Behavior Problems in Relation to Sustained Selective Attention Skills of Moderately Preterm Children

Attention skills may form an important developmental mechanism. A mediation model was examined in which behavioral problems of moderately preterm and term children at school age are explained by attention performance. Parents and teachers completed behavioral assessments of 348 moderately preterm children and 182 term children at 8 years of age. Children were administered a test of sustained selective attention. Preterm birth was associated with more behavioral and attention difficulties. Gestational age, prenatal maternal smoking, and gender were associated with mothers’, fathers’, and teachers’ reports of children’s problem behavior. Sustained selective attention partially mediated the relationship between birth status and problem behavior. Development of attention skills should be an important focus for future research in moderately preterm children

Can Animal Skin Diseases or Current Transgenic Mice Serve as a Model for Hidradenitis Suppurativa?

The pathogenesis of hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) is still enigmatic, and a valid animal model for HS is currently not available. The recent discovery of gamma-secretase mutations in a subpopulation of patients with HS suggested gamma-secretase transgenic mice as a model for HS pathogenesis. However, the discrepancies between human HS and these mice are daunting. We critically review cases of animal HS and transgenic gamma-secretase mouse models for HS and discuss the criteria which should be met for a representative pathogenic model. Copyright (C) 2012 S. Karger AG, Base

Mitochondrial introgression and interspecies recombination in the Fusarium fujikuroi species complex

The Fusarium fujikuroi species complex (FFSC) is an economically important monophyletic lineage in the genus Fusarium. Incongruence observed among mitochondrial gene trees, as well as the multiple non-orthologous copies of the internal transcribed spacer region of the ribosomal RNA genes, suggests that the origin and history of this complex likely involved interspecies gene flow. Based on this hypothesis, the mitochondrial genomes of non-conspecific species should harbour signatures of introgression or introgressive hybridization. The aim of this study was therefore to search for recombination between the mitochondrial genomes of different species in the FFSC. Using methods based on mt genome sequence similarity, five significant recombinant regions in both gene and intergenic regions were detected. Using coalescent-based methods and the sequences for individual mt genes, various ancestral recombination events between different lineages of the FFSC were also detected. These findings suggest that interspecies gene flow and introgression are likely to have played key roles in the evolution of the FFSC at both ancient and more recent time scales.The South African National Department of Science and Technology (DST), National Research Foundation (NRF), the Technology and Human Resources of Industry Programme (THRIP) (includes Grant specific unique reference number (UID) 83924), the Tree Protection Cooperative Programme (TPCP), L’Oréal/UNESCO for Women in Science in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Claude Leon Foundation, and the University of Pretoria.http://www.imafungus.orgam2019BiochemistryForestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute (FABI)GeneticsMicrobiology and Plant Patholog