Implantation of a Bi-Ventricular Pacing System in the Setting of Dextrocardia with Situs Inversus Totalis

Dextrocardia with situs inversus totalis is a rare disorder but is frequently associated with anomalous venous return. Pacemaker/Internal Cardioverter Defibrillator implantation in this population can be difficult given the difficult venous anatomy. This case illustrates how beforehand knowledge of the venous anatomy by cardiac MRI can facilitate device implantation.     

Why SIT Works: Normal Function Despite Typical Myofiber Pattern in Situs Inversus Totalis (SIT) Hearts Derived by Shear-induced Myofiber Reorientation

The left ventricle (LV) of mammals with Situs Solitus (SS, normal organ arrangement) displays hardly any interindividual variation in myofiber pattern and experimentally determined torsion. SS LV myofiber pattern has been suggested to result from adaptive myofiber reorientation, in turn leading to efficient pump and myofiber function. Limited data from the Situs Inversus Totalis (SIT, a complete mirror image of organ anatomy and position) LV demonstrated an essential different myofiber pattern, being normal at the apex but mirrored at the base. Considerable differences in torsion patterns in between human SIT LVs even suggest variation in myofiber pattern among SIT LVs themselves. We addressed whether different myofiber patterns in the SIT LV can be predicted by adaptive myofiber reorientation and whether they yield similar pump and myofiber function as in the SS LV. With a mathematical model of LV mechanics including shear induced myofiber reorientation, we predicted myofiber patterns of one SS and three different SIT LVs. Initial conditions for SIT were based on scarce information on the helix angle. The transverse angle was set to zero. During reorientation, a non-zero transverse angle developed, pump function increased, and myofiber function increased and became more homogeneous. Three continuous SIT structures emerged with a different location of transition between normal and mirrored myofiber orientation pattern. Predicted SIT torsion patterns matched experimentally determined ones. Pump and myofiber function in SIT and SS LVs are similar, despite essential differences in myocardial structure. SS and SIT LV structure and function may originate from same processes of adaptive myofiber reorientation.     

Eccrine Function in Psoriasis Inversus

Seven patients with psoriatic lesions of axilla and internatal cleft were tested by thermal and intradermal methacholine stimulation using the quinizarin test for sweating to determine the source of moisture causing maceration and absence of scaling in psoriasis inversus.Histopathological changes were non-specific: slight and patchy hyperkeratosis and parakeratosis, slight elongation of rete ridges and thinning of suprapapillary plates, microspongiosis and vesiculation in variably acanthotic prickle cell layer; dilated capillary loops less prominent than in typical psoriasis.Lesions clinically and histopathologically consistent with psoriasis inversus were anhidrotic. Maceration was due to spread of sweat from adjacent uninvolved skin, spongiosis and vesiculation, serum exudation and insensible perspiration.     

Using Situs for the integration of multi-resolution structures

Situs is a modular and widely used software package for the integration of biophysical data across the spatial resolution scales. It has been developed over the last decade with a focus on bridging the resolution gap between atomic structures, coarse-grained models, and volumetric data from low-resolution biophysical origins, such as electron microscopy, tomography, or small-angle scattering. Structural models can be created and refined with various flexible and rigid body docking strategies. The software consists of multiple, stand-alone programs for the format conversion, analysis, visualization, manipulation, and assembly of 3D data sets. The programs have been ported to numerous platforms in both serial and shared memory parallel architectures and can be combined in various ways for specific modeling applications. The modular design facilitates the updating of individual programs and the development of novel application workflows. This review provides an overview of the Situs package as it exists today with an emphasis on functionality and workflows supported by version 2.5.     

电刺激大壁虎中脑诱发相反方向脊柱侧弯的研究

深入探索大壁虎Gekko gecko中脑运动调控功能,通过对头部固定的大壁虎(n=10)中脑脑区采用不锈钢微电极施加电刺激,发现对中脑不同深度脑区的电刺激能诱发出脊柱侧弯、四肢动等运动反应.在实验过程中,一些刺激针道在中脑围脑室灰质诱发出脊柱同侧弯曲反应,而在中脑腹侧被盖诱发出脊柱对侧弯曲反应.通过对刺激脑区的组织学检验,确定了大壁虎中脑内控制相反方向脊柱侧弯运动核团分布的大致区域.     

