Regulation of respiration during muscular exertion

A brief critical review of literature shows that many authors still follow a classical theory that the respiration control is performed by feedback (by deviation of PCO2, PO2 and pH in blood). This point of view does not account for the exercise hyperpnea. The present paper contains the various data and considerations which show that respiration during muscular exercise is controlled by a combined self-learning system. The system is based on both disturbance (open-loop) control and feedback control. The signals of disturbance (of central origin and from receptors of exercising muscles) cause the increase of respiration during exercise. The signals of deviations (from peripheral and central chemoreceptors) correct the response of respiratory centre to disturbance signals. The self-learning takes place by the formation of conditioned reflexes that ensures the control of respiration (the stability of gaseous composition of blood during exercise).     

Reference gene selection for normalizing gene expression using quantitative real-time PCR in Haemaphysalis longicornis

The Asian longhorned tick, Haemaphysalis longicornis, the dominant species of Ixodidae in Korea, has a wide distribution in East Asia, far-East Russia, and Western Pacific countries, and has recently been discovered in the Eastern states of the United States of America. H. longicornis transmits various pathogens, including Babesia ovate, Rickettsia japonica, and severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome virus (SFTSV). Considering its medical importance, in order to understand the physiology of H. longicornis, it is crucial to determine the expression of the genes of interest. Although quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) has been widely used to analyze gene expression, stably-expressed internal reference genes across samples of different conditions should be selected for the accurate normalization of target gene expression levels. Therefore, in this study, we investigated the expression levels of five candidate reference genes, namely ACT, RPP0, RPL23, TUB, and GAPDH, in H. longicornis under different conditions, including different collection months, developmental stages, and SFTSV infection status. Using four software programs, namely, NormFinder, BestKeeper, geNorm, and RefFinder, their expression stabilities were evaluated. Subsequently, a single gene between RPL23 and RPP0 was validated, which was found to be most stable reference gene after comparing the expression levels of HSP70 determined using different normalization methods.