Total soft-tissue reconstruction of the middle and lower face with multiple simultaneous free flaps in a pediatric patient

A 2-year-old boy sustained a massive facial soft-tissue wound secondary to a dog attack. Essentially all the soft tissues of the face were absent, including innervation and intraoral lining. We describe the reconstruction of this defect with five simultaneous free tissue transfers. To our knowledge, this is the first report of five simultaneous free flaps in any patient.     

Out of Africa and back again: nested cladistic analysis of human Y chromosome variation

We surveyed nine diallelic polymorphic sites on the Y chromosomes of 1,544 individuals from Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania, and the New World. Phylogenetic analyses of these nine sites resulted in a tree for 10 distinct Y haplotypes with a coalescence time of approximately 150,000 years. The 10 haplotypes were unevenly distributed among human populations: 5 were restricted to a particular continent, 2 were shared between Africa and Europe, 1 was present only in the Old World, and 2 were found in all geographic regions surveyed. The ancestral haplotype was limited to African populations. Random permutation procedures revealed statistically significant patterns of geographical structuring of this paternal genetic variation. The results of a nested cladistic analysis indicated that these geographical associations arose through a combination of processes, including restricted, recurrent gene flow (isolation by distance) and range expansions. We inferred that one of the oldest events in the nested cladistic analysis was a range expansion out of Africa which resulted in the complete replacement of Y chromosomes throughout the Old World, a finding consistent with many versions of the Out of Africa Replacement Model. A second and more recent range expansion brought Asian Y chromosomes back to Africa without replacing the indigenous African male gene pool. Thus, the previously observed high levels of Y chromosomal genetic diversity in Africa may be due in part to bidirectional population movements. Finally, a comparison of our results with those from nested cladistic analyses of human mtDNA and beta-globin data revealed different patterns of inferences for males and females concerning the relative roles of population history (range expansions) and population structure (recurrent gene flow), thereby adding a new sex-specific component to models of human evolution.      

Red clothing increases perceived dominance,aggression and anger

The presence and intensity of red coloration correlate with male dominance and testosterone in a variety of animal species, and even artificial red stimuli can influence dominance interactions. In humans, red stimuli are perceived as more threatening and dominant than other colours, and wearing red increases the probability of winning sporting contests. We investigated whether red clothing biases the perception of aggression and dominance outside of competitive settings, and whether red influences decoding of emotional expressions. Participants rated digitally manipulated images of men for aggression and dominance and categorized the emotional state of these stimuli. Men were rated as more aggressive and more dominant when presented in red than when presented in either blue or grey. The effect on perceived aggression was found for male and female raters, but only male raters were sensitive to red as a signal of dominance. In a categorization test, images were significantly more often categorized as ‘angry’ when presented in the red condition, demonstrating that colour stimuli affect perceptions of emotions. This suggests that the colour red may be a cue used to predict propensity for dominance and aggression in human males.     

Upgrading a Piped Water Supply from Intermittent to Continuous Delivery and Association with Waterborne Illness: A Matched Cohort Study in Urban India

Background

Intermittent delivery of piped water can lead to waterborne illness through contamination in the pipelines or during household storage, use of unsafe water sources during intermittencies, and limited water availability for hygiene. We assessed the association between continuous versus intermittent water supply and waterborne diseases, child mortality, and weight for age in Hubli-Dharwad, India.

Methods and Findings

We conducted a matched cohort study with multivariate matching to identify intermittent and continuous supply areas with comparable characteristics in Hubli-Dharwad. We followed 3,922 households in 16 neighborhoods with children <5 y old, with four longitudinal visits over 15 mo (Nov 2010–Feb 2012) to record caregiver-reported health outcomes (diarrhea, highly credible gastrointestinal illness, bloody diarrhea, typhoid fever, cholera, hepatitis, and deaths of children <2 y old) and, at the final visit, to measure weight for age for children <5 y old. We also collected caregiver-reported data on negative control outcomes (cough/cold and scrapes/bruises) to assess potential bias from residual confounding or differential measurement error.Continuous supply had no significant overall association with diarrhea (prevalence ratio [PR] = 0.93, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.83–1.04, p = 0.19), bloody diarrhea (PR = 0.78, 95% CI: 0.60–1.01, p = 0.06), or weight-for-age z-scores (Δz = 0.01, 95% CI: −0.07–0.09, p = 0.79) in children <5 y old. In prespecified subgroup analyses by socioeconomic status, children <5 y old in lower-income continuous supply households had 37% lower prevalence of bloody diarrhea (PR = 0.63, 95% CI: 0.46–0.87, p-value for interaction = 0.03) than lower-income intermittent supply households; in higher-income households, there was no significant association between continuous versus intermittent supply and child diarrheal illnesses. Continuous supply areas also had 42% fewer households with ≥1 reported case of typhoid fever (cumulative incidence ratio [CIR] = 0.58, 95% CI: 0.41–0.78, p = 0.001) than intermittent supply areas. There was no significant association with hepatitis, cholera, or mortality of children <2 y old; however, our results were indicative of lower mortality of children <2 y old (CIR = 0.51, 95% CI: 0.22–1.07, p = 0.10) in continuous supply areas. The major limitations of our study were the potential for unmeasured confounding given the observational design and measurement bias from differential reporting of health symptoms given the nonblinded treatment. However, there was no significant difference in the prevalence of the negative control outcomes between study groups that would suggest undetected confounding or measurement bias.

