Ghrelin effect on nutritional indices, midgut and fat body of Lymantria dispar L. (Lymantriidae)

Ghrelin is a 28-amino acid peptide that has significant effects on appetite and growth in humans and animals. The aim of this study was to examine 4th instar larvae of the pest insect Lymantria dispar L. after ghrelin treatment. Parameters included changes in nutritional indices (efficiency of conversion of ingested food, efficiency of conversion of digested food, approximate digestibility); midgut and fat body mass; total proteases, trypsin and leucine aminopeptidase activities in the midgut; number, height and width of columnar and goblet cells and their nuclei in the midgut epithelium and detection of ghrelin-like immunoreactivity in the midgut tissue. Four subpicomolar injections of ghrelin (0.3pmol) or physiological saline (control) were applied every 24h. The nutritional indices were higher in the ghrelin treated than in the control group. Ghrelin treatment was also associated with elevation of midgut mass, induced digestive enzyme activities, increased fat body mass and morphometric changes in columnar and goblet cells. This is the first report of the presence of ghrelin-like hormone in endocrine cells of an insect midgut. Such information provides additional evidence for application of this relatively simple model system in the future studies of the mechanisms underlying of digestion and energy balance in more complex organisms.     

Renal Ischemia/Reperfusion Injury in Soluble Epoxide Hydrolase-Deficient Mice

Aim

20-hydroxyeicosatetraenoic acid (20-HETE) and epoxyeicosatrienoic acids (EETs) are cytochrome P450 (CYP)-dependent eicosanoids that play opposite roles in the regulation of vascular tone, inflammation, and apoptosis. 20-HETE aggravates, whereas EETs ameliorate ischemia/reperfusion (I/R)-induced organ damage. EETs are rapidly metabolized to dihydroxyeicosatrienoic acids (DHETs) by the soluble epoxide hydrolase (sEH). We hypothesized that sEH gene (EPHX2) deletion would increase endogenous EET levels and thereby protect against I/R-induced acute kidney injury (AKI).

Methods

Kidney damage was evaluated in male wildtype (WT) and sEH-knockout (KO)-mice that underwent 22-min renal ischemia followed by two days of reperfusion. CYP-eicosanoids were analyzed by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry.

Results

Contrary to our initial hypothesis, renal function declined more severely in sEH-KO mice as indicated by higher serum creatinine and urea levels. The sEH-KO-mice also featured stronger tubular lesion scores, tubular apoptosis, and inflammatory cell infiltration. Plasma and renal EET/DHET-ratios were higher in sEH-KO than WT mice, thus confirming the expected metabolic consequences of sEH deficiency. However, CYP-eicosanoid profiling also revealed that renal, but not plasma and hepatic, 20-HETE levels were significantly increased in sEH-KO compared to WT mice. In line with this finding, renal expression of Cyp4a12a, the murine 20-HETE-generating CYP-enzyme, was up-regulated both at the mRNA and protein level, and Cyp4a12a immunostaining was more intense in the renal arterioles of sEH-KO compared with WT mice.

Conclusion

These results indicate that the potential beneficial effects of reducing EET degradation were obliterated by a thus far unknown mechanism leading to kidney-specific up-regulation of 20-HETE formation in sEH-KO-mice.     

QSAR study of antiplatelet agents

A QSAR methodology that involves multilinear (Hansch-type) and nonlinear (ANN backpropagation) approaches was developed to correlate the antiplatelet activity of 60 benzoxazinone derivatives against factor Xa. The statistical characteristics provided by multilinear model (R2 = 0.821) indicated satisfactory stability and predictive ability, while the ANN predictive ability is somewhat superior (R2 = 0.909). The multilinear model provided insight into the main factors that modulate the inhibitory activity of the investigated compounds.     

Fine needle aspiration cytology and immunocytochemistry in tuberculous thyroiditis: a case report

BACKGROUND: Tuberculosis of the thyroid is very rare and does not strike the clinician as a first clinical diagnosis of a thyroid nodule. To our knowledge, only 40 cases of tuberculous thyroiditis diagnosed by fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) are described in the English literature. CASE: We report a case of tuberculous thyroiditis in a young woman who presented with a right-side solitary thyroid nodule of short duration (15 days), diagnosed by FNAC and confirmed by positive immunocytochemistry with monoclonal antibody to Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex. Ziehl Neelsen staining for acid-fast bacilli (AFB) was negative. CONCLUSION: FNAC provides a confident preoperative diagnosis of thyroid tuberculosis, obviating the need for unnecessary surgical removal of thyroid nodule. Immunocytochemistry is an important diagnostic adjunct to FNAC in AFB-negative cases.     

