Gene Expression changes in aging zebrafish (Danio rerio) brains are sexually dimorphic

Cataloged from PDF version of article.Background: Brain aging is a multi-factorial process due to both genetic and environmental factors. The zebrafish has recently become a popular model organism for examining aging and age-related diseases because as in humans they age gradually and exhibit cognitive decline. Few studies have examined the biological changes in the aging brain that may contribute to these declines and none have examined them within individuals with respect to gender. Our aim was to identify the main genetic pathways associated with zebrafish brain aging across gender. We chose males and females from specific age groups (young, 7.5-8.5 months and old, 31-36 months) based on the progression of cognitive decline in zebrafish. RNA was isolated from individual brains and subjected to microarray and qPCR analysis. Statistical analyses were performed using a two-way ANOVA and the relevant post-hoc tests. Results: Our results demonstrated that in the brains of young and old male and female zebrafish there were over 500 differentially expressed genes associated with multiple pathways but most notably were those related to neurogenesis and cell differentiation, as well as brain and nervous system development. Conclusions: The gene expression of multiple pathways is altered with age and differentially expressed in males and females. Future studies will be aimed at determining the causal relationships of age-related changes in gene expression in individual male and female brains, as well as possible interventions that counteract these alterations

Spectrum-Aware and Energy-Adaptive Reliable Transport for Internet of Sensing Things

© 1967-2012 IEEE. Wireless sensors equipped with cognitive radio, i.e., cognitive radio sensor networks (CRSN), can access the spectrum in an opportunistic manner and coexist with licensed users to mitigate the crowded spectrum problem and provide ubiquitous remote event monitoring and tracking for cyber-physical systems. In this paper, a novel transport layer protocol for CRSN, spectrum-aware energy-adaptive reliable transport protocol is presented to enable energy-adaptive collaborative event sensing in spectrum-scarce cyber-physical systems. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to specifically devise a reliable event transport scheme for CRSN

Nonlinearities and Parametric Amplification in Superconducting Coplanar Waveguide Resonators

Experimental investigations of the nonlinear properties of superconducting niobium coplanar waveguide resonators are reported. The nonlinearity due to a current dependent kinetic inductance of the center conductor is strong enough to realize bifurcation of the nonlinear oscillator. When driven with two frequencies near the threshold for bifurcation, parametric amplification with a gain of +22.4 dB is observed.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, 1 table. In version 2: Added appendix with model description and fits to measurements. Minor corrections and rephrasin

Genetic characterization and relatedness among autochthonous grapevine cultivars from Northeast Turkey by Simple Sequence Repeats (SSR)

25 autochthonous grapevine cultivars from Northeast Anatolia in Turkey together with two well-known standard cultivars, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot were fi ngerprinted using six pairs of SSR primers to assess their genetic diversity and relatedness. All six SSR primers produced successful amplifi cations and revealed DNA polymorphisms that were subsequently used to assess genetic relatedness of the cultivars. A total of 52 alleles were detected with a mean value of 8.67 alleles per locus indicating allele richness. The average expected heterozygosity (He) and observed heterozygosity (Ho) were 0.759 and 0.809, respectively. Considering the number of alleles generated, the highest number was observed in VVS2 loci (14 alleles/locus), while the lowest in VrZAG83 loci (5 alleles/locus). The Unweighted Pair-Group Method with Arithmetic mean (UPGMA) dendrogram constructed based on the SSR data yielded two main clusters. First cluster included only cv. Kibris and the second cluster included rest of the cultivars including Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. The results showed that SSR markers have proved to be an effi cient tool for fi ngerprinting grapevine cultivars and conducting genetic diversity studies in grapevine

