms and are distributed in different monophyletic clades. Although all Giardia DHHC proteins were found to be present in trophozoites and encysting cells, these proteins showed a different intracellular localization in trophozoites and seemed to be differently involved in the encystation process when they were overexpressed. dhhc transgenic parasites showed a different pattern of cyst wall protein expression and yielded different amounts of mature cysts when they were induced to encyst. Our findings disclosed some important issues regarding the role of DHHC proteins and palmitoylation during Giardia encystation.Fil: Merino, Maria Cecilia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto de Investigación Médica Mercedes y Martín Ferreyra. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Instituto de Investigación Médica Mercedes y Martín Ferreyra; ArgentinaFil: Zamponi, Nahuel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto de Investigación Médica Mercedes y Martín Ferreyra. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Instituto de Investigación Médica Mercedes y Martín Ferreyra; ArgentinaFil: Vranych, Cecilia Verónica. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto de Investigación Médica Mercedes y Martín Ferreyra. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Instituto de Investigación Médica Mercedes y Martín Ferreyra; ArgentinaFil: Touz, Maria Carolina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto de Investigación Médica Mercedes y Martín Ferreyra. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Instituto de Investigación Médica Mercedes y Martín Ferreyra; ArgentinaFil: Ropolo, Andrea Silvana. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto de Investigación Médica Mercedes y Martín Ferreyra. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Instituto de Investigación Médica Mercedes y Martín Ferreyra; Argentin

Five Easy Pieces: The Dynamics of Quarks in Strongly Coupled Plasmas

We revisit the analysis of the drag a massive quark experiences and the wake it creates at a temperature T while moving through a plasma using a gravity dual that captures the renormalisation group runnings in the dual gauge theory. Our gravity dual has a black hole and seven branes embedded via Ouyang embedding, but the geometry is a deformation of the usual conifold metric. In particular the gravity dual has squashed two spheres, and a small resolution at the IR. Using this background we show that the drag of a massive quark receives corrections that are proportional to powers of log T when compared with the drag computed using AdS/QCD correspondence. We use the perturbation produced by the quark strings to compute the wake and compare with the results obtained using AdS/QCD correspondence. We also study the shear viscosity with running couplings, analyze the viscosity to entropy ratio and compare the result with the known bound. In the presence of higher order curvature square corrections from the back-reactions of the embedded D7 branes, we argue the possibility of the entropy to viscosity bound being violated. Finally, we show that our set-up could in-principle allow us to study a family of gauge theories at the boundary by cutting off the dual geometry respectively at various points in the radial direction. All these gauge theories can have well defined UV completions, and more interestingly, we demonstrate that any thermodynamical quantities derived from these theories would be completely independent of the cut-off scale and only depend on the temperature at which we define these theories. Such a result would justify the holographic renormalisabilities of these theories which we, in turn, also demonstrate. We give physical interpretations of these results and compare them with more realistic scenarios.Comment: 130 pages, 12 eps figures, LaTex; v4: final version with corrected typos, numerous additional references and enlargement of some sections. The published version, that appears in Nucl. Phys. B, differs slightly in section 3 where there is more emphasis on holographic renormalisabilty and less on the wake, compared to this versio

Environmental and Parental Influences on Offspring Health and Growth in Great Tits (Parus major)

PMCID: PMC3728352This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

Evolutionary conservation and regulation of particular alternative splicing events in plant SR proteins

Alternative splicing is an important mechanism for fine tuning of gene expression at the post-transcriptional level. SR proteins govern splice site selection and spliceosome assembly. The Arabidopsis genome encodes 19 SR proteins, several of which have no orthologues in metazoan. Three of the plant specific subfamilies are characterized by the presence of a relatively long alternatively spliced intron located in their first RNA recognition motif, which potentially results in an extremely truncated protein. In atRSZ33, a member of the RS2Z subfamily, this alternative splicing event was shown to be autoregulated. Here we show that atRSp31, a member of the RS subfamily, does not autoregulate alternative splicing of its similarily positioned intron. Interestingly, this alternative splicing event is regulated by atRSZ33. We demonstrate that the positions of these long introns and their capability for alternative splicing are conserved from green algae to flowering plants. Moreover, in particular alternative splicing events the splicing signals are embedded into highly conserved sequences. In different taxa, these conserved sequences occur in at least one gene within a subfamily. The evolutionary preservation of alternative splice forms together with highly conserved intron features argues for additional functions hidden in the genes of these plant-specific SR proteins

Sensing Characteristics of Flame-Spray-Made Pt/ZnO Thick Films as H2 Gas Sensor

Hydrogen sensing of thick films of nanoparticles of pristine, 0.2, 1.0 and 2.0 atomic percentage of Pt concentration doped ZnO were investigated. ZnO nanoparticles doped with 0.2–2.0 at.% Pt were successfully produced in a single step by flame spray pyrolysis (FSP) technique using zinc naphthenate and platinum(II) acetylacetonate as precursors dissolved in xylene. The particle properties were analyzed by XRD, BET, SEM and TEM. Under the 5/5 (precursor/oxygen) flame condition, ZnO nanoparticles and nanorods were observed. The crystallite sizes of ZnO spheroidal and hexagonal particles were found to be ranging from 5 to 20 nm while ZnO nanorods were seen to be 5–20 nm wide and 20–40 nm long. ZnO nanoparticles paste composed of ethyl cellulose and terpineol as binder and solvent respectively was coated on Al2O3 substrate interdigitated with gold electrodes to form thin films by spin coating technique. The thin film morphology was analyzed by SEM technique. The gas sensing properties toward hydrogen (H2) was found that the 0.2 at.% Pt/ZnO sensing film showed an optimum H2 sensitivity of ∼164 at hydrogen concentration in air of 1 volume% at 300 °C and a low hydrogen detection limit of 50 ppm at 300 °C operating temperature