Transcriptome Analysis of the Hippocampal CA1 Pyramidal Cell Region after Kainic Acid-Induced Status Epilepticus in Juvenile Rats

Molecular mechanisms involved in epileptogenesis in the developing brain remain poorly understood. The gene array approach could reveal some of the factors involved by allowing the identification of a broad scale of genes altered by seizures. In this study we used microarray analysis to reveal the gene expression profile of the laser microdissected hippocampal CA1 subregion one week after kainic acid (KA)-induced status epilepticus (SE) in 21-day-old rats, which are developmentally roughly comparable to juvenile children. The gene expression analysis with the Chipster software generated a total of 1592 differently expressed genes in the CA1 subregion of KA-treated rats compared to control rats. The KEGG database revealed that the identified genes were involved in pathways such as oxidative phosporylation (26 genes changed), and long-term potentiation (LTP; 18 genes changed). Also genes involved in Ca2+ homeostasis, gliosis, inflammation, and GABAergic transmission were altered. To validate the microarray results we further examined the protein expression for a subset of selected genes, glial fibrillary protein (GFAP), apolipoprotein E (apo E), cannabinoid type 1 receptor (CB1), Purkinje cell protein 4 (PEP-19), and interleukin 8 receptor (CXCR1), with immunohistochemistry, which confirmed the transcriptome results. Our results showed that SE resulted in no obvious CA1 neuronal loss, and alterations in the expression pattern of several genes during the early epileptogenic phase were comparable to previous gene expression studies of the adult hippocampus of both experimental epileptic animals and patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). However, some changes seem to occur after SE specifically in the juvenile rat hippocampus. Insight of the SE-induced alterations in gene expression and their related pathways could give us hints for the development of new target-specific antiepileptic drugs that interfere with the progression of the disease in the juvenile age group

Athen, Griechenland. »Shapes of Ancient Greece«: Ein Projekt zur Digitalisierung der archäologischen Sammlung der Abteilung Athen. Der ­Beginn der Arbeiten 2021

The project »Shapes of Ancient Greece« is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and aims at digitizing and re-contextualizing the complete archaeological collection of the Athens branch of the German ­Archaeological Institute. Furthermore, all the approximately 37.000 objects will be provided with metadata. Most of these objects are pottery sherds. The items will be both photographed and scanned. The »Laser Aided Profiler« is used for generating two-dimensional profil drawings. The »Go!SCAN 3D-Scanner« for creating 3D models of selected objects. The digital images and the metadata will be published in iDAI.objects and linked to other databases under the umbrella of the iDAI.world portal

Expanding the hydride chemistry

Funding Information: The authors thank Christoph Wallach for Raman measurements and Sabine Zeitz for UV/Vis absorption spectroscopy. A. M. and M. B. thank Leonhard Dorsch for packing of the MAS rotors. Bircan Dilki is thanked gratefully for conducting the elemental analysis. We would like to thank the Institut Laue-Langevin for beam time allocated on D2B; https://doi.org/10.5291/ILL-DATA.5-21-1170 and https://doi.org/10.5291/ILL-DATA.EASY-725 . A. M. and N. K. thank the DFG for funding (project number 245845833) within International Research Training Group IRTG 2022—Alberta Technical University of Munich School for Functional Hybrid Materials (ATUMS). A. M. thanks the International Graduate School for Science and Engineering (IGSSE) for support. A. J. K. thanks Academy of Finland for funding (grant 324973) and CSC, the Finnish IT Center for Science for computational resources. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Royal Society of ChemistryThe four compounds A3MO4H (A = Rb, Cs; M = Mo, W) are introduced as the first members of the new material class of the transition oxometalate hydrides. The compounds are accessible via a thermal synthesis route with carefully controlled conditions. Their crystal structures were solved by neutron diffraction of the deuterated analogues. Rb3MoO4D, Cs3MoO4D and Cs3WO4D crystallize in the antiperovskite-like K3SO4F-structure type, while Rb3WO4D adopts a different orthorhombic structure. 2H MAS NMR, Raman spectroscopy and elemental analysis prove the abundance of hydride ions next to oxometalate ions and experimental findings are supported by quantum chemical calculations. The tetragonal phases are direct and wide band gap semiconductors arising from hydride states, whereas Rb3WO4H shows a unique, peculiar valence band structure dominated by hydride states.Peer reviewe

Konzeptionelle und praktische Überlegungen zu einer gesundheitsfördernden Fakultät - Ein Manual für den hochschulischen Transfer - Campus Kleefeld

Mehr als 3,5 Millionen Menschen verbringen an deutschen Hochschulen den Großteil ihres Tages und sind hier gesundheitlichen Belastungen ausgesetzt. Die Rahmenbedingungen an Hochschulen können erheblichen Einfluss auf die Gesundheit der Studierenden und Beschäftigten haben. Die soziale Verantwortung der Fakultät V gegenüber den dort Studierenden und Beschäftigten hat zur Initiierung des Projektes der „Gesundheitsfördernden Fakultät V – Campus Kleefeld“ geführt. Das Projekt zielt auf den Erhalt bzw. die nachhaltige Förderung der Gesundheit und Gesundheitskompetenz der dort lokalisierten Statusgruppen ab und möchte damit insbesondere die Motivation und Zufriedenheit der Studierenden und Beschäftigten an der Fakultät V unterstützen. Dieses Handbuch richtet sich an Fakultäten, die Interesse an einer langfristigen und nachhaltigen Implementierung gesundheitsförderlicher Maßnahmen für Studierende und/oder Beschäftigte haben und nach einer greifbaren sowie praxisnahen Unterstützung suchen