Conclusions

Continuous water supply had no significant overall association with diarrheal disease or ponderal growth in children <5 y old in Hubli-Dharwad; this might be due to point-of-use water contamination from continuing household storage and exposure to diarrheagenic pathogens through nonwaterborne routes. Continuous supply was associated with lower prevalence of dysentery in children in low-income households and lower typhoid fever incidence, suggesting that intermittently operated piped water systems are a significant transmission mechanism for Salmonella typhi and dysentery-causing pathogens in this urban population, despite centralized water treatment. Continuous supply was associated with reduced transmission, especially in the poorer higher-risk segments of the population.     

Candidate Gene Identification with SNP Marker-Based Fine Mapping of Anthracnose Resistance Gene Co-4 in Common Bean

Anthracnose, caused by Colletotrichum lindemuthianum, is an important fungal disease of common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris). Alleles at the Co–4 locus confer resistance to a number of races of C. lindemuthianum. A population of 94 F_4:5 recombinant inbred lines of a cross between resistant black bean genotype B09197 and susceptible navy bean cultivar Nautica was used to identify markers associated with resistance in bean chromosome 8 (Pv08) where Co–4 is localized. Three SCAR markers with known linkage to Co–4 and a panel of single nucleotide markers were used for genotyping. A refined physical region on Pv08 with significant association with anthracnose resistance identified by markers was used in BLAST searches with the genomic sequence of common bean accession G19833. Thirty two unique annotated candidate genes were identified that spanned a physical region of 936.46 kb. A majority of the annotated genes identified had functional similarity to leucine rich repeats/receptor like kinase domains. Three annotated genes had similarity to 1, 3-β-glucanase domains. There were sequence similarities between some of the annotated genes found in the study and the genes associated with phosphoinositide-specific phosphilipases C associated with Co-x and the COK–4 loci found in previous studies. It is possible that the Co–4 locus is structured as a group of genes with functional domains dominated by protein tyrosine kinase along with leucine rich repeats/nucleotide binding site, phosphilipases C as well as β-glucanases.     

Biodistribution and long-term fate of silver nanoparticles functionalized with bovine serum albumin in rats

Silver nanocrystals (Ag NCs) hold promising antibiotic and antiviral properties in biological systems. The biodistribution of silver nanostructures injected into animals in vivo is currently unknown, remaining as a fundamental issue for potential therapeutic applications. Here, we injected Ag NCs capped with bovine serum albumin (BSA) in live rats to elucidate their fate in several organs including liver, heart and brain. Very significant accumulations of nanoparticles were confirmed by inductively coupled plasma mass spectroscopy (ICPMS) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) techniques on the liver and heart. In contrast, the brain tissue did not reveal evidence of particles content. Our results suggest that Ag+ permeated across the blood-brain barrier (BBB), and followed swift clearance from the organ.     

A QTL for osteoporosis detected in an F2 population derived from White Leghorn chicken lines divergently selected for bone index

Osteoporosis, resulting from progressive loss of structural bone during the period of egg-laying in hens, is associated with an increased susceptibility to bone breakage. To study the genetic basis of bone strength, an F(2) cross was produced from lines of hens that had been divergently selected for bone index from a commercial pedigreed White Leghorn population. Quantitative trait loci (QTL) affecting the bone index and component traits of the index (tibiotarsal and humeral strength and keel radiographic density) were mapped using phenotypic data from 372 F(2) individuals in 32 F(1) families. Genotypes for 136 microsatellite markers in 27 linkage groups covering approximately 80% of the genome were analysed for association with phenotypes using within-family regression analyses. There was one significant QTL on chromosome 1 for bone index and the component traits of tibiotarsal and humeral breaking strength. Additive effects for tibiotarsal breaking strength represented 34% of the trait standard deviation and 7.6% of the phenotypic variance of the trait. These QTL for bone quality in poultry are directly relevant to commercial populations.     

Homing endonuclease mediated gene targeting in Anopheles gambiae cells and embryos

Homing endonuclease genes (HEGs) are ‘selfish’ genetic elements that combine the capability to selectively disrupt specific gene sequences with the ability to rapidly spread from a few individuals to an entire population through homologous recombination repair events. Because of these properties, HEGs are regarded as promising candidates to transfer genetic modifications from engineered laboratory mosquitoes to wild-type populations including Anopheles gambiae the vector of human malaria. Here we show that I-SceI and I-PpoI homing endonucleases cleave their recognition sites with high efficiency in A. gambiae cells and embryos and we demonstrate HEG-induced homologous and non-homologous repair events in a variety of functional assays. We also propose a gene drive system for mosquitoes that is based on our finding that I-PpoI cuts genomic rDNA located on the X chromosome in A. gambiae, which could be used to selectively incapacitate X-carrying spermatozoa thereby imposing a severe male-biased sex ratio.