The effects of actinomycin D on the early development of quail and chick embryos

Development ◽  
1971 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 385-403
Author(s):  
F. S. Billett ◽  
Patricia Bowman ◽  
Doreen Pugh

In agreement with previous work it has been found that treatment of chick embryos at an early stage of development with small concentrations of actinomycin D (2·0–4·0 × 10−8m) produces abnormalities of the brain, neural tube and somites but allows near normal development of heart and blood islands. Similar effects are produced on quail embryos by even smaller concentrations of actinomycin D (0·8–1·0 × 10−8m). In addition to the effect on the embryo, actinomycin D severely restricts the outgrowth of the explanted blastoderm; an effect which becomes obvious after about 8 h culture and coincides with the detachment of the blastoderm edge from the supporting vitelline membrane. Histological examination of the edge of the blastoderm shows that many cells have been killed by the actinomycin D. The pronounced effect of actinomycin D on the growth of the blastoderm cannot be ignored as a factor which causes the embryos to develop abnormally and it is suggested that it may even be the primary cause of the abnormalities. Under these circumstances any interpretation of the effects produced in the embryos in terms of the selective inhibition, or lack of inhibition, of specific messenger RNAs by actinomycin D seems to be unwarranted. Using [3H]actinomycin D an estimate has been made of the concentration of the compound in the blastoderm tissues at the time when the embryonic abnormalities are produced. The total DNA content of the blastoderms has also been determined. These measurements indicate that the ratio between actinomycin D molecules and guanosine residues in the treated tissue is very low (of the order of 1:20000) and would probably not allow an effective inhibition of DNA-dependent RNA synthesis.

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 340 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. PENADÉS-SUAY ◽  
J. TOMÁS ◽  
F. J. AZNAR

In September, 2016, an adult female blue shark (Prionace glauca) 247 cm long stranded alive on the coast of Valencia (Spain, Western Mediterranean) but died shortly afterwards. The necropsy revealed ongoing pregnancy, with 65 embryos in early stage of development, and a healthy condition with no signs of starvation. Two fishing hooks surrounded by scarred tissue were detected in the mandible, indicating past interaction with fisheries. In addition, a fragment of the tip of a swordfish (Xiphias gladius) rostrum (length: 18 cm long, width: 0.5 cm (distal) and 3 cm (proximal)) was removed from the animal. The fragment had pierced the head producing an incision of 3.5 cm close to the left eye, crossing the head anterior to the pre-orbital process. No apparent damage was observed in the olfactory capsule or the eye, but the fragment had penetrated both sides of the skull causing extensive lesions in the brain, which were inferred to be the cause of death. Allometric analysis suggested that the swordfish was ca. 110 cm long, corresponding to a juvenile 1-2 yrs old. Swordfish had previously been reported driving their rostrum into pelagic sharks, allegedly as a defensive strategy. However, this is the first report of impalement as the direct cause of death in blue sharks.


Author(s):  
Menghan TAO ◽  
Ning XIAO ◽  
Xingfu ZHAO ◽  
Wenbin LIU

New energy vehicles(NEV) as a new thing for sustainable development, in China, on the one hand has faced the rapid expansion of the market; the other hand, for the new NEV users, the current NEVs cannot keep up with the degree of innovation. This paper demonstrates the reasons for the existence of this systematic challenge, and puts forward the method of UX research which is different from the traditional petrol vehicles research in the early stage of development, which studies from the user's essence level, to form the innovative product programs which meet the needs of users and being real attractive.


Author(s):  
М.М. Руденок ◽  
А.Х. Алиева ◽  
А.А. Колачева ◽  
М.В. Угрюмов ◽  
П.А. Сломинский ◽  
...  

