Acrylamide acute neurotoxicity in adult zebrafish

Un articulo indexadoAcute exposure to acrylamide (ACR), a type-2 alkene, may lead to a ataxia, skeletal muscles weakness and numbness of the extremities in human and laboratory animals. In the present manuscript, ACR acute neurotoxicity has been characterized in adult zebrafish, a vertebrate model increasingly used in human neuropharmacology and toxicology research. At behavioral level, ACR-treated animals exhibited “depression-like” phenotype comorbid with anxiety behavior. At transcriptional level, ACR induced down-regulation of regeneration-associated genes and up-regulation of oligodendrocytes and reactive astrocytes markers, altering also the expression of genes involved in the presynaptic vesicle cycling. ACR induced also significant changes in zebrafish brain proteome and formed adducts with selected cysteine residues of specific proteins, some of them essential for the presynaptic function. Finally, the metabolomics analysis shows a depletion in the monoamine neurotransmitters, consistent with the comorbid depression and anxiety disorder, in the brain of the exposed fish.Conacy

Androgenic activation, impairment of the monoaminergic system and altered behavior in zebra!sh larvae exposed to environmental concentrations of fenitrothion

Artículo indizadoFenitrothion is an organophosphorus insecticide usually found in aquatic ecosystems at concentrations in the range of low ng/L. In this manuscript we show that 24 h exposure to environmental concentrations of fenitro- thion, from ng/L to low !g/L, altered basal locomotor activity, visual-motor response and acoustic/vibrational es- cape response of zebra!sh larvae. Furthermore, fenitrothion and expression of gap43a, gfap, atp2b1a, and mbp exhibited a signi!cant non-monotonic concentration-response relationship. Once determined that environmen- tal concentrations of fenitrothion were neurotoxic for zebra!sh larvae, a computational analysis identi!ed poten- tial protein targets of this compound. Some of the predictions, including interactions with acetylcholinesterase, monoamine-oxidases and androgen receptor (AR), were experimentally validated. Binding to AR was the most suitable candidate for molecular initiating event, as indicated by both the up-regulation of cyp19a1b and sult2st3 and the non-monotonic relationship found between fenitrothion and the observed responses. Finally, when the integrity of the monoaminergic system was evaluated, altered levels of L-DOPA, DOPAC, HVA and 5-HIAA were found, as well as a signi!cant up-regulation of slc18a2 expression at the lowest concentrations of fenitrothion. These data strongly suggest that concentrations of fenitrothion commonly found in aquatic ecosystems present a signi!cant environmental risk for !sh communities.This work was supported by the Spanish Government with FEDER Funds (CTM2017-83242-R; D.R.) and the net- work of recognized research groups by the Catalan Government (2017 SGR_902)

Marine fish egg hydration is aquaporin-mediated.

Contains fulltext : 48766.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)The positive buoyancy of marine fish eggs in sea water, allowed by hydration of the oocyte, is critical for their survival and dispersion in the ocean. We isolated an aquaporin, SaAQP1o, that belongs to a unique subfamily of aquaporin-1-like channels specifically evolved in teleosts and mainly expressed in the ovary. We further show that hormone-induced fish oocyte hydration is a highly controlled process based on the interplay between protein hydrolysis and the translocation of SaAQP1o to the plasma membrane, indicating a specialized physiological role for this aquaporin

Improving the Performance of Biomechanically Safe Velocity Control for Redundant Robots through Reflected Mass Minimization

Ensuring safety is a primary goal in physical human-robot interaction. In various collision experiments it was found that the robot's effective mass, velocity, and geometry are the key parameters which influence the human injury severity during an impact. Recently, a velocity controller was proposed that limits the robot speed to a biomechanically safe value, taking into account the mass and the curvature in the direction of movement for a given point of interest. The mass and the geometry depend on the mechanical design, however, the effective mass also depends on the robot configuration. In this paper, we exploit the redundant degree(s) of freedom of a joint torque controlled seven- and eight-DOF robot to minimize the effective mass without affecting the desired Cartesian end-effector trajectory and with the goal to improve the performance of the safe velocity controller at the same time. Given recent results in robotics injury analysis, we analyze when such a redundancy resolution scheme actually improves safety. For the considered robots, we find reflected mass extrema that can be obtained by null space motions, and propose a real-time, torque-based redundancy resolution scheme, which is finally verified in experiments