Facial diplegia with hyperreflexia-a mild Guillain-Barre Syndrome variant, to treat or not to treat?

Guillain Barre Syndrome (GBS) is readily diagnosed when the presentation is that of ascending weakness and areflexia. Atypical presentations with preserved, and at times, brisk reflexes, can be a diagnostic dilemma. We describe a patient with GBS who presented with facial diplegia and hyperreflexia on examination and discuss management options

Overall Prevalence and Clinical Significance of a Retroesophageal Right Subclavian with a Non-Recurrent Right Laryngeal Nerve in an 83-year-old and a 93-year-old White Male Donor

Head and neck anatomic variations are common and generally go undetected, but may be clinically significant or have important surgical consequences. Knowledge of various abnormalities is important for clinical decision making and the avoidance of iatrogenic complications. Anomalies of the aortic arch and its various branches are relatively common. However, rare variations with profound clinical sequelae can occur. During recent cadaveric dissection, we identified an 83-year-old and a 93-year-old White male donor who both had a right retroesophageal subclavian artery with an associated non-recurrent right laryngeal nerve. Lack of knowledge of this anatomic variation can directly result in severe consequences for patients and lead to major morbidity. Understanding this variation and recognizing it will be important for anatomists, radiologists and surgeons

Natural Genetic Variation in Selected Populations of Arabidopsis thaliana Is Associated with Ionomic Differences

Controlling elemental composition is critical for plant growth and development as well as the nutrition of humans who utilize plants for food. Uncovering the genetic architecture underlying mineral ion homeostasis in plants is a critical first step towards understanding the biochemical networks that regulate a plant's elemental composition (ionome). Natural accessions of Arabidopsis thaliana provide a rich source of genetic diversity that leads to phenotypic differences. We analyzed the concentrations of 17 different elements in 12 A. thaliana accessions and three recombinant inbred line (RIL) populations grown in several different environments using high-throughput inductively coupled plasma- mass spectroscopy (ICP-MS). Significant differences were detected between the accessions for most elements and we identified over a hundred QTLs for elemental accumulation in the RIL populations. Altering the environment the plants were grown in had a strong effect on the correlations between different elements and the QTLs controlling elemental accumulation. All ionomic data presented is publicly available at www.ionomicshub.org

Combined Forward-Backward Asymmetry Measurements in Top-Antitop Quark Production at the Tevatron

The CDF and D0 experiments at the Fermilab Tevatron have measured the asymmetry between yields of forward- and backward-produced top and antitop quarks based on their rapidity difference and the asymmetry between their decay leptons. These measurements use the full data sets collected in proton-antiproton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of $\sqrt s =1.96$ TeV. We report the results of combinations of the inclusive asymmetries and their differential dependencies on relevant kinematic quantities. The combined inclusive asymmetry is $A_{\mathrm{FB}}^{t\bar{t}} = 0.128 \pm 0.025$. The combined inclusive and differential asymmetries are consistent with recent standard model predictions

Consensus guidelines for the use and interpretation of angiogenesis assays

The formation of new blood vessels, or angiogenesis, is a complex process that plays important roles in growth and development, tissue and organ regeneration, as well as numerous pathological conditions. Angiogenesis undergoes multiple discrete steps that can be individually evaluated and quantified by a large number of bioassays. These independent assessments hold advantages but also have limitations. This article describes in vivo, ex vivo, and in vitro bioassays that are available for the evaluation of angiogenesis and highlights critical aspects that are relevant for their execution and proper interpretation. As such, this collaborative work is the first edition of consensus guidelines on angiogenesis bioassays to serve for current and future reference

Using high throughput technology to characterize disease response in hexaploid wheat

Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is vital for human consumption, global economics as well as societal structure. Wheat is found in a wide range of food products as well as forage for livestock. Yield loss in any crop cannot only affect the world food supply, but also economic stability. Plant viruses and pathogens can greatly impact plant health and yield. The Barley- and Cereal yellow dwarf viruses (BYDV and CYDV, respectively), can cause dramatic yield loss, upwards of 50% in some areas. The yellow dwarf viruses (YDVs) have a wide host range and are spread by aphid transmission. YDVs move up the mouth parts of the aphid and into the hindgut. Aphids feeding on the plant phloem with their stylet, deposit the virus. In wheat, there is little natural resistance to a YDV multi-infection. In recent years, an introgression into wheat with a segment of wheatgrass (Thinopyrum intermedium) 7E2 chromosome confers resistance to all YDVs. While the wheatgrass chromosome segment introgression has been mapped to the long arm of 7D, few polymorphic markers have been developed to determine the exact location of the wheatgrass chromosome segment, and thus, YDV resistance. Also, the mode of resistance the wheatgrass introgression has introduced is not well understood. It has been demonstrated in YDV resistant wheat-wheatgrass lines that YDVs are unable to move into the phloem and spread systemically. In other species, both mammalian and plant, it has been demonstrated that small RNAs (sRNAs) are involved in disease response. Likewise, mammalian and plant viruses have developed a set of proteins, called viral suppressors, that counteract the host\u27s response. CYDVs posses such a viral suppressor called P0, which recently has been shown to affect sRNA response machinery. In this thesis, a high throughput approach was taken to examine disease response to YDVs in a YDV resistant wheat-wheatgrass introgression line in two ways: 1.) identify more polymorphic markers to the 7E2 wheatgrass region of the wheat-wheatgrass introgression line, and 2.) identify sRNAs expressed during YDV infection of a YDV resistant wheat-wheatgrass introgression line. To identify polymorphic markers to the wheatgrass region of the wheat-wheatgrass introgression lines, wheat oligonucleotide microarray technology (Affymetrix) was used. Robustified project pursuit (RPP) identified SFPs (single feature polymorphism) candidates by comparing microarray hybridization intensities between the wheat line, Chinese Spring, and the wheat-wheatgrass substitution lines. One hundred fragments were cloned and sequenced and 4 markers were bin mapped to the group 7 wheat chromosomes using Chinese spring deletion lines. Markers specific for the wheatgrass 7E2 chromosome were not identified using the wheat oligonucleotide array because comparison of genotypes would only identify SFPs on the wheat chromosomes. The second part of the thesis was a high throughput examination of sRNA in a YDV resistant wheat-wheatgrass introgression line. A time course study was conducted using three different treatments 1. aphids containing the CYDV-RPV isolate (viruliferous aphids), 2. aphids without any virus (non-viruliferous aphids), and 3. no aphids. Each treatment had three biological replicates. Total RNA was isolated, fractionated, and sRNA libraries were made using the small RNA expression kit (SREK) (Applied Biosystems™) for SOLiD™ (Applied Biosystems™) sequencing. Computational methods developed for wheat SOLiD™ (Applied Biosystems™) sequencing data were developed and identified 5000 unique putative sRNAs in a YDV resistant wheat-wheatgrass introgression line. Of the 5000 unique putative sRNAs, 70 were determined computationally to be conserved microRNAs (miRNAs) and small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) in other plant species. Also, among sRNA between 17 and 28 nucleotides (nts) in length, 76% of the data was 17 nts. Biological validation by time course Northern blotting of 8 putative conserved sRNAs and 4 short (17-18 nt) sRNAs showed no difference in sRNA expression. However, tissue-specific (tissue included root, stem, leaf, spikelet, and flag leaf) Northern blots showed difference in expression of the 12 putative conserved sRNAs. No CYDV-RPV specific viral sRNA (vsRNA) were identified in this data set. However, over 5000 unique sRNAs have yet to be validated. Future directions of this project would be to examine additional unique sRNAs in this data set as well as sRNA expression in a YDV susceptible wheat-wheatgrass introgression line

Forward Genetics by Sequencing EMS Variation-Induced Inbred Lines

In order to leverage novel sequencing techniques for cloning genes in eukaryotic organisms with complex genomes, the false positive rate of variant discovery must be controlled for by experimental design and informatics. We sequenced five lines from three pedigrees of ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS)-mutagenized Sorghum bicolor, including a pedigree segregating a recessive dwarf mutant. Comparing the sequences of the lines, we were able to identify and eliminate error-prone positions. One genomic region contained EMS mutant alleles in dwarfs that were homozygous reference sequences in wild-type siblings and heterozygous in segregating families. This region contained a single nonsynonymous change that cosegregated with dwarfism in a validation population and caused a premature stop codon in the Sorghum ortholog encoding the gibberellic acid (GA) biosynthetic enzyme ent-kaurene oxidase. Application of exogenous GA rescued the mutant phenotype. Our method for mapping did not require outcrossing and introduced no segregation variance. This enables work when line crossing is complicated by life history, permitting gene discovery outside of genetic models. This inverts the historical approach of first using recombination to define a locus and then sequencing genes. Our formally identical approach first sequences all the genes and then seeks cosegregation with the trait. Mutagenized lines lacking obvious phenotypic alterations are available for an extension of this approach: mapping with a known marker set in a line that is phenotypically identical to starting material for EMS mutant generation