Climate policies that achieved major emission reductions: Global evidence from two decades

Meeting the Paris Agreement’s climate targets necessitates better knowledge about which climate policies work in reducing emissions at the necessary scale. We provide a global, systematic ex post evaluation to identify policy combinations that have led to large emission reductions out of 1500 climate policies implemented between 1998 and 2022 across 41 countries from six continents. Our approach integrates a comprehensive climate policy database with a machine learning–based extension of the common difference-in-differences approach. We identified 63 successful policy interventions with total emission reductions between 0.6 billion and 1.8 billion metric tonnes CO2. Our insights on effective but rarely studied policy combinations highlight the important role of price-based instruments in well-designed policy mixes and the policy efforts necessary for closing the emissions gap

Impact of High-Fat Diet and Exercise on Bone and Bile Acid Metabolism in Rats

Bile acids help facilitate intestinal lipid absorption and have endocrine activity in glucose, lipid and bone metabolism. Obesity and exercise influence bile acid metabolism and have opposite effects in bone. This study investigates if regular exercise helps mitigate the adverse effects of obesity on bone, potentially by reversing alterations in bile acid metabolism. Four-month-old female Sprague Dawley rats either received a high-fat diet (HFD) or a chow-based standard diet (lean controls). During the 10-month study period, half of the animals performed 30 min of running at moderate speed on five consecutive days followed by two days of rest. The other half was kept inactive (inactive controls). At the study’s end, bone quality was assessed by microcomputed tomography and biomechanical testing. Bile acids were measured in serum and stool. HFD feeding was related to reduced trabecular (−33%, p = 1.14 × 10−7) and cortical (−21%, p = 2.9 × 10−8) bone mass and lowered femoral stiffness (12–41%, p = 0.005). Furthermore, the HFD decreased total bile acids in serum (−37%, p = 1.0 × 10−6) but increased bile acids in stool (+2-fold, p = 7.3 × 10−9). These quantitative effects were accompanied by changes in the relative abundance of individual bile acids. The concentration of serum bile acids correlated positively with all cortical bone parameters (r = 0.593–0.708), whilst stool levels showed inverse correlations at the cortical (r = −0.651–−0.805) and trabecular level (r = −0.656–−0.750). Exercise improved some trabecular and cortical bone quality parameters (+11–31%, p = 0.043 to 0.001) in lean controls but failed to revert the bone loss related to the HFD. Similarly, changes in bile acid metabolism were not mitigated by exercise. Prolonged HFD consumption induced quantitative and qualitative alterations in bile acid metabolism, accompanied by bone loss. Tight correlations between bile acids and structural indices of bone quality support further functional analyses on the potential role of bile acids in bone metabolism. Regular moderate exercise improved trabecular and cortical bone quality in lean controls but failed in mitigating the effects related to the HFD in bone and bile acid metabolism

Immune responses against SARS-CoV-2 variants after heterologous and homologous ChAdOx1 nCoV-19/BNT162b2 vaccination.

Currently approved viral vector-based and mRNA-based vaccine approaches against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) consider only homologous prime-boost vaccination. After reports of thromboembolic events, several European governments recommended using AstraZeneca's ChAdOx1-nCov-19 (ChAd) only in individuals older than 60 years, leaving millions of already ChAd-primed individuals with the decision to receive either a second shot of ChAd or a heterologous boost with mRNA-based vaccines. However, such combinations have not been tested so far. We used Hannover Medical School's COVID-19 Contact Study cohort of healthcare professionals to monitor ChAd-primed immune responses before and 3 weeks after booster with ChAd (n = 32) or BioNTech/Pfizer's BNT162b2 (n = 55). Although both vaccines boosted prime-induced immunity, BNT162b2 induced significantly higher frequencies of spike-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cells and, in particular, high titers of neutralizing antibodies against the B.1.1.7, B.1.351 and P.1 variants of concern of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2

Recruitment of plasma cells from IL-21-dependent and IL-21-independent immune reactions to the bone marrow

Abstract Bone marrow plasma cells (BMPC) are the correlate of humoral immunity, consistently releasing antibodies into the bloodstream. It remains unclear if BMPC reflect different activation environments or maturation of their precursors. Here we define human BMPC heterogeneity and track the recruitment of antibody-secreting cells (ASC) from SARS-CoV-2 vaccine immune reactions to the bone marrow (BM). Trajectories based on single-cell transcriptomes and repertoires of peripheral and BM ASC reveal sequential colonisation of BMPC compartments. In activated B cells, IL-21 suppresses CD19 expression, indicating that CD19low-BMPC are derived from follicular, while CD19high-BMPC originate from extrafollicular immune reactions. In primary immune reactions, both CD19low- and CD19high-BMPC compartments are populated. In secondary immune reactions, most BMPC are recruited to CD19high-BMPC compartments, reflecting their origin from extrafollicular reactivations of memory B cells. A pattern also observable in vaccinated-convalescent individuals and upon diphtheria/tetanus/pertussis recall-vaccination. Thus, BMPC diversity reflects the evolution of a given humoral immune response