Murine craniofacial development requires Hdac3-mediated repression of Msx gene expression

AbstractCraniofacial development is characterized by reciprocal interactions between neural crest cells and neighboring cell populations of ectodermal, endodermal and mesodermal origin. Various genetic pathways play critical roles in coordinating the development of cranial structures by modulating the growth, survival and differentiation of neural crest cells. However, the regulation of these pathways, particularly at the epigenomic level, remains poorly understood. Using murine genetics, we show that neural crest cells exhibit a requirement for the class I histone deacetylase Hdac3 during craniofacial development. Mice in which Hdac3 has been conditionally deleted in neural crest demonstrate fully penetrant craniofacial abnormalities, including microcephaly, cleft secondary palate and dental hypoplasia. Consistent with these abnormalities, we observe dysregulation of cell cycle genes and increased apoptosis in neural crest structures in mutant embryos. Known regulators of cell cycle progression and apoptosis in neural crest, including Msx1, Msx2 and Bmp4, are upregulated in Hdac3-deficient cranial mesenchyme. These results suggest that Hdac3 serves as a critical regulator of craniofacial morphogenesis, in part by repressing core apoptotic pathways in cranial neural crest cells

Technology Pipeline for Large Scale Cross-Lingual Dubbing of Lecture Videos into Multiple Indian Languages

Cross-lingual dubbing of lecture videos requires the transcription of the original audio, correction and removal of disfluencies, domain term discovery, text-to-text translation into the target language, chunking of text using target language rhythm, text-to-speech synthesis followed by isochronous lipsyncing to the original video. This task becomes challenging when the source and target languages belong to different language families, resulting in differences in generated audio duration. This is further compounded by the original speaker's rhythm, especially for extempore speech. This paper describes the challenges in regenerating English lecture videos in Indian languages semi-automatically. A prototype is developed for dubbing lectures into 9 Indian languages. A mean-opinion-score (MOS) is obtained for two languages, Hindi and Tamil, on two different courses. The output video is compared with the original video in terms of MOS (1-5) and lip synchronisation with scores of 4.09 and 3.74, respectively. The human effort also reduces by 75%

Microfluidic Endothelium for Studying the Intravascular Adhesion of Metastatic Breast Cancer Cells

BACKGROUND:The ability to properly model intravascular steps in metastasis is essential in identifying key physical, cellular, and molecular determinants that can be targeted therapeutically to prevent metastatic disease. Research on the vascular microenvironment has been hindered by challenges in studying this compartment in metastasis under conditions that reproduce in vivo physiology while allowing facile experimental manipulation. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS:We present a microfluidic vasculature system to model interactions between circulating breast cancer cells with microvascular endothelium at potential sites of metastasis. The microfluidic vasculature produces spatially-restricted stimulation from the basal side of the endothelium that models both organ-specific localization and polarization of chemokines and many other signaling molecules under variable flow conditions. We used this microfluidic system to produce site-specific stimulation of microvascular endothelium with CXCL12, a chemokine strongly implicated in metastasis. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE:When added from the basal side, CXCL12 acts through receptor CXCR4 on endothelium to promote adhesion of circulating breast cancer cells, independent of CXCL12 receptors CXCR4 or CXCR7 on tumor cells. These studies suggest that targeting CXCL12-CXCR4 signaling in endothelium may limit metastases in breast and other cancers and highlight the unique capabilities of our microfluidic device to advance studies of the intravascular microenvironment in metastasis

A Conceptual System Architecture for Cloud-Based E-learning Systems for Higher Education in India

Volume 1 Issue 9 (November 2013

Research on orofacial pain in India: A bibliometric study

Introduction: Orofacial pain is a common complaint affecting the lives of millions of people around the world. It is a public health problem and it is important to judge the extent of research undertaken in the diagnosis and management of orofacial pain and its underlying mechanisms. The aim of this study is to provide a quantitative overview of research on orofacial pain in Indian scenario by using bibliometric techniques on recent scientific publications on orofacial pain indexed in PubMed, IndMed and PakMediNet. Materials and methods: Data was collected from online databases viz- PubMed, IndMed and PakMediNet The data set included papers published during 2006 to 2010. Results: A total of 122 articles which were based on Indian scenario were published from 2006 to 2010 in PubMed, IndMed and PakMed Net. A total of 78.7% were published in Pubmed, out of which 54.2% were research based articles. Conclusion: Descriptive study of research done in India on orofacial pain from 2006 to 2010 based on PubMed, IndMed and PakMediNet database is presented. Taking into account the manpower available. research productivity in India in the field of orofacial pain is in its zygotic stages. The reason for this may be attributed due to the lack of standardization. The result of this study could be used by various professional societies, individual scientists, scholarly institutions and funding organizations to frame essential policies regarding the improvement of the research on orofacial pain in India and further studies could be done for assessment of quality of research

Semaphorin 3d and Semaphorin 3e Direct Endothelial Motility through Distinct Molecular Signaling Pathways

10.1074/jbc.M113.544833JOURNAL OF BIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY2892617971-1797

Murine craniofacial development requires Hdac3-mediated repression of Msx gene expression

10.1016/j.ydbio.2013.03.008DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY3772333-34

Tigers in the Terai: Strong evidence for meta-population dynamics contributing to tiger recovery and conservation in the Terai Arc Landscape - Fig 2

<p>Minimum Convex Polygon (MCP) from multiyear camera trap surveys carried out in a) core area of Suklaphanta National Park; b) Babai valley within Bardia National Park.</p