Immunometabolism: Molecular mechanisms, diseases, and therapies 2018

Immunometabolism: Molecular mechanisms, diseases, and therapies 201

Ultrasound Quantitative Assessment of Ventral Finger Microvasculopathy in Systemic Sclerosis With Raynaud’s Phenomena: A Comparative Study

Objective: To assess the finger vascularity of systemic sclerosis patients with Raynaud\u27s phenomenon (RP-SSc) using various ultrasound techniques. Methods: All fingers (except thumbs) of 18 RP-SSc patients and 18 controls were imaged at room temperature using four ultrasound vascular imaging techniques. The percent vascular area was quantified by counting blood flow pixels in a 25 mm2 square centred at the nail fold for the dorsal side and in 25 mm2 and 100 mm2 square from the fingertip for the ventral side. The mean vascular intensity was calculated from the corresponding areas for dorsal and ventral sides. Results: The percent vascular areas and mean vascular intensities in RP-SSc were significantly lower than those in controls for both dorsal and ventral sides (p\u3c0.01). The mean vascular intensities showed slightly higher area under the curve (AUC) than the percent vascular areas (0.53-0.91 vs 0.53-0.90) regardless of imaging technique and assessment side. For each imaging technique, the ventral side vascularity showed a higher AUC (0.74-0.91) compared with the dorsal side (0.53-0.81). Moreover, ventral side abnormalities were associated with a history of digital ulcers. Conclusions: Ultrasound demonstrated potential to quantify finger vascularity of RP-SSc. The ventral side of the fingers showed a higher accuracy in detecting RP-SSc than the dorsal side

Tumor-expressed adrenomedullin accelerates breast cancer bone metastasis

INTRODUCTION: Adrenomedullin (AM) is secreted by breast cancer cells and increased by hypoxia. It is a multifunctional peptide that stimulates angiogenesis and proliferation. The peptide is also a potent paracrine stimulator of osteoblasts and bone formation, suggesting a role in skeletal metastases-a major site of treatment-refractory tumor growth in patients with advanced disease. METHODS: The role of adrenomedullin in bone metastases was tested by stable overexpression in MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells, which cause osteolytic bone metastases in a standard animal model. Cells with fivefold increased expression of AM were characterized in vitro, inoculated into immunodeficient mice and compared for their ability to form bone metastases versus control subclones. Bone destruction was monitored by X-ray, and tumor burden and osteoclast numbers were determined by quantitative histomorphometry. The effects of AM overexpression on tumor growth and angiogenesis in the mammary fat pad were determined. The effects of AM peptide on osteoclast-like multinucleated cell formation were tested in vitro. A small-molecule AM antagonist was tested for its effects on AM-stimulated ex vivo bone cell cultures and co-cultures with tumor cells, where responses of tumor and bone were distinguished by species-specific real-time PCR. RESULTS: Overexpression of AM mRNA did not alter cell proliferation in vitro, expression of tumor-secreted factors or cell cycle progression. AM-overexpressing cells caused osteolytic bone metastases to develop more rapidly, which was accompanied by decreased survival. In the mammary fat pad, tumors grew more rapidly with unchanged blood vessel formation. Tumor growth in the bone was also more rapid, and osteoclasts were increased. AM peptide potently stimulated bone cultures ex vivo; responses that were blocked by small-molecule adrenomedullin antagonists in the absence of cellular toxicity. Antagonist treatment dramatically suppressed tumor growth in bone and decreased markers of osteoclast activity. CONCLUSIONS: The results identify AM as a target for therapeutic intervention against bone metastases. Adrenomedullin potentiates osteolytic responses in bone to metastatic breast cancer cells. Small-molecule antagonists can effectively block bone-mediated responses to tumor-secreted adrenomedullin, and such agents warrant development for testing in vivo

Viral to metazoan marine plankton nucleotide sequences from the Tara Oceans expedition

A unique collection of oceanic samples was gathered by the Tara Oceans expeditions (2009-2013), targeting plankton organisms ranging from viruses to metazoans, and providing rich environmental context measurements. Thanks to recent advances in the field of genomics, extensive sequencing has been performed for a deep genomic analysis of this huge collection of samples. A strategy based on different approaches, such as metabarcoding, metagenomics, single-cell genomics and metatranscriptomics, has been chosen for analysis of size-fractionated plankton communities. Here, we provide detailed procedures applied for genomic data generation, from nucleic acids extraction to sequence production, and we describe registries of genomics datasets available at the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA, www.ebi.ac.uk/ena). The association of these metadata to the experimental procedures applied for their generation will help the scientific community to access these data and facilitate their analysis. This paper complements other efforts to provide a full description of experiments and open science resources generated from the Tara Oceans project, further extending their value for the study of the world's planktonic ecosystems

Time-course Of Transcriptomic Responses In Skeletal Muscle During Recovery From Endurance Exercise Indicates Prolonged Muscular Inflammation

