Age-related changes of interoceptive brain networks : implications for interoception and alexithymia

Aging is known to be associated with a decline in interoceptive abilities and changes in emotional processing, including alexithymia. As the brain areas supporting interoceptive awareness participate in the perception of emotion, we suggested that interoceptive decline and alexithymia in older adults may share common neural ground. To test this hypothesis, we administered functional magnetic resonance imaging-based heartbeat detection task to 62 adults of diverse ages (range 18–73) and evaluated a larger sample of older and younger adults using questionnaires characterizing interoceptive sensibility, alexithymia, and depressive attitudes. We found that increasing age was linked to decreased activation during the interoceptive task, including the right insular- opercular and supplementary motor areas (SMAs). Age also affected task-based functional connectivity, with two major effects being a decrease in the connectivity of the SMA–insular network and an increase in the connectivity of the prefrontal–lateral occipital network. Path analysis performed for interoceptive accuracy as the endogenous variable revealed that the impact of agewasmediated by the functional activation of the insular cortex and SMA and by the connectivity between these areas.Another path analysis using alexithymia as the endogenous variable while controlling for depressive attitudes showed that the effect of age was mediated by interoceptive decline. The study supports the role of central mechanisms in age-related interoceptive decline and shows its implications for alexithymia. Since alexithymia represents a risk factor for mental and cardiovascular diseases, the study findings may open an important direction toward maintaining older adults’ well-being

Interoception during aging : functional neuroimaging data from a heartbeat detection task

Interoception is critically important for allostatic adaptation and emotional regulation, and aberrant interoceptive processing is increasingly recognized to be involved in the pathogenesis of neurological, psychiatric and cardiovascular diseases. Despite the fact that interoceptive abilities decline with age, the corresponding neural correlates and clinical consequences of these age-related changes have yet to be discovered. We present a dataset that contains task-based functional neuroimaging data from 50 adults aged 40–65 years and 12 adults aged 18–25 years who performed an fMRI-based heartbeat-detection task. Of the 62, 38 participants also took part in a rubber hand illusion experiment outside the scanner. While the dataset was mainly created to study age-related changes in interoception, it can also be used in body perception research in general. The provided group data may serve as a reference for clinical studies on interoception involving older adults

Identifying novel elements and regulators in auxin-dependent gene expression

Auxin is a key phytohormone which controls plant growth and development and many other related processes. Hormones are signalling molecules which regulate different processes via influencing the expression of thousands of genes, auxin is not an exception. The auxin signalling pathway was studied in detail and the main involved proteins-interplayers are already known, however, this knowledge is not sufficient to explain the diversity and specificity of auxin-mediated plant’s reactions. In our study we developed a bioinformatics tool to identify another potentially involved in auxin proteins. With that tool we predicted a number of potential interplayers and performed experimental verification. Appeared to be that specificity is provided by the involvement of different proteins in the control of different processes

metaRE R Package for Meta-Analysis of Transcriptome Data to Identify the cis-Regulatory Code behind the Transcriptional Reprogramming

At the molecular level, response to an external factor or an internal condition causes reprogramming of temporal and spatial transcription. When an organism undergoes physiological and/or morphological changes, several signaling pathways are activated simultaneously. Examples of such complex reactions are the response to temperature changes, dehydration, various biologically active substances, and others. A significant part of the regulatory ensemble in such complex reactions remains unidentified. We developed metaRE, an R package for the systematic search for cis-regulatory elements enriched in the promoters of the genes significantly changed their transcription in a complex reaction. metaRE mines multiple expression profiling datasets generated to test the same organism’s response and identifies simple and composite cis-regulatory elements systematically associated with differential expression of genes. Here, we showed metaRE performance for the identification of low-temperature-responsive cis-regulatory code in Arabidopsis thaliana and Danio rerio. MetaRE identified potential binding sites for known as well as unknown cold response regulators. A notable part of cis-elements was found in both searches discovering great conservation in low-temperature responses between plants and animals.</jats:p

metaRE R Package for Meta-Analysis of Transcriptome Data to Identify the cis-Regulatory Code behind the Transcriptional Reprogramming

At the molecular level, response to an external factor or an internal condition causes reprogramming of temporal and spatial transcription. When an organism undergoes physiological and/or morphological changes, several signaling pathways are activated simultaneously. Examples of such complex reactions are the response to temperature changes, dehydration, various biologically active substances, and others. A significant part of the regulatory ensemble in such complex reactions remains unidentified. We developed metaRE, an R package for the systematic search for cis-regulatory elements enriched in the promoters of the genes significantly changed their transcription in a complex reaction. metaRE mines multiple expression profiling datasets generated to test the same organism&rsquo;s response and identifies simple and composite cis-regulatory elements systematically associated with differential expression of genes. Here, we showed metaRE performance for the identification of low-temperature-responsive cis-regulatory code in Arabidopsis thaliana and Danio rerio. MetaRE identified potential binding sites for known as well as unknown cold response regulators. A notable part of cis-elements was found in both searches discovering great conservation in low-temperature responses between plants and animals

Cell dynamics in WOX5-overexpressing root tips: the impact of local auxin biosynthesis

Root stem cell niche functioning requires the formation and maintenance of the specific “auxin-rich domain” governed by directional auxin transport and local auxin production. Auxin maximum co-localizes with the WOX5 expression domain in the quiescent center that separates mitotically active proximal and distal root meristems. Here we unravel the interconnected processes happening under WOX5 overexpression by combining in vivo experiments and mathematical modeling. We showed that WOX5-induced TAA1-mediated auxin biosynthesis is the cause, whereas auxin accumulation, PIN transporters relocation, and auxin redistribution between proximal and distal root meristems are its subsequent effects that influence the formation of the well-described phenotype with an enlarged root cap. These findings helped us to clarify the role of WOX5, which serves as a local QC-specific regulator that activates biosynthesis of non-cell-autonomous signal auxin to regulate the distal meristem functioning. The mathematical model with WOX5-mediated auxin biosynthesis and auxin-regulated cell growth, division, and detachment reproduces the columella cells dynamics in both wild type and under WOX5 dysregulation

Energy Evolution: Forecasting the Development of Non-Conventional Renewable Energy Sources and Their Impact on the Conventional Electricity System

The development of the world&rsquo;s electric power systems goes back over a century. During this period, the overwhelming majority of states have formed stable, typically centralized systems for generation, transmission, and distribution of electrical energy. At the same time, technologies, primarily for energy generation, are steadily developing, which leads to the emergence of potentially effective technological solutions based on fundamentally new energy sources. The most rapidly expanding group at the moment are renewable energy sources (RES). This fact is due to the significant coverage of the potential environmental and economic benefits of using technologies based on RES in the information environment. At the same time, the process of transformation of traditional electric power systems, by integrating generation technologies based on the use of renewable energy sources, is extremely resource-intensive, and also potentially reducing the level of sustainability and efficiency of the entire system functioning as a whole. This thesis is primarily true for exclusively centralized power systems. The purpose of this study is to create a forecasting model for the development of non-conventional renewable energy sources (NCRES) for short, medium, and long term, which makes it possible to form an action plan to ensure a reliable and uninterrupted supplying of consumers, taking into account the existing electric power system. The developed model made it possible to identify the most promising directions of NCRES from the integration point of view, and for them the quantification and clustering of the information environment was carried out, which made it possible to identify key trends and the specifics of the development of technological solutions for these directions of renewable energy sources. The developed tool and systemic conclusions formulated on the basis of its application make it possible to develop mathematically sound solutions in the direction of managing the development of traditional electric power systems based on the integration of NCRES