Using Sculptor and Situs for simultaneous assembly of atomic components into low-resolution shapes

We describe an integrated software system called Sculptor that combines visualization capabilities with molecular modeling algorithms for the analysis of multi-scale data sets. Sculptor features extensive special purpose visualization techniques that are based on modern GPU programming and are capable of representing complex molecular assemblies in real-time. The integration of graphics and modeling offers several advantages. The user interface not only eases the usually steep learning curve of pure algorithmic techniques, but it also permits instant analysis and post-processing of results, as well as the integration of results from external software. Here, we implemented an interactive peak-selection strategy that enables the user to explore a preliminary score landscape generated by the colors tool of Situs. The interactive placement of components, one at a time, is advantageous for low-resolution or ambiguously shaped maps, which are sometimes difficult to interpret by the fully automatic peak selection of colors. For the subsequent refinement of the preliminary models resulting from both interactive and automatic peak selection, we have implemented a novel simultaneous multi-body docking in Sculptor and Situs that softly enforces shape complementarities between components using the normalization of the cross-correlation coefficient. The proposed techniques are freely available in Situs version 2.6 and Sculptor version 2.0.     

Automated tracing of filaments in 3D electron tomography reconstructions using Sculptor and Situs

The molecular graphics program Sculptor and the command-line suite Situs are software packages for the integration of biophysical data across spatial resolution scales. Herein, we provide an overview of recently developed tools relevant to cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET), with an emphasis on functionality supported by Situs 2.7.1 and Sculptor 2.1.1. We describe a work flow for automatically segmenting filaments in cryo-ET maps including denoising, local normalization, feature detection, and tracing. Tomograms of cellular actin networks exhibit both cross-linked and bundled filament densities. Such filamentous regions in cryo-ET data sets can then be segmented using a stochastic template-based search, VolTrac. The approach combines a genetic algorithm and a bidirectional expansion with a tabu search strategy to localize and characterize filamentous regions. The automated filament segmentation by VolTrac compares well to a manual one performed by expert users, and it allows an efficient and reproducible analysis of large data sets. The software is free, open source, and can be used on Linux, Macintosh or Windows computers.     

Situs: A package for docking crystal structures into low-resolution maps from electron microscopy

Three-dimensional image reconstructions of large-scale protein aggregates are routinely determined by electron microscopy (EM). We combine low-resolution EM data with high-resolution structures of proteins determined by x-ray crystallography. A set of visualization and analysis procedures, termed the Situs package, has been developed to provide an efficient and robust method for the localization of protein subunits in low-resolution data. Topology-representing neural networks are employed to vector-quantize and to correlate features within the structural data sets. Microtubules decorated with kinesin-related ncd motors are used as model aggregates to demonstrate the utility of this package of routines. The precision of the docking has allowed for the extraction of unique conformations of the macromolecules and is limited only by the reliability of the underlying structural data.     

Refinement of a Translocation Breakpoint Associated with Blepharophimosis–Ptosis–Epicanthus Inversus Syndrome to a 280-kb Interval at Chromosome 3q23

Blepharophimosis syndrome (BPES) is an autosomal dominant disorder of craniofacial development, the features of which include blepharophimosis, ptosis, and epicanthus inversus. Although it has been suggested that BPES is genetically heterogeneous, a major locus for this condition resides at chromosome 3q23. We have previously mapped a translocation breakpoint associated with BPES to the D3S1316–D3S1615 interval. The markers in this region have subsequently been shown to lie in a different order, with the BPES locus mapping to the 1-cM D3S1576 and D3S1316 interval. In the current investigation, a physical map, consisting of 60 yeast artificial chromosome (YAC) clones and 1 bacterial artificial chromosome, that spans this region has been constructed. Ten expressed sequence tags and the cellular retinol-binding protein I locus have been mapped to the contig. YAC end isolation has led to the creation of novel STSs that have been used to reduce the size of the BPES critical region to a 280-kb interval, which has been cloned in two nonchimeric YACs.