Characterization of regulatory T cells in urban newborns

© 2009 Ly et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licens

Maternal exposure to air pollution before and during pregnancy related to changes in newborn's cord blood lymphocyte subpopulations. The EDEN study cohort

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Toxicants can cross the placenta and expose the developing fetus to chemical contamination leading to possible adverse health effects, by potentially inducing alterations in immune competence. Our aim was to investigate the impacts of maternal exposure to air pollution before and during pregnancy on newborn's immune system.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Exposure to background particulate matter less than 10 μm in diameter (PM₁₀) and nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) was assessed in 370 women three months before and during pregnancy using monitoring stations. Personal exposure to four volatile organic compounds (VOCs) was measured in a subsample of 56 non-smoking women with a diffusive air sampler during the second trimester of pregnancy. Cord blood was analyzed at birth by multi-parameter flow cytometry to determine lymphocyte subsets.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Among other immunophenotypic changes in cord blood, decreases in the CD4+CD25+ T-cell percentage of 0.82% (p = 0.01), 0.71% (p = 0.04), 0.88% (p = 0.02), and 0.59% (p = 0.04) for a 10 μg/m³increase in PM₁₀levels three months before and during the first, second and third trimester of pregnancy, respectively, were observed after adjusting for confounders. A similar decrease in CD4+CD25+ T-cell percentage was observed in association with personal exposure to benzene. A similar trend was observed between NO₂exposure and CD4+CD25+ T-cell percentage; however the association was stronger between NO₂exposure and an increased percentage of CD8+ T-cells.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These data suggest that maternal exposure to air pollution before and during pregnancy may alter the immune competence in offspring thus increasing the child's risk of developing health conditions later in life, including asthma and allergies.</p

Aggregated, conformationally changed fibrinogen exposes the stimulating sites for t-PA-catalysed plasminogen activation

The present paper shows that conformationally changed fibrinogen can expose the sites Aα-(148-160) and γ-(312-324) involved in stimulation of the tissue-type plasminogen activator (t-PA)-catalysed plasminogen activation. The exposure of the stimulating sites was determined by ELISA using mABs directed to these sites, and was shown to coincide with stimulation of t-PA-catalysed plasminogen activation as assessed in an assay using a chromogenic substrate for plasmin. Gel permeation chromatography of fibrinogen conformationally changed by heat (46.5°C for 25 min) demonstrated the presence of both aggregated and monomeric fibrinogen. The aggregated fibrinogen, but not the monomeric fibrinogen, had exposed the epitopes Aα-(148-160) and γ-(312-324) involved in t-PA stimulation. Fibrinogen subjected to heat in the presence of 3 mM of the tetrapeptide GPRP neither aggregates nor exposes the rate-enhancing sites. Thus, aggregation and exposure of t-PA-stimulating sites in fibrinogen seem to be related phenomena, and it is tempting to believe that the exposure of stimulating sites is a consequence of the conformational changes that occur during aggregation, or self-association. Fibrin monomers kept in a monomeric state by a final GPRP concentration of 3 mM do not expose the epitopes Aα-(148-160) and γ-(312-324) involved in t-PA-stimulation, whereas dilution of GPRP to a concentration that is no longer anti-polymerizing, results in exposure of these sites. Consequently, the exposure of t-PA-stimulating sites in fibrin as well is due to the conformational changes that occur during self-association. Chemicals/CAS: Antibodies, Monoclonal; Biopolymers; Epitopes; Fibrinogen, 9001-32-5; glycyl-prolyl-arginyl-proline, 67869-62-9; Oligopeptides; Plasminogen, 9001-91-6; Tissue Plasminogen Activator, EC 3.4.21.6

Genetic Parentage Analysis Confirms a Polygynandrous Breeding System in the European Grayling (Thymallus thymallus)

Knowing the breeding system of a species is important in order to understand individual variation in reproductive success. Large variation in reproductive success and thus reproductive skew strongly impacts on the effective number of breeders and thus the long-term effective population size (Ne). Fishes, in particular species belonging to the salmonid family, exhibit a wide diversity of breeding systems. In general, however, breeding systems are rarely studied in detail in the wild. Here we examine the breeding system of the spring-spawning European grayling Thymallus thymallus from a small Norwegian stream using parentage assignment based on the genotyping of 19 polymorphic microsatellite loci. In total 895 individual grayling fry and 154 mature grayling (57 females and 97 males) were genotyped. A total of 466 offspring were assigned a father, a mother, or a parent pair with a confidence of 90% or higher. Successfully reproducing males had on average 11.9 ± 13.3 (SD) offspring with on average 2.1 ± 1.2 partners, whereas successful females had on average 9.5 ± 12.8 offspring and 2.3 ± 1.5 partners. Parents with more partners also produced more offspring. Thus the grayling breeding system within this small stream revealed a polygynandrous breeding system, similar to what has been observed for many other salmonid fish species. The present study thus unambiguously corroborates a polygynadrous breeding system in the European grayling. This knowledge is critical for managing populations of this species, which has suffered significant local population declines throughout its range over the last several decades

Propagation of forcing and model uncertainties on to hydrological drought characteristics in a multi-model century-long experiment in large river basins

Recent climate change impact studies studies have presented conflicting results regarding the largest source of uncertainty in essential hydrological variables, especially streamflow and derived characteristics that describe the evolution of drought events. Part of the problem arises from the lack of a consistent framework to address compatible initial conditions for the impact models and a set of standardized historical and future forcings. The ISI-MIP2 project provides a good opportunity to advance our understanding of the propagation of forcing and model uncertainties on to century-long time series of drought characteristics using an ensemble of hydrological model (HM) projections across a broad range of climate scenarios and regions. To achieve this goal, we used six regional preconditioned hydrological models set up in seven large river basins: Upper-Amazon, Blue-Nile, Ganges, Upper-Niger, Upper-Mississippi, Rhine, and Upper-Yellow. These models were forced with bias-corrected outputs from five CMIP5 general circulation models (GCMs) under two extreme representative concentration pathway scenarios (i.e., RCP2.6 and RCP8.5) for the period 1971-2099. The simulated streamflow was transformed into a monthly runoff index (RI) to analyze the attributions of the GCM and HM uncertainties on to drought magnitudes and durations over time. The results indicated that GCM uncertainty mostly dominated over HM uncertainty for the projections of runoff drought characteristics, irrespective of the selected RCP and region. In general, the overall uncertainty increased with time. The uncertainty in the drought characteristics increased as the radiative forcing of the RCP increased, but the propagation of the GCM uncertainty on to a drought characteristic depended largely upon the hydro-climatic regime. Although our study emphasizes the need for multi-model ensembles for the assessment of future drought projections, the agreement between the GCM forcings was still too weak to draw conclusive recommendations.by L. Samaniego, R. Kumar, L. Breuer, A. Chamorro, M. Flörke, I. G. Pechlivanidis, D. Schäfer, H. Shah, T. Vetter, M. Wortmann, X. Zen