Human activities and climate variability drive fast‐paced change across the world's estuarine–coastal ecosystems

Time series of environmental measurements are essential for detecting, measuring and understanding changes in the Earth system and its biological communities. Observational series have accumulated over the past 2–5 decades from measurements across the world's estuaries, bays, lagoons, inland seas and shelf waters influenced by runoff. We synthesize information contained in these time series to develop a global view of changes occurring in marine systems influenced by connectivity to land. Our review is organized around four themes: (i) human activities as drivers of change; (ii) variability of the climate system as a driver of change; (iii) successes, disappointments and challenges of managing change at the sea‐land interface; and (iv) discoveries made from observations over time. Multidecadal time series reveal that many of the world's estuarine–coastal ecosystems are in a continuing state of change, and the pace of change is faster than we could have imagined a decade ago. Some have been transformed into novel ecosystems with habitats, biogeochemistry and biological communities outside the natural range of variability. Change takes many forms including linear and nonlinear trends, abrupt state changes and oscillations. The challenge of managing change is daunting in the coastal zone where diverse human pressures are concentrated and intersect with different responses to climate variability over land and over ocean basins. The pace of change in estuarine–coastal ecosystems will likely accelerate as the human population and economies continue to grow and as global climate change accelerates. Wise stewardship of the resources upon which we depend is critically dependent upon a continuing flow of information from observations to measure, understand and anticipate future changes along the world's coastlines.     

Advantages of intramedullar fixation in treatment of congenital tibial pseudoarthrosis--a case report

This report describes a case of a 29-year old patient with congenital pseudoarthrosis of the distal tibia previously treated unsuccessfully by a conventional surgical method. Tibial congenital pseudoarthrosis is a rare disease characterized by segmental osseous weakness resulting in deformation of the bone and spontaneous fractures which progresses to a tibial nonunion. In our case we used intramedullary stabilization with bone grafting and six month after operation congenital pseudarthrosis of the tibia healed.     

Age,growth and mortality of common two‐banded seabream,Diplodus vulgaris (Geoffroy Saint‐Hilaire, 1817), in the eastern Adriatic Sea (Croatian coast)

Age, growth and mortality were analysed for the common two‐banded seabream, Diplodus vulgaris, collected in the eastern Adriatic (Croatian coast) from commercial fishery catches by ‘tramata’ fishing (2005–2006) to obtain growth estimation. The oldest female was estimated to be age 11, the oldest male age 10 years. The von Bertalanffy growth parameters estimated by reading scales were: L_∞ = 48.60 cm (SE = 1.101), K = 0.112 (SE = 0.005) and t₀ = ?2.366 (SE = 0.060) for all specimens; L_∞ = 51.96 cm (SE = 2.153), K = 0.095 (SE = 0.007) and t₀ = ?2.837 (SE = 0.120) for females and L_∞ = 56.25 cm (SE = 2.662), K = 0.084 (SE = 0.067) and t₀ = ?2.920 (SE = 0.117) for males. The overall sex ratio was 1.22 : 1 in favour of males. Total mortality, corresponding to the slope of the descending limb of the catch curve, was Z = 0.81 per year for females and Z = 0.85 per year for males. Exploitation ratios were E = 0.68 for females and E = 0.73 for males.     

Two types of aspartic proteinases from buckwheat seed--gene structure and expression analysis

Two types of aspartic proteinase (AP) genes have been isolated from the cDNA library of developing buckwheat seeds. Analysis of their sequences showed that one of these, FeAP9, resembled the structure and shared high homology with the so-called typical plant APs characterized by the presence of a plant-specific insert (PSI), an element unique among APs. The other cDNA, FeAPL1, encoded an AP-like protein lacking that domain. Different expression profiles were observed for FeAP9 and FeAPL1. FeAPL1 mRNAs were restricted to the seeds only, whereas FeAP9 mRNAs were also present in the other plant tissues - leaves, roots, and flowers. Higher levels of FeAP9 were observed in senescent leaves compared with green leaves. The differential expression pattern of these two unique APs raises the interesting possibility that these proteinases have unique substrate specificity and may have different roles in plant development and other physiological processes.