Introduction Re-programming of gene expression is fundamental for skeletal muscle adaptations in response to endurance exercise. Although inflammatory responses in muscle following muscle-damaging exercise can persist for days, there is a paucity of global gene expression data beyond 48 hours following exercise. This study aimed to investigate the changes in the transcriptome of skeletal muscle until 96 hours after an endurance exercise trial (EXTRI; one hour of cycling followed by one hour of running). Data on the transcriptome of circulating neutrophils from participants in the current study indicated that the neutrophil transcriptional activity was related to the muscle-damaging component of the EXTRI (Neubauer et al. 2013, J Appl Physiol.). We hypothesised that the muscular transcriptome would particularly reflect interactions between muscle and infiltrating leukocytes. Methods Eight healthy, endurance-trained, male individuals participated. Skeletal muscle samples were taken one week before the EXTRI, 3, 48, and 96 hours post-EXTRI. RNA was extracted from muscle tissue. Differential gene expression was evaluated using Illumina microarrays, and validated with q-PCR. Gene set enrichment analysis identified functionally related gene sets chosen from the Molecular Signatures Database. Results Significantly (FWER p-value Conclusions The current data indicate that many of the coordinated gene expression responses in skeletal muscle, particularly at 96 hours post-EXTRI, were related with exercise-induced muscle damage, and the subsequent accumulation of muscle leukocytes. The substantial transcriptional activity 96 h post-EXTRI was strongly associated with inflammatory and immune responses, and suggests that muscular recovery, from a transcriptional perspective, is incomplete 96 hours after exercise

IMPACT: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning. Volume 10, Issue 2, Summer 2021

Impact: The Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching & Learning is a peer-reviewed, biannual online journal that publishes scholarly and creative non-fiction essays about the theory, practice, and assessment of interdisciplinary education. Impact is produced by the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching & Learning at Boston University College of General Studies. Impact accepts submissions throughout the year and publishes issues in February and July. Please submit your essays for consideration at https:// citl.submittable.com/submit. Impact provides free and open access to all of its research publications. There is no charge to authors for publication, and the journal abides by a CC-BY license. Authors published in Impact retain copyright on their articles, except for any third-party images and other materials added by Impact, which are subject to copyright of their respective owners. Authors are therefore free to disseminate and re-publish their articles, subject to any requirements of third-party copyright owners and subject to the original publication being fully cited. Visitors may download and forward articles subject to the citation requirements; all copyright notices must be displayed. If readers want to search by journal subject they might use these words: education, graduate, undergraduate, interdisciplinary, disciplines, curriculum, higher education.The theme of this issue is interdisciplinary approaches to, or including, the sciences. STEM disciplines like chemistry, biology, physics, computer science, and math are often taught as separate and distinct from the humanities. The concept of STEAM (STEM + Arts) has attempted to make STEM subjects more interdisciplinary, allowing students to interact with the material from different perspectives. The essays in this issue explore unique ways to design and implement interdisciplinary curricula that combine sciences and humanities/arts

Functional repertoire convergence of distantly related eukaryotic plankton lineages abundant in the sunlit ocean

Marine planktonic eukaryotes play critical roles in global biogeochemical cycles and climate. However, their poor representation in culture collections limits our understanding of the evolutionary history and genomic underpinnings of planktonic ecosystems. Here, we used 280 billion Tara Oceans metagenomic reads from polar, temperate, and tropical sunlit oceans to reconstruct and manually curate more than 700 abundant and widespread eukaryotic environmental genomes ranging from 10 Mbp to 1.3 Gbp. This genomic resource covers a wide range of poorly characterized eukaryotic lineages that complement long-standing contributions from culture collections while better representing plankton in the upper layer of the oceans. We performed the first, to our knowledge, comprehensive genome-wide functional classification of abundant unicellular eukaryotic plankton, revealing four major groups connecting distantly related lineages. Neither trophic modes of plankton nor its vertical evolutionary history could completely explain the functional repertoire convergence of major eukaryotic lineages that coexisted within oceanic currents for millions of years

Lanthanide compounds containing a benzo-15-crown-5 derivatised [60]fullerene and the related [Tb(H2O)(3)(NO3)(2)(acac)]. C14H20O5 supramolecular adduct

Novel lanthanum(III), europium(III) and terbium(III) compounds of a benzo-15-crown-5 [60]fulleropyrrolidine were isolated in the solid state and characterised using vibrational (infrared and Raman) spectroscopy and by 13C CP MAS NMR for the lanthanum(III) compound. The photoluminescence properties were investigated for the europium(III) and terbium(III) compounds. The related [Tb(H2O)3(NO3)2(acac)] C14H20O5 [where acac ¼ acetylacetonate and C14H20O5 ¼ benzo-15-crown-5] supramolecular adduct was isolated using similar synthetic conditions, in the absence of [60]fullerene, and its crystal structure used as a model for the coordination sphere of the lanthanide [60]fullerene derivatives, with further supporting evidence given by photoluminescence measurements

CEERS Key Paper VII: Emission Line Ratios from NIRSpec and NIRCam Wide-Field Slitless Spectroscopy at z>2

We use James Webb Space Telescope Near-Infrared Camera Wide Field Slitless Spectroscopy (NIRCam WFSS) and Near-Infrared spectrograph (NIRSpec) in the Cosmic Evolution Early Release survey (CEERS) to measure rest-frame optical emission-line of 155 galaxies at z>2. The blind NIRCam grism observations include a sample of galaxies with bright emission lines that were not observed on the NIRSpec masks. We study the changes of the Ha, [OIII]/Hb, and [NeIII]/[OII] emission lines in terms of redshift by comparing to lower redshift SDSS and CLEAR samples. We find a significant (>3$\sigma$) correlation between [OIII]/Hb with redshift, while [NeIII]/[OII] has a marginal (2$\sigma$) correlation with redshift. We compare [OIII]/Hb and [NeIII]/[OII] to stellar mass and Hb SFR. We find that both emission-line ratios have a correlation with Hb SFR and an anti-correlation with stellar mass across the redshifts 0<z<9. Comparison with MAPPINGS~V models indicates that these trends are consistent with lower metallicity and higher ionization in low-mass and high-SFR galaxies. We additionally compare to IllustriousTNG predictions and find that they effectively describe the highest [OIII]/Hb ratios observed in our sample, without the need to invoke MAPPINGS models with significant shock ionizionation components.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figure