Reported Incidence of Cases at the ISU Veterinary Teaching Hospital

Cases dealing with trauma are the most commonly seen cases at lSU\u27s Teaching Hospital followed closely by gastrointentestinal and dermatological cases. From information gathered since 1980, trauma cases comprised 20 % of the caseload in 1980 and remained the number one complaint despite a steady decline in the number of cases seen (12 % in 1984). Gastrointestinal cases were the second most commonly seen problem, accounting for 14% of the hospital\u27s caseload in 1980 and decreasing slightly to 12 % in 1984. Dermatological cases were a close third, supplying 12 % of the caseload in 1980 and increasing slightly to 13% in 1984

A Brief Review of Scrapie

Accounts of scrapie have been published in northwestern Europe since 1750. Available evidence suggests the prevalence and occurrence of scrapie is closely connected with the breed and genetic structures of the sheep population to which the affected animals belong. After 1700, ovine nutritional and environmental housing conditions improved in Europe with the exception of Spain. Interest in phenotype improvement by genetic selection began at this time also, leading to a system of closer inbreeding. The Spanish merino studs of Germany and France in the late eighteenth century adopted a program of closer inbreeding with catastrophic results. Within 20 years, scrapie had become so prevalent that certain stud flocks were almost lost, as losses from this disease outnumbered increases in the herd. Without individual animal identification and well kept mating and lambing records, it was difficult to control any genetic predisposition to this disease. This is especially true with scrapie, which does not manifest itself until middle age, often halfway through an animal\u27s reproductive life. Unfortunately such records were not always kept under European 18th century farming conditions

Amino Acid Degradation after Meteoritic Impact Simulation

Amino acids are among the most important prebiotic molecules as it is from these precursors that the building blocks of life were formed [1]. Although organic molecules were among the components of the planetesimals making up the terrestrial planets, large amounts of primitive organic precursor molecules are believed to be exogenous in origin and to have been imported to the Earth via micrometeorites, carbonaceous meteorites and comets, especially during the early stages of the formation of the Solar System [1,2]. Our study concerns the hypothesis that prebiotic organic matter, present on Earth, was synthesized in the interstellar environment, and then imported to Earth by meteorites or micrometeorites. We are particularly concerned with the formation and fate of amino acids. We have already shown that amino acid synthesis is possible inside cometary grains under interstellar environment conditions [3]. We are now interested in the effects of space conditions and meteoritic impact on these amino acids [4-6]. Most of the extraterrestrial organic molecules known today have been identified in carbonaceous chondrite meteorites [7]. One of the components of these meteorites is a clay with a composition close to that of saponite, used in our experiments. Two American teams have studied the effects of impact on various amino acids [8,9]. [8] investigated amino acids in saturated solution in water with pressure ranges between 5.1 and 21 GPa and temperature ranges between 412 and 870 K. [9] studied amino acids in solid form associated with and without minerals (Murchison and Allende meteorite extracts) and pressure ranges between 3 and 30 GPa. In these two experiments, the amino acids survived up to 15 GPa. At higher pressure, the quantity of preserved amino acids decreases quickly. Some secondary products such as dipeptides and diketopiperazins were identified in the [8] experiment

Reported Incidence of Cases at the ISU Veterinary Teaching Hospital

Cases dealing with trauma are the most commonly seen cases at lSU's Teaching Hospital followed closely by gastrointentestinal and dermatological cases. From information gathered since 1980, trauma cases comprised 20 % of the caseload in 1980 and remained the number one complaint despite a steady decline in the number of cases seen (12 % in 1984). Gastrointestinal cases were the second most commonly seen problem, accounting for 14% of the hospital's caseload in 1980 and decreasing slightly to 12 % in 1984. Dermatological cases were a close third, supplying 12 % of the caseload in 1980 and increasing slightly to 13% in 1984.</p

(Editor's) Notes or Why We Did Things This Way

Greetings! It is my great pleasure and privilege to be senior editor of this 50th anniversary edition of The ISU Veterinarian. You may have noticed that this volume has been titled The Veten·nary Student, the journal's original name when it was begun in 1938. We thought it would be fun, as well as interesting, for our readers if we pursued an historical point of view in this issue. The format ofthis issue reflects that desire. There are two anicies dealing with people who were active in 1938. One is a feature story on Dr. Leland West, a 1936 graduate of I.S.U. who made the acquaintance of one of the ISU Vet staffers at the AVMA convention in Chicago last summer. He agreed to talk about his life as a practitioner as well as what major changes he feels have taken place in veterinary medicine. That story is on pages 36 and 37. The second feature highlights the accomplishments of Dr. Margaret Wragg Sloss, the first woman to graduate from I.S.U .'s veterinary college in 1938. Her life is chronicled, beginning on page 61.</p

West Nile virus (WNV) replication is independent of autophagy in mammalian cells.

Autophagy is a homeostatic process responsible for recycling cytosolic proteins and organelles. Moreover, this pathway contributes to the cell's intrinsic innate defenses. While many viruses have evolved mechanisms to antagonize the antiviral effects of the autophagy pathway, others subvert autophagy to facilitate replication. Here, we have investigated the role of autophagy in West Nile virus (WNV) replication. Experiments in cell lines derived from a variety of sources, including the kidney, liver, skin, and brain, indicated that WNV replication does not upregulate the autophagy pathway. Furthermore, WNV infection did not inhibit rapamycin-induced autophagy, suggesting that WNV does not disrupt the authophagy signaling cascade. Perturbation of the autophagy pathway by depletion of the major autophagy factors Atg5 or Atg7 had no effect on WNV infectious particle production, indicating that WNV does not require a functional autophagy pathway for replication. Taken together, the results of our study provide evidence that WNV, unlike several other viruses of the family Flaviviridae, does not significantly interact with the conventional autophagy pathway in mammalian cells

Dr. Dukes - A Life Remembered

Dr. H. Hugh Dukes, author of Dukes, Physiology of Domestic Animals, died on June 8, 1987. His work as an author and educator is internationally recognized but we know little about his life outside academia. In an interview in September, Mrs. Dukes talked about Dr. Dukes and their life together. This article is a summary of that interview.</p