Anale Inkontinenz als Folge angeborener Enddarmfehlbildungen:Experimentelle Untersuchungen zur Substitution des Musculus sphincter ani internus durch Tissue Engineering

Die Analatresie stellt eine schwerwiegende Missbildung des Enddarmabschnittes dar. Als Hauptproblem wird die anale Inkontinenz gesehen, bedingt durch eine nur rudimentär angelegte Schließmuskulatur. Bisher gibt es kein bioatifizielles Implantat als Schließmuskelersatz. So entstand die Idee der Kultivierung eines glattmuskulären Gewebeverbandes zur Unterstützung des insuffizienten, glattmuskulären inneren Analsphincters (IAS). Glatte Muskelzellen wurden aus dem IAS gewonnen, in vitro kultiviert, auf drei unterschiedliche Trägermaterialien überbracht und wieder reimplantiert. Die Zellen wurden in vitro im Hinblick auf Morphologie und Proliferation untersucht. Die in vivo Analyse legte den Schwerpunkt auf die Vaskularisation und die Integration der Implantate ins native Gewebe. Zudem wurde in beiden Phasen der Differenzierungsgrad der Zellen bestimmt. Die Membranpotentiale der Zellen wurden mit Hilfe eines spannungssensitiven Farbstoffs gemessen

Soil–strain compatibility: the key to effective use of arbuscular mycorrhizal inoculants?

Consistency of response to arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) inoculation is required for efficient use of AM fungi in plant production. Here, we found that the response triggered in plants by an AM strain depends on the properties of the soil where it is introduced. Two data sets from 130 different experiments assessing the outcome of a total of 548 replicated single inoculation trials conducted either in soils with a history of (1) high input agriculture (HIA; 343 replicated trials) or (2) in more pristine soils from coffee plantations (CA; 205 replicated trials) were examined. Plant response to inoculation with different AM strains in CA soils planted with coffee was related to soil properties associated with soil types. The strains Glomus fasciculatum-like and Glomus etunicatum-like were particularly performant in soil relatively rich in nutrients and organic matter. Paraglomus occultum and Glomus mosseae-like performed best in relatively poor soils, and G. mosseae and Glomus manihotis did best in soils of medium fertility. Acaulospora scrobiculata, Diversispora spurca, G. mosseae-like, G. mosseae and P. occultum stimulated coffee growth best in Chromic, Eutric Alluvial Cambisol, G. fasciculatum-like and G. etunicatum-like in Calcaric Cambisol and G. manihotis, in Chromic, Eutric Cambisols. Acaulospora scrobiculata and Diversispora spurca strains performed best in Chromic Alisols and Rodic Ferralsols. There was no significant relationship between plant response to AM fungal strains and soil properties in the HIA soil data set, may be due to variation induced by the use of different host plant species and to modification of soil properties by a history of intensive production. Consideration of the performance of AM fungal strains in target soil environments may well be the key for efficient management of the AM symbiosis in plant production

Overlapping expression patterns and differential transcript levels of phosphate transporter genes in arbuscular mycorrhizal, Pi-fertilised and phytohormone-treated Medicago truncatula roots

A microarray carrying 5,648 probes of Medicago truncatula root-expressed genes was screened in order to identify those that are specifically regulated by the arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungus Gigaspora rosea, by Pi fertilisation or by the phytohormones abscisic acid and jasmonic acid. Amongst the identified genes, 21% showed a common induction and 31% a common repression between roots fertilised with Pi or inoculated with the AM fungus G. rosea, while there was no obvious overlap in the expression patterns between mycorrhizal and phytohormone-treated roots. Expression patterns were further studied by comparing the results with published data obtained from roots colonised by the AM fungi Glomus mosseae and Glomus intraradices, but only very few genes were identified as being commonly regulated by all three AM fungi. Analysis of Pi concentrations in plants colonised by either of the three AM fungi revealed that this could be due to the higher Pi levels in plants inoculated by G. rosea compared with the other two fungi, explaining that numerous genes are commonly regulated by the interaction with G. rosea and by phosphate. Differential gene expression in roots inoculated with the three AM fungi was further studied by expression analyses of six genes from the phosphate transporter gene family in M. truncatula. While MtPT4 was induced by all three fungi, the other five genes showed different degrees of repression mirroring the functional differences in phosphate nutrition by G. rosea, G. mosseae and G. intraradices

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and Department of Defense Sport-Related Concussion Common Data Elements Version 1.0 Recommendations

