α-Synuclein Transgenic Drosophila As a Model of Parkinson's Disease and Related Synucleinopathies

α-Synuclein (α-Syn) is a major component of protein inclusions known as Lewy bodies, which are hallmarks of synucleinopathies such as Parkinson's disease (PD). The α-Syn gene is one of the familial PD-causing genes and is also associated with an increased risk of sporadic PD. Numerous studies using α-Syn expressing transgenic animals have indicated that α-Syn plays a critical role in the common pathogenesis of synucleinopathies. Drosophila melanogaster has several advantages for modeling human neurodegenerative diseases and is widely used for studying their pathomechanisms and therapies. In fact, Drosophila models expressing α-Syn have already been established and proven to replicate several features of human PD. In this paper, we review the current research on synucleinopathies using α-Syn Drosophila models and, moreover, explore the possibilities of these models for comprehensive genetic analyses and large-scale drug screening towards elucidating the molecular pathogenesis and developing therapies for synucleinopathies

The Physics of Galaxy Cluster Outskirts

As the largest virialized structures in the universe, galaxy clusters continue to grow and accrete matter from the cosmic web. Due to the low gas density in the outskirts of clusters, measurements are very challenging, requiring extremely sensitive telescopes across the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Observations using X-rays, the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect, and weak lensing and galaxy distributions from the optical band, have over the last decade helped to unravel this exciting new frontier of cluster astrophysics, where the infall and virialization of matter takes place. Here, we review the current state of the art in our observational and theoretical understanding of cluster outskirts, and discuss future prospects for exploration using newly planned and proposed observatories.Comment: 56 pages. Review paper. Published in Space Science Review

Enumerated sparse extraction of important surgical planning features for mandibular reconstruction

[2020 42nd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society (EMBC 2020); Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 20-24 July 2020]Because implicit medical knowledge and experience are used to perform medical treatment, such decisions must be clarified when systematizing surgical procedures. We propose an algorithm that extracts low-dimensional features that are important for determining the number of fibular segments in mandibular reconstruction using the enumeration of Lasso solutions (eLasso). To perform the multi-class classification, we extend the eLasso using an importance evaluation criterion that quantifies the contribution of the extracted features. Experiment results show that the extracted 7-dimensional feature set has the same estimation performance as the set using all 49-dimensional features

Antisense RNA transcripts in the blood may be novel diagnostic markers for colorectal cancer

Numerous genetic studies have been conducted regarding the occurrence of colorectal cancer (CRC) and the prognosis using microarrays. However, adequate investigations into the diagnostic application of microarrays have yet to be performed. The simplicity and accuracy of diagnosis and prognosis tracking are important requirements for its processes, and the use of blood cells for diagnosis is considered to be suitable to meet these requirements. The patients involved in the study were 28 preoperative patients with CRC and 6 healthy individuals who served as controls. RNA was extracted from the blood cells of the patients and analyzed using a sense/antisense RNA custom microarray. In the patients with CRC, the expression levels of 20 sense RNA and 20 antisense RNA species were identified as being significantly altered compared with that of the healthy volunteers (P2.0). Cluster analysis of these RNA species revealed that the top 10 antisense RNAs significantly clustered patients with cancer and healthy individuals separately. Patients with stage I or II CRC exhibited significant changes in the expression levels of 33 sense and 39 antisense RNA species, as compared with healthy volunteers (P2.0). Cluster analysis demonstrated that patients with stage I or II CRC and healthy volunteers formed separate clusters only among the top 20 antisense RNA species. A tracking study of expression levels of haloacid dehalogenase‑like hydrolase domain‑containing 1 (HDHD1) antisense RNA was performed and a significant difference was identified between the CRC and healthy groups revealing that the levels at one week and three months following surgical removal of the cancerous tissue, decreased to almost same levels of the healthy individuals. The results of the current study indicate that HDHD1 antisense RNA may serve as a potential biomarker for the prognosis of CRC

