ダウン症候群児の咀嚼機能獲得に関連する要因の検討

Down syndrome (DS) has the highest prevalence of any chromosomal abnormality identified in newborns. DS children have specific eating and swallowing difficulties such as poor tongue control, mouth opening, swallowing food without chewing, and both facial and occlusal abnormalities. DS children are also at high risk of aspiration, and swallowing food without chewing is considered to be a factor associated with increased risk of aspiration and eating problems. This study aimed to identify factors preventing the acquisition of masticatory function in DS children. The subjects were 75 outpatient DS children (44 males, age range 12 to 36 month-old, mean age 33.0 ± 7.0 month­-old; 31 females, age 12 to 36 month-old, mean age 20.8 ± 8.0 month-old), who had not yet acquired masticatory function, out of 319 who visited the clinic between October 2012 and October 2017. The information necessary for assessment was retrospectively extracted from the medical records of the subjects. The items examined included age, birth weight, nutritional intake, picky eating, tactile hyperesthesia, cognitive development assessed by Ohta stage, gross motor function, occlusal condition by Hellman's dental age, and tongue thrust/lip closure/mastication while eating. The relationships between the acquisition of masticatory function and these items were investigated after one year of rehabilitation. The revealed age, low birth weight, picky eating, and gross motor function to be relevant factors. Among these, gross motor function was found to be the factor most strongly associated with acquisition of masticatory function

Shell-model calculations for p-shell hypernuclei

The interpretation of hypernuclear gamma-ray data for p-shell hypernuclei in terms of shell-model calculations that include the coupling of Lambda- and Sigma-hypernuclear states is briefly reviewed. Next, Lambda 8Li, Lambda 8Be, and Lambda 9Li are considered, both to exhibit features of Lambda-Sigma coupling and as possible source of observed, but unassigned, hypernuclear gamma rays. Then, the feasibility of measuring the ground-state doublet spacing of Lambda 10Be, which, like Lambda 9Li, could be studied via the (K-,pi0 gamma) reaction, is investigated. Structural information relevant to the population of states in these hypernuclei in recent (e,e'K+) studies is also given. Finally, the extension of the shell-model calculations to sd-shell hypernuclei is briefly considered.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures. Contribution to special volume on Strangeness Nuclear Physic

Investigation of guidance on maintaining visual acuity at combined school from kindergarten to junior high school.: Consideration of relationship between visual acuity and lifestyle

The negative effect of visual acuity for growing children led by widely use of IC device such as mobile phone is concerned today. Heavy use of electronic device such as PC in early age will bring poor visual acuity, and an inconvenience in exercise caused by wearing glasses. In this study, we used wearable devise to search relations between daily lives of children and a decrease in vision in add to a preexisting questionnaire. Compared with the duration of watching TV and reading books of PVA( Poor visual acuity) and NPVA(Non poor visual acuity), PVA students were turned out to be using more time in doing, which supports previous studies. The relevance to visual acuity and sleep was clarified to be significantly shorter in NPVA in terms of nocturnal awakening, and also the average of a sleep and a deep sleep duration were longer in NPVA. No significant difference was observed due to the small parameter. From now on, the further work is needed to examine child's sleep conscientiously, including enriching health guidance for sight maintenance

Transcription factors interfering with dedifferentiation induce cell type-specific transcriptional profiles

初期化を阻害する転写因子が分化を促進する. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2013-04-02.Transcription factors (TFs) are able to regulate differentiation-related processes, including dedifferentiation and direct conversion, through the regulation of cell type-specific transcriptional profiles. However, the functional interactions between the TFs regulating different transcriptional profiles are not well understood. Here, we show that the TFs capable of inducing cell type-specific transcriptional profiles prevent the dedifferentiation induced by TFs for pluripotency. Of the large number of TFs expressed in a neural-lineage cell line, we identified a subset of TFs that, when overexpressed, strongly interfered with the dedifferentiation triggered by the procedure to generate induced pluripotent stem cells. This interference occurred through a maintenance mechanism of the cell type-specific transcriptional profile. Strikingly, the maintenance activity of the interfering TF set was strong enough to induce the cell line-specific transcriptional profile when overexpressed in a heterologous cell type. In addition, the TFs that interfered with dedifferentiation in hepatic-lineage cells involved TFs with known induction activity for hepatic-lineage cells. Our results suggest that dedifferentiation suppresses a cell type-specific transcriptional profile, which is primarily maintained by a small subset of TFs capable of inducing direct conversion. We anticipate that this functional correlation might be applicable in various cell types and might facilitate the identification of TFs with induction activity in efforts to understand differentiation

The N-terminal region of Jaw1 has a role to inhibit the formation of organized smooth endoplasmic reticulum as an intrinsically disordered region

Jaw1/LRMP is a type II integral membrane protein that is localized at the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and outer nuclear membrane. We previously reported that a function of Jaw1 is to maintain the nuclear shape as a KASH protein via its carboxyl terminal region, a component of linker of nucleoskeleton and cytoskeleton complex in the oligomeric state. Although the oligomerization of some KASH proteins via the cytosolic regions serves to stabilize protein-protein interactions, the issue of how the oligomerization of Jaw1 is regulated is not completely understood. Therefore, we focused on three distinct regions on the cytosolic face of Jaw1: the N-terminal region, the coiled-coil domain and the stem region, in terms of oligomerization. A co-immunoprecipitation assay showed that its coiled-coil domain is a candidate for the oligomerization site. Furthermore, our data indicated that the N-terminal region prevents the aberrant oligomerization of Jaw1 as an intrinsically disordered region (IDR). Importantly, the ectopic expression of an N-terminal region deleted mutant caused the formation of organized smooth ER (OSER), structures such as nuclear karmellae and whorls, in B16F10 cells. Furthermore, this OSER interfered with the localization of the oligomer and interactors such as the type III inositol 1,4,5-triphosphate receptor (IP3R3) and SUN2. In summary, the N-terminal region of Jaw1 inhibits the formation of OSER as an IDR to maintain the homeostatic localization of interactors on the ER membrane