Cell-free derivatives from mesenchymal stem cells are effective in wound therapy

AIM:To compare the efficacy of cell-free derivatives from Bone marrow derived human mesenchymal stem cells(hMSCs) in wound therapy.METHODS:hMSCs have been shown to play an important role in wound therapy.The present study sought to compare efficacy of hMSCs and cell-free derivatives of hMSCs,which may be clinically more relevant as they are easier to prepare,formulate and transport.hMSCs were isolated from human bone marrow and cultured.Multi lineage differentiation of hMSCs was performed to confirm their identity.The ability of hMSCs to migrate was evaluated using in vitro and in vivo migration assays.Cell lysates and conditioned medium concentrate was prepared from hMSCs(see Methods for details).Wounds were induced in mice and wound areas were measure before and after cell and cell-free derivative treatment.RNA and proteins were extracted from the skin and cytokine levels were measured.RESULTS:Co-culture of hMSCs with keratinocytes resulted in increased expression of CXCL-12(SDF1) and ENA78(CXCL-5) in the conditioned media indicating that the hMSCs can respond to signals from keratinocytes.Accelerated wound closure was observed when hMSCs were injected near the site of excisional wounds in athymic as well as NOD/SCID mice.Interestingly,cell-free lysates prepared from hMSCs were also effective in inducing accelerated wound closure and increased expression of SDF1 and CXCL-5 at the wound bed.Additionally,concentrated media from hMSCs as well as an emulsion containing lysates prepared from hMSCs was also found to be more effective in rapid re-epithelialization than fibroblasts or vehicle-alone control.Use of cell-free derivatives may help replace expensive wound care approaches including use of growth factors,epidermal/dermal substitutes,synthetic membranes,cytokines,and matrix components,and most importantly avoid transmission of pathogens from human and animal products.CONCLUSION:These results encourage development of derivatives of hMSCs for wound care and re-epithelialization applications.     

Novel impedimetric immunosensor for the detection and quantitation of Adenovirus using reduced antibody fragments immobilized onto a conducting copolymer surface

The number of Adenovirus (Ad) infections detected in immunocompromised people has increased due to the number of patients receiving transplants, as well as the HIV pandemic. Ads cause life-threatening diseases specific to the infected organs of immunocompromised hosts, with discontinuation of immunosuppressive agents necessary to prevent morbidity. The methodology in this paper has been employed to develop a novel impedimetric based assay platform to detect and quantify human Ads, which is comparable in performance to current methods, such as ELISA and PCR, but is also less expensive and faster. Novel immunosensors have been fabricated using polyclonal antibodies raised against a human Ad (Ad5) capsid protein, which were selectively cleaved into antibody fragments by 2-mercaptoethylamine. The fragments were immobilized onto a functionalized conducting copolymer matrix comprising polyaniline and 2-aminobenzylamine. Fully fabricated sensors were incubated with two immunologically distinct serotypes of Ad, Ad5 and Ad3, with between 10 and 10(12)virus particles/mL prior to sensor interrogation. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy was used to measure the charge transfer resistance of the sensors over a range of frequencies from 25 kHz to 0.1 Hz. Our data demonstrate that the immunosensors specifically detect, and differentiate between, closely related human Ad serotypes with a limit of detection of 10(3)virus particles/mL. In addition, atomic force microscopy was applied to study the sensor surface nanostructure. Future work looks to test virus containing clinical samples but this could be a viable and valuable alternative for point-of-care virus detection and quantification.     

Evolution of spur-length diversity in Aquilegia petals is achieved solely through cell-shape anisotropy

The role of petal spurs and specialized pollinator interactions has been studied since Darwin. Aquilegia petal spurs exhibit striking size and shape diversity, correlated with specialized pollinators ranging from bees to hawkmoths in a textbook example of adaptive radiation. Despite the evolutionary significance of spur length, remarkably little is known about Aquilegia spur morphogenesis and its evolution. Using experimental measurements, both at tissue and cellular levels, combined with numerical modelling, we have investigated the relative roles of cell divisions and cell shape in determining the morphology of the Aquilegia petal spur. Contrary to decades-old hypotheses implicating a discrete meristematic zone as the driver of spur growth, we find that Aquilegia petal spurs develop via anisotropic cell expansion. Furthermore, changes in cell anisotropy account for 99 per cent of the spur-length variation in the genus, suggesting that the true evolutionary innovation underlying the rapid radiation of Aquilegia was the mechanism of tuning cell shape.     

Sex-biased terminal investment in offspring induced by maternal immune challenge in the house wren (Troglodytes aedon)

The reproductive costs associated with the upregulation of immunity have been well-documented and constitute a fundamental trade-off between reproduction and self-maintenance. However, recent experimental work suggests that parents may increase their reproductive effort following immunostimulation as a form of terminal parental investment as prospects for future reproduction decline. We tested the trade-off and terminal investment hypotheses in a wild population of house wrens (Troglodytes aedon) by challenging the immune system of breeding females with lipopolysaccharide, a potent but non-lethal antigen. Immunized females showed no evidence of reproductive costs; instead, they produced offspring of higher phenotypic quality, but in a sex-specific manner. Relative to control offspring, sons of immunized females had increased body mass and their sisters exhibited higher cutaneous immune responsiveness to phytohaemagglutinin injection, constituting an adaptive strategy of sex-biased allocation by immune-challenged females to enhance the reproductive value of their offspring. Thus, our results are consistent with the terminal investment hypothesis, and suggest that maternal immunization can induce pronounced transgenerational effects on offspring phenotypes.     