Aim: Through a partnership with the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Department of Defense (DoD), the development of Sport-Related Concussion (SRC) Common Data Elements (CDEs) was initiated. The aim of this collaboration was to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of clinical research studies and clinical treatment outcomes, increase data quality, facilitate data sharing across studies, reduce study start-up time, more effectively aggregate information into metadata results, and educate new clinical investigators. Materials/Methods: The SRC CDE Working Group consisted of 34 worldwide experts in concussion from varied fields of related expertise, divided into three Subgroups: Acute (3 months post-concussion). To develop CDEs, the Subgroups reviewed various domains, and then selected from, refined, and added to existing CDEs, case report forms and field-tested data elements from national registries and funded research studies. Recommendations were posted to the NINDS CDE Website for Public Review from February 2017 to April 2017. Results: Following an internal Working Group review of recommendations, along with consideration of comments received from the Public Review period, the first iteration (Version 1.0) of the NINDS SRC CDEs was completed in June 2017. The recommendations include Core and Supplemental ? Highly Recommended CDEs for cognitive data elements and symptom checklists, as well as other outcomes and endpoints (e.g., vestibular, oculomotor, balance, anxiety, depression) and sample case report forms (e.g., injury reporting, demographics, concussion history) for domains typically included in clinical research studies. Interpretation: The NINDS SRC CDEs and supporting documents are publicly available on the NINDS CDE website https://www.commondataelements.ninds.nih.gov/. Widespread use of CDEs by researchers and clinicians will facilitate consistent SRC clinical research and trial design, data sharing, and metadata retrospective analysis

Stressed out symbiotes:hypotheses for the influence of abiotic stress on arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi

Abiotic stress is a widespread threat to both plant and soil communities. Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi can alleviate effects of abiotic stress by improving host plant stress tolerance, but the direct effects of abiotic stress on AM fungi are less well understood. We propose two hypotheses predicting how AM fungi will respond to abiotic stress. The stress exclusion hypothesis predicts that AM fungal abundance and diversity will decrease with persistent abiotic stress. The mycorrhizal stress adaptation hypothesis predicts that AM fungi will evolve in response to abiotic stress to maintain their fitness. We conclude that abiotic stress can have effects on AM fungi independent of the effects on the host plant. AM fungal communities will change in composition in response to abiotic stress, which may mean the loss of important individual species. This could alter feedbacks to the plant community and beyond. AM fungi will adapt to abiotic stress independent of their host plant. The adaptation of AM fungi to abiotic stress should allow the maintenance of the plant-AM fungal mutualism in the face of changing climates. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00442-016-3673-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Non-linearity in gaze holding: Experimental results and possible mechanisms

Cerebellar impairment may cause deficits in horizontal gaze holding, leading to centrifugal gaze-evoked nystagmus during fixation of eccentric targets. Healthy individuals show a weak drift leading to physiological nystagmus only at large gaze angles. These drifts are due to imperfect memory of the neural circuitry generating the eye position signals by integration of velocity signals. The cerebellum plays a crucial role in reducing the "leakiness" of this neural integrator. This neural integrator has been traditionally modeled as a first order low-pass filter, implying a linear relation between drift velocity and eye eccentricity. Evidences of a nonlinear behavior, however, can be found in the literature. In a recent series of papers we showed that the eye drift velocity (V) can be descriptively modeled as a tangent function of gaze eccentricity (P) with the following equation: V= k(2)/k(1) tan (k(1)P). Notably, the two parameters have distinct roles: k(1) regulates the rate of compression of the tangent, exclusively determining the non-linearity; k(2) is a pure scaling factor. This descriptive model robustly fitted the data of healthy individuals both at baseline (n = 50) and following transient cerebellar impairment induced by controlled amounts of alcohol [blood alcohol content 0.06% (n 15) and 0.1% (n = 15)] and of patients with chronic cerebellar impairment of various origin (n = 20). Interestingly, alcohol selectively changed the scaling factor k(2) , evidencing that an overall, transient cerebellar impairment does not impact the non-linear behavior. Patients with cerebellar degeneration, on the other hand, showed a change in both k(1) and k(2) , implying a role of the cerebellum in limiting the range of eye positions where the non-linearity becomes relevant. Non-linearity has been reported in literature for both the neural integrator and the eye plant. While previous models using a neural network attempted to reproduce the non-linear behavior of the brainstem, we propose a block diagram reproducing the observed PV tangent relation by introducing a position dependency in the parameters of the cerebellar feedback loop