Characterization of electrical and mechanical activities of rabbit uterus associated with the presence of capacitated and non-capacitated spermatozoa

[EN] To investigate the effects capacitated spermatozoa may exert upon motility of the rabbit uterus, both contractility and electrical activity (frequency and intensity) were measured in 3 distinctive uterine segments of anaesthetized does: horn (UH), uterotubal junction (UTJ) and tube (UT) after 1) natural mating, 2) infusion of either seminal plasma or PBS, 3) infusion of either capacitated or non-capacitated spermatozoa. Basal values were: 17.1, 15.7, 16.4 g (contractility, P>0.05); 3.5, 3.5, 3.4 Hz (frequency, P>0.05); 0.49, 0.50, 0.57 ¿V (intensity, P>0.05) for UH, UTJ, UT, respectively. Seminal plasma caused an increase (P<0.05) in the UH contractility: 26.3 vs. 11.7 (natural mating) and 17.0 g (PBS); it also caused a decrease (P<0.05) in electrical intensity at the UTJ: 0.24 vs. 0.67 (natural mating) and 0.58 ¿V (PBS). The presence of either capacitated or non-capacitated spermatozoa caused no changes in contractility and electrical frequency in any of the uterine segments. However, there was a change in electrical intensity at UTJ (0.37 vs. 0.57 ¿V for non-capacitated and capacitated spermatozoa, respectively; P<0.05). There were also differences between segments by treatment: UTJ (0.37) vs. UT (0.59 ¿V) for non-capacitated; UH (0.46) vs. UT (0.71 ¿V) for capacitated spermatozoa (P<0.05). In conclusion, use of this experimental model showed that uterine electrical activity was slightly modified by the presence of capacitated spermatozoa.Lazcano-reyes, J.; Montiel, J.; Medrano, A. (2013). Characterization of electrical and mechanical activities of rabbit uterus associated with the presence of capacitated and non-capacitated spermatozoa. World Rabbit Science. 21(4):243-249. doi:10.4995/wrs.2013.1470.SWORD24324921

Rapid ovarian transcript changes during the onset of premature ovarian insufficiency in a mouse model

Premature ovarian insufficiency (POI) affects 1-3% of women under 40 years of age. The identified causes are highly heterogeneous, and 70% of the cases are idiopathic. The ovarian manifestation varies from a variable population of follicles that fail to develop (follicular POI) to the absence of follicles (afollicular POI) with a transition from one to the other over time. Previously, we have described a mouse model of POI that results from an oocyte-specific deletion of N- and O-glycans; Double Mutant (DM). DM females produce only one litter before undergoing POI due to ovarian dysfunction. In this study, we have characterised the gene expression profile of prepuberal (3 weeks), fertile (6 weeks) and infertile (9 weeks) DM ovaries. Up-regulation of cathepsin K (Ctsk, with unknown ovarian function) seems to trigger transcriptional changes in DM ovaries. Significant transcriptional changes then occur rapidly, associated with morphophysiological changes displayed by DM mice throughout the onset of POI. We identified genetic pathways such as extracellular matrix and immune response as candidates for the onset of POI in DM females. Remarkably, DM mice and POI women share a set of differentially expressed genes, including a functionally and co-expressed network of Mcm (minichromosome maintenance proteins) family members. The transcriptomic profile of the DM mouse model provides novel insight into the aetiology of POI

Whole sequence of the mitochondrial DNA genome of Kearns Sayre Syndrome patients: Identification of deletions and variants

Mitochondria both produce the energy of the cell as ATP via respiration and regulate cellular metabolism. Accordingly, any deletion or mutation in the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) may result in a disease. One of these diseases is Kearns Sayre syndrome (KSS), described for the first time in 1958, where different large-scale deletions of different sizes and at different positions have been reported in the mitochondrial genome of patients with similar clinical symptoms. In this study, sequences of the mitochondrial genome of three patients with clinic features of KSS were analyzed. Our results revealed the position, heteroplasmy percentage, size of deletions, and their haplogroups. Two patients contained deletions reported previously and one patient showed a new deletion not reported previously. These results display for the first time a systematic analysis of mtDNA variants in the whole mtDNA genome of patients with KSS to help to understand their association with the disease

Evidence for a narrow dip structure at 1.9 GeV/c2^2 in 3π+3π−3\pi^+ 3\pi^- diffractive photoproduction

A narrow dip structure has been observed at 1.9 GeV/c$^2$ in a study of diffractive photoproduction of the $~3\pi^+3\pi^-$ final state performed by the Fermilab experiment E687.Comment: The data of Figure 6 can be obtained by downloading the raw data file e687_6pi.txt. v5 (2nov2018): added Fig. 7, the 6 pion energy distribution as requested by a reade

Highly-parallelized simulation of a pixelated LArTPC on a GPU

The rapid development of general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU) is allowing the implementation of highly-parallelized Monte Carlo simulation chains for particle physics experiments. This technique is particularly suitable for the simulation of a pixelated charge readout for time projection chambers, given the large number of channels that this technology employs. Here we present the first implementation of a full microphysical simulator of a liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) equipped with light readout and pixelated charge readout, developed for the DUNE Near Detector. The software is implemented with an end-to-end set of GPU-optimized algorithms. The algorithms have been written in Python and translated into CUDA kernels using Numba, a just-in-time compiler for a subset of Python and NumPy instructions. The GPU implementation achieves a speed up of four orders of magnitude compared with the equivalent CPU version. The simulation of the current induced on 10^3 pixels takes around 1 ms on the GPU, compared with approximately 10 s on the CPU. The results of the simulation are compared against data from a pixel-readout LArTPC prototype