Senescence and immortality in hepatocellular carcinoma

Cataloged from PDF version of article.Cellular senescence is a process leading to terminal growth arrest with characteristic morphological features. This process is mediated by telomere-dependent, oncogene-induced and ROS-induced pathways, but persistent DNA damage is the most common cause. Senescence arrest is mediated by p16(INK4a)- and p21(Cip1)-dependent pathways both leading to retinoblastoma protein (pRb) activation. p53 plays a relay role between DNA damage sensing and p21(Cip1) activation. pRb arrests the cell cycle by recruiting proliferation genes to facultative heterochromatin for permanent silencing. Replicative senescence that occurs in hepatocytes in culture and in liver cirrhosis is associated with lack of telomerase activity and results in telomere shortening. Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cells display inactivating mutations of p53 and epigenetic silencing of p16(INK4a). Moreover, they re-express telomerase reverse transcriptase required for telomere maintenance. Thus, senescence bypass and cellular immortality is likely to contribute significantly to HCC development. Oncogene-induced senescence in premalignant lesions and reversible immortality of cancer cells including HCC offer new potentials for tumor prevention and treatment. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved

Aging, neurogenesis, and caloric restriction in different model organisms

Brain aging is a multifactorial process that is occurring across multiple cognitive domains. A significant complaint that occurs in the elderly is a decrement in learning and memory ability. Both rodents and zebrafish exhibit a similar problem with memory during aging. The neurobiological changes that underlie this cognitive decline are complex and undoubtedly influenced by many factors. Alterations in the birth of new neurons and neuron turnover may contribute to age-related cognitive problems. Caloric restriction is the only non-genetic intervention that reliably increases life span and healthspan across multiple organisms although the molecular mechanisms are not well-understood. Recently the zebrafish has become a popular model organism for understanding the neurobiological consequences but to date very little work has been performed. Similarly, few studies have examined the effects of dietary restriction in zebrafish. Here we review the literature related to memory decline, neurogenesis, and caloric restriction across model organisms and suggest that zebrafish has the potential to be an important animal model for understanding the complex interactions between age, neurobiological changes in the brain, and dietary regimens or their mimetics as interventions

Computational analysis of complicated metamaterial structures using MLFMA and nested preconditioners

We consider accurate solution of scattering problems involving complicated metamaterial (MM) structures consisting of thin wires and split-ring resonators. The scattering problems are formulated by the electric-field integral equation (EFIE) discretized with the Rao-Wilton- Glisson basis functions defined on planar triangles. The resulting dense matrix equations are solved iteratively, where the matrix-vector multiplications that are required by the iterative solvers are accelerated with the multilevel fast multipole algorithm (MLFMA). Since EFIE usually produces matrix equations that are ill-conditioned and difficult to solve iteratively, we employ nested preconditioners to achieve rapid convergence of the iterative solutions. To further accelerate the simulations, we parallelize our algorithm and perform the solutions on a cluster of personal computers. This way, we are able to solve problems of MMs involving thousands of unit cells

Assessment of caecal parameters in layer hens fed on diets containing wheat distillers dried grains with solubles

There is much interest in quantifying the nutritional value of UK wheat distillers dried grains with solubles (W-DDGS) for livestock species. A study was designed to evaluate caecal parameters (pH, short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) and bacterial diversity) in layer hens fed on balanced diets containing graded concentrations of W-DDGS. A total of 32 layer hens (Bovans Brown strain at 27 weeks of age) were randomly allocated to one of 4 dietary treatments containing W-DDGS at 0, 60, 120 or 180 g/kg. Each treatment was fed to 8 replicate individually housed layer hens over a 5-d acclimatisation period, followed by a 4-week trial. Individual feed intakes were monitored and all eggs were collected daily for weeks 2, 3 and 4 of the trial, weighed and an assessment of eggshell “dirtiness” made. All hens were culled on d 29 and caecal pH and SCFAs measured. Polymerase chain reaction denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis of the bacterial 16 S rDNA gene was used to assess total bacterial diversity of luminal caecal content from hens fed the 0 and 180 g W-DDGS/kg diets. Unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean (UPGMA) dendrograms were generated from DGGE banding patterns. Increasing W-DDGS dietary concentrations resulted in a more acidic caecal environment. Caecal SCFAs were unaffected by diet aside from a quadratic effect for molar proportions of isobutyric acid. Diversity profiles of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene from luminal caecal contents were unaffected by W-DDGS inclusion. The results of the current study suggest that W-DDGS can be successfully formulated into nutritionally balanced layer diets (supplemented with xylanase and phytase) at up to 180 g/kg with no detrimental effects to the caecal environment