Supplementary Material for: Developmental Characterization of Tail Movements in the Appendicularian Urochordate Oikopleura dioica

<p>Using high-speed video cinematography, we characterized kinematically the spontaneous tail movements made by the appendicularian urochordate <i>Oikopleura dioica</i>. Videos of young adult (1-day-old) animals discriminated 4 cardinal movement types: bending, nodding, swimming and filtering, each of which had a characteristic signature including cyclicity, event or cycle duration, cycle frequency, cycle frequency variation, laterality, tail muscle segment coordination and episode duration. Bending exhibited a more common, unilateral form (single bending) and a rarer, bilateral form (alternating bending). Videos of developing animals showed that bending and swimming appeared in rudimentary form starting just after hatching and exhibited developmental changes in movement excursion, duration and frequency, whereas nodding and filtering appeared in the fully mature form in young adults at the time of first house production. More complex behaviors were associated with inflating, entering and exiting the house. We also assessed the influence of descending inputs by separating the tail (which contains all muscles and most likely the neural circuits that generate most motor outputs) from the head. Isolated tails spontaneously generated either bending or swimming movements in abnormally protracted episodes. This together with other observations of interactions between bending and swimming behaviors indicates the presence of several types of descending inputs that regulate the activity of the pattern generating circuitry in the tail nervous system.</p

Supplementary Material for: Hampered Lung Maturation in Methimazole-Induced Hypothyroidism in Fetal Chicken: Morphological and Molecular Correlates to Human Fetal Development

<br><strong><em>Background:</em></strong> Molecular understanding of lung development is crucial for developing therapies and diagnostic tools. Animal models with altered thyroid hormone signaling provide mechanistic insight into thyroid-dependent neonatal lung disease. Repression of Klf2 (Krüppel-like factor 2), a suggested T3 target gene, is associated with disrupted lung development in mice. Klf2 is proposed to be specifically involved in type I pneumocyte differentiation. <b><i>Objectives:</i></b> To explore mechanisms of thyroid-dependent lung disease, we studied developing chicken fetuses with experimentally induced hypothyroidism. <b><i>Methods:</i></b> Morphology and the expression of a panel of molecules linked to Klf2 were assessed using histology, immunohistochemistry, Western blot and qPCR. <b><i>Results:</i></b> Methimazole injections at E14 hampered lung maturation. The effects of methimazole were evident in several tissue compartments, and impacted on both pneumocyte and vascular differentiation, suggesting cellular and molecular pleiotropy. <b><i>Conclusions:</i></b> Concomitant expression changes in a panel of selected microRNAs regulated by Klf2 suggest importance in lung development. These microRNAs may thus represent potential clinical targets and diagnostic and prognostic tools in thyroid-dependent lung disease