Habitat Use and Trophic Niche Overlap of Two Sympatric Colobines, Presbytis potenziani and Simias concolor, on Siberut Island, Indonesia

According to ecological theory, the concept of niche differentiation is essential to our understanding of how sympatric species can limit competition over resources. We here examine ecological niche differentiation in 2 sympatric Asian langurs, Presbytis potenziani and Simias concolor, both endemic to the Mentawai Islands off the west coast of Sumatra. We collected data (home range size, canopy use, activity budgets, diet, and niche breadth and overlap) using GPS and scan/focal animal sampling methods on 2 groups of Presbytis potenziani and 3 groups of Simias concolor living in a mixed primary rain forest in northern Siberut. Results show that home ranges of the 2 species overlapped completely and that the home range size of Presbytis potenziani was ca. 4 times larger than that of Simias concolor. Lower canopy levels (<20 m) were used more often by Simias concolor, whereas Presbytis potenziani preferred the canopy >20 m. Apart from foraging and other activities, there was little difference in overall activity budgets of the 2 species. Regarding diet, although 60% of all food species examined were used by both langur species, they shared only 3 of the 10 most commonly eaten species. Presbytis potenziani fed more selectively on fruits, whereas Simias concolor fed predominantly on leaves. Levin’s niche breadth indices revealed that the diet of Simias concolor is more general (0.34) than that of Presbytis potenziani (0.22). Based on a Pianka index of 0.32, we conclude that there is a relatively small food niche overlap between the 2 colobine species and that diet represents an important mechanism enabling their coexistence.     

Serum profiling by MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry as a diagnostic tool for domoic acid toxicosis in California sea lions

Background

There are currently no reliable markers of acute domoic acid toxicosis (DAT) for California sea lions. We investigated whether patterns of serum peptides could diagnose acute DAT. Serum peptides were analyzed by MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry from 107 sea lions (acute DAT n = 34; non-DAT n = 73). Artificial neural networks (ANN) were trained using MALDI-TOF data. Individual peaks and neural networks were qualified using an independent test set (n = 20).

Results

No single peak was a good classifier of acute DAT, and ANN models were the best predictors of acute DAT. Performance measures for a single median ANN were: sensitivity, 100%; specificity, 60%; positive predictive value, 71%; negative predictive value, 100%. When 101 ANNs were combined and allowed to vote for the outcome, the performance measures were: sensitivity, 30%; specificity, 100%; positive predictive value, 100%; negative predictive value, 59%.

Conclusions

These results suggest that MALDI-TOF peptide profiling and neural networks can perform either as a highly sensitive (100% negative predictive value) or a highly specific (100% positive predictive value) diagnostic tool for acute DAT. This also suggests that machine learning directed by populations of predictive models offer the ability to modulate the predictive effort into a specific type of error.     

Genomic sequencing of key genes in mouse pancreatic cancer cells

Pancreatic cancer is a multiple genetic disorder with many mutations identified during the progression. Two mouse pancreatic cancer cell lines were established which showed different phenotype in vivo: a non-metastatic cell line, Panc02, and a highly metastatic cell line, Panc02-H7, a derivative of Panc02. In order to investigate whether the genetic mutations of key genes in pancreatic cancer such as KRAS, TP53 (p53), CDKN2A (p16), SMAD4, ZIP4, and PDX-1 contribute to the phenotypic difference of these two mouse pancreatic cancer cells, we sequenced the exonic regions of these key genes in both cell lines and in the normal syngeneic mouse pancreas and compared them with the reference mouse genome sequence. The exons of KRAS, SMAD4, CDKN2A (p16), TP53 (p53), ZIP4, and PDX-1 genes were amplified and the genotype of these genes was determined by Sanger sequencing. The sequences were analyzed with Sequencher software. A mutation in SMAD4 was identified in both cell lines. This homozygote G to T mutation in the first position of codon 174 (GAA) generated a stop codon resulting in the translation of a truncated protein. Further functional analysis indicates that different TGF-β/SMAD signaling pathways were involved in those two mouse cell lines, which may explain the phonotypic difference between the two cells. A single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in KRAS gene (TAT to TAC at codon 32) was also identified in the normal pancreas DNA of the syngenic mouse and in both derived tumoral Panc02 and Panc02-H7 cells. No mutation or SNP was found in CDKN2A (p16), TP53 (p53), ZIP4, and PDX-1 genes in these two cell lines. The absence of mutations in genes such as KRAS, TP53, and CDKN2A, which are considered as key genes in the development of human pancreatic cancer suggests that SMAD4 might play a central and decisive role in mouse pancreatic cancer. These results also suggest that other mechanisms are involved in the substantial phenotypic difference between these two mouse pancreatic cancer cell lines. Further studies are warranted to elucidate the molecular pathways that lead to the aggressive metastatic potential of Panc02-H7.