Photoinduced swing of a diarylethene thin broad sword shaped crystal:a study on the detailed mechanism

We report a swinging motion of photochromic thin broad sword shaped crystals upon continuous irradiation with UV light. By contrast in thick crystals, photosalient phenomena were observed. The bending and swinging mechanisms are in fact due to molecular size changes as well as phase transitions. The first slight bending away from the light source is due to photocyclization-induced surface expansion, and the second dramatic bending toward UV incidence is due to single-crystal-to-single-crystal (SCSC) phase transition from the original phase I to phase IIUV. Upon visible light irradiation, the crystal returned to phase I. A similar SCSC phase transition with a similar volume decrease occurred by lowering the temperature (phase IIItemp). For both photoinduced and thermal SCSC phase transitions, the symmetry of the unit cell is lowered; in phase IIUV the twisting angle of disordered phenyl groups is different between two adjacent molecules, while in phase IIItemp, the population of the phenyl rotamer is different between adjacent molecules. In the case of phase IIUV, we found thickness dependent photosalient phenomena. The thin broad sword shaped crystals with a 3 mu m thickness showed no photosalient phenomena, whereas photoinduced SCSC phase transition occurred. In contrast, large crystals of several tens of mu m thickness showed photosalient phenomena on the irradiated surface where SCSC phase transition occurred. The results indicated that the accumulated strain, between isomerized and non-isomerized layers, gave rise to the photosalient phenomenon

Nasogastric tube syndrome induced by an indwelling long intestinal tube

The nasogastric tube (NGT) has become a frequently used device to alleviate gastrointestinal symptoms. Nasogastric tube syndrome (NTS) is an uncommon but potentially life-threatening complication of an indwelling NGT. NTS is characterized by acute upper airway obstruction due to bilateral vocal cord paralysis. We report a case of a 76-year-old man with NTS, induced by an indwelling long intestinal tube. He was admitted to our hospital for treatment of sigmoid colon cancer. He underwent sigmoidectomy to release a bowel obstruction, and had a long intestinal tube inserted to decompress the intestinal tract. He presented acute dyspnea following prolonged intestinal intubation, and bronchoscopy showed bilateral vocal cord paralysis. The NGT was removed immediately, and tracheotomy was performed. The patient was finally discharged in a fully recovered state. NTS be considered in patients complaining of acute upper airway obstruction, not only with a NGT inserted but also with a long intestinal tube

Suzaku Observation of Abell 1689: Anisotropic Temperature and Entropy Distributions Associated with the Large-Scale Structure

(Abridged) We present results of Suzaku observations of the intracluster medium (ICM) in Abell 1689, combined with complementary analysis of the SDSS data and weak and strong lensing analysis of Subaru/Suprime-Cam and HST/ACS observations. Faint X-ray emission from the ICM around the virial radius is detected at 4.0 sigma significance. We find anisotropic gas temperature and entropy distributions in cluster outskirts correlated with large-scale structure of galaxies. The high temperature and entropy region in the northeastern (NE) outskirts is connected to an overdense filamentary structure. The outskirt regions in contact with low density void environments have low gas temperatures and entropies, deviating from hydrostatic equilibrium. These results suggest that thermalization of the ICM occurs faster along the filamentary structures than the void regions. A joint X-ray and lensing analysis shows that the hydrostatic mass is $\sim60-90$ of spherical lensing one but comparable to a triaxial halo mass within errors in 0.6r_{2500} \simlt r \simlt 0.8r_{500}, and that it is significantly biased as low as \simlt60% within $0.4r_{2500}$, irrespective of mass models. The thermal gas pressure within $r_{500}$ is, at most, $\sim50$--60% of the total pressure to balance fully the gravity of the spherical lensing mass, and $\sim30$--40% around the virial radius. Although these constitute lower limits when one considers the possible halo triaxiality, these small relative contributions of thermal pressure would require additional sources of pressure, such as bulk and/or turbulent motions.Comment: 24 pages, 15 figures, 9 tables. Accepted for publication in Ap