Generation of cloned transgenic pigs rich in omega-3 fatty acids

Meat products are generally low in omega-3 (n-3) fatty acids, which are beneficial to human health. We describe the generation of cloned pigs that express a humanized Caenorhabditis elegans gene, fat-1, encoding an n-3 fatty acid desaturase. The hfat-1 transgenic pigs produce high levels of n-3 fatty acids from n-6 analogs, and their tissues have a significantly reduced ratio of n-6/n-3 fatty acids (P < 0.001). © 2006 Nature Publishing Group

Illusions and Cloaks for Surface Waves

Open access articleEver since the inception of Transformation Optics (TO), new and exciting ideas have been proposed in the field of electromagnetics and the theory has been modified to work in such fields as acoustics and thermodynamics. The most well-known application of this theory is to cloaking, but another equally intriguing application of TO is the idea of an illusion device. Here, we propose a general method to transform electromagnetic waves between two arbitrary surfaces. This allows a flat surface to reproduce the scattering behaviour of a curved surface and vice versa, thereby giving rise to perfect optical illusion and cloaking devices, respectively. The performance of the proposed devices is simulated using thin effective media with engineered material properties. The scattering of the curved surface is shown to be reproduced by its flat analogue (for illusions) and vice versa for cloaks.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC

High-contrast, fast chemical imaging by coherent Raman scattering using a self-synchronized two-colour fibre laser

Kong C, Pilger C, Hachmeister H, et al. High-contrast, fast chemical imaging by coherent Raman scattering using a self-synchronized two-colour fibre laser. Light: Science &amp; Applications. 2020;9(1): 25.Coherent Raman scattering (CRS) microscopy is widely recognized as a powerful tool for tackling biomedical problems based on its chemically specific label-free contrast, high spatial and spectral resolution, and high sensitivity. However, the clinical translation of CRS imaging technologies has long been hindered by traditional solid-state lasers with environmentally sensitive operations and large footprints. Ultrafast fibre lasers can potentially overcome these shortcomings but have not yet been fully exploited for CRS imaging, as previous implementations have suffered from high intensity noise, a narrow tuning range and low power, resulting in low image qualities and slow imaging speeds. Here, we present a novel high-power self-synchronized two-colour pulsed fibre laser that achieves excellent performance in terms of intensity stability (improved by 50 dB), timing jitter (24.3 fs), average power fluctuation (20 dB) and pulse width variation (<1.8%) over an extended wavenumber range (2700–3550 cm−1). The versatility of the laser source enables, for the first time, high-contrast, fast CRS imaging without complicated noise reduction via balanced detection schemes. These capabilities are demonstrated in this work by imaging a wide range of species such as living human cells and mouse arterial tissues and performing multimodal nonlinear imaging of mouse tail, kidney and brain tissue sections by utilizing second-harmonic generation and two-photon excited fluorescence, which provides multiple optical contrast mechanisms simultaneously and maximizes the gathered information content for biological visualization and medical diagnosis. This work also establishes a general scenario for remodelling existing lasers into synchronized two-colour lasers and thus promotes a wider popularization and application of CRS imaging technologies

S100A8 and S100A9 Are Associated with Doxorubicin-Induced Cardiotoxicity in the Heart of Diabetic Mice

© 2016 Pei, Tam, Sin, Wang, Yung, Chan, Wong, Ying, Lai and Siu. Cardiomyopathy is a clinical problem that occurs in the hearts of type 2 diabetic patients as well as cancer patients undergoing doxorubicin chemotherapy. The number of diabetic cancer patients is increasing but surprisingly the cardiac damaging effects of doxorubicin, a commonly used chemotherapeutic drug, on diabetic hearts have not been well-examined. As the signaling mechanisms of the doxorubicin-induced cardiomyopathy in type 2 diabetic heart are largely unknown, this study examined the molecular signaling pathways that are responsible for the doxorubicin-induced cardiotoxicity in type 2 diabetic hearts. Male 14- to 18-week-old db/db mice were used as the type 2 diabetic model, and age-matched non-diabetic db/+ mice served as controls. The db/+ non-diabetic and db/db diabetic mice were randomly assigned to the following groups: db/+CON, db/+DOX-5d, db/+DOX-7d, db/dbCON, db/dbDOX-5d, and db/dbDOX-7d. Mice assigned to doxorubicin (DOX) group were exposed to an intraperitoneal (i.p.) injection of DOX at a dose of 15 mg/kg to induce cardiomyopathy. Mice in control (CON) groups were i.p. injected with the same volume of saline instead of DOX. Mice were euthanized by overdose of ketamine and xylazine 5 or 7 days after the DOX injection. Microarray analysis was adopted to examine the changes of the whole transcriptional profile in response to doxorubicin exposure in diabetic hearts. Ventricular fractional shortening was examined as an indicator of cardiac function by transthoracic echocardiography. The presence of diabetic cardiomyopathy in db/db mice was evident by the reduction of fractional shortening. There was a further impairment of cardiac contractile function 7 days after the DOX administration in db/db diabetic mice. According to our microarray analysis, we identified a panel of regulatory genes associated with cardiac remodeling, inflammatory response, oxidative stress, and metabolism in the DOX-induced cardiac injury in diabetic heart. The microarray results of selected genes were confirmed by real time PCR. Notably, S100A8 and S100A9 were found to have a unique specific expression pattern that was coincident with the DOX-induced cardiomyopathy in diabetic hearts. Correspondingly, NF-κB expression in diabetic hearts was increased together with the elevation of S100A8/9 and activation of p38 MAPK signaling after DOX administration, which induced cardiac inflammation as demonstrated by the elevation of cardiac IL-6 level. These findings provide novel pre-clinical information for revealing the S100A8/A9-associated molecular signaling pathways that mediate the doxorubicin-induced cardiotoxicity in diabetic hearts.Link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Acute rejection is associated with antibodies to non-Gal antigens in baboons using Gal-knockout pig kidneys

We transplanted kidneys from α1,3-galactosyltransferase knockout (GalT-KO) pigs into six baboons using two different immunosuppressive regimens, but most of the baboons died from severe acute humoral xenograft rejection. Circulating induced antibodies to non-Gal antigens were markedly elevated at rejection, which mediated strong complement-dependent cytotoxicity against GalT-KO porcine target cells. These data suggest that antibodies to non-Gal antigens will present an additional barrier to transplantation of organs from GalT-KO pigs to humans. © 2005 Nature Publishing Group

Factorization and NNLL Resummation for Higgs Production with a Jet Veto

Using methods of effective field theory, we derive the first all-order factorization theorem for the Higgs-boson production cross section with a jet veto, imposed by means of a standard sequential recombination jet algorithm. Like in the case of small-q_T resummation in Drell-Yan and Higgs production, the factorization is affected by a collinear anomaly. Our analysis provides the basis for a systematic resummation of large logarithms log(m_H/p_T^veto) beyond leading-logarithmic order. Specifically, we present predictions for the resummed jet-veto cross section and efficiency at next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic order. Our results have important implications for Higgs-boson searches at the LHC, where a jet veto is required to suppress background events.Comment: 28 pages, 5 figures; v2: published version; note added in proo