Несмотря на очевидный прогресс, достигнутый в изучении молекулярно-генетических факторов и механизмов патогенеза болезни Паркинсона (БП), в настоящее время стало ясно, что нарушения в структуре ДНК не описывают весь спектр патологических изменений, наблюдаемых при развитии заболевания. В настоящее время показано, что существенное влияние на патогенез БП могут оказывать изменения на уровне транскриптома. В работе были использованы мышиные модели досимптомной стадии БП, поздней досимптомной и ранней симптомной (РСС) стадиями БП. Для полнотранскриптомного анализа пулов РНК тканей черной субстанции и стриатума мозга мышей использовались микрочипы MouseRef-8 v2.0 Expression BeadChip Kit («Illumina», США). Полученные данные указывают на последовательное вовлечение транскриптома в патогенез БП, а также на то, что изменения на транскриптомном уровне процессов транспорта и митохондриального биогенеза могут играть важную роль в нейродегенерации при БП уже на самых ранних этапах. Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a complex systemic disease, mainly associated with the death of dopaminergic neurons. Despite the obvious progress made in the study of molecular genetic factors and mechanisms of PD pathogenesis, it has now become clear that violations in the DNA structure do not describe the entire spectrum of pathological changes observed during the development of the disease. It has now been shown that changes at the transcriptome level can have a significant effect on the pathogenesis of PD. The authors used models of the presymptomatic stage of PD with mice decapitation after 6 hours (6 h-PSS), presymptomatic stage with decapitation after 24 hours (24 h-PSS), advanced presymptomatic (Adv-PSS) and early symptomatic (ESS) stages of PD. For whole transcriptome analysis of RNA pools of the substantia nigra and mouse striatum, the MouseRef-8 v2.0 Expression BeadChip Kit microchips (Illumina, USA) were used. As a result of the analysis of whole transcriptome data, it was shown that, there are a greater number of statistically significant changes in the tissues of the brain and peripheral blood of mice with Adv-PSS and ESS models of PD compared to 6 h-PSS and 24 h-PSS models. In general, the obtained data indicate the sequential involvement of the transcriptome in the pathogenesis of PD, as well as the fact that changes at the transcriptome level of the processes of transport and mitochondrial biogenesis can play an important role in neurodegeneration in PD at an early stage.


Author(s):  
Shoaib Amin Banday ◽  
Mohammad Khalid Pandit

Introduction: Brain tumor is among the major causes of morbidity and mortality rates worldwide. According to National Brain Tumor Foundation (NBTS), the death rate has nearly increased by as much as 300% over last couple of decades. Tumors can be categorized as benign (non-cancerous) and malignant (cancerous). The type of the brain tumor significantly depends on various factors like the site of its occurrence, its shape, the age of the subject etc. On the other hand, Computer Aided Detection (CAD) has been improving significantly in recent times. The concept, design and implementation of these systems ascend from fairly simple ones to computationally intense ones. For efficient and effective diagnosis and treatment plans in brain tumor studies, it is imperative that an abnormality is detected at an early stage as it provides a little more time for medical professionals to respond. The early detection of diseases has predominantly been possible because of medical imaging techniques developed from past many decades like CT, MRI, PET, SPECT, FMRI etc. The detection of brain tumors however, has always been a challenging task because of the complex structure of the brain, diverse tumor sizes and locations in the brain. Method: This paper proposes an algorithm that can detect the brain tumors in the presence of the Radio-Frequency (RF) inhomoginiety. The algorithm utilizes the Mid Sagittal Plane as a landmark point across which the asymmetry between the two brain hemispheres is estimated using various intensity and texture based parameters. Result: The results show the efficacy of the proposed method for the detection of the brain tumors with an acceptable detection rate. Conclusion: In this paper, we have calculated three textural features from the two hemispheres of the brain viz: Contrast (CON), Entropy (ENT) and Homogeneity (HOM) and three parameters viz: Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), Correlation Co-efficient (CC), and Integral of Absolute Difference (IAD) from the intensity distribution profiles of the two brain hemispheres to predict any presence of the pathology. First a Mid Sagittal Plane (MSP) is obtained on the Magnetic Resonance Images that virtually divides brain into two bilaterally symmetric hemispheres. The block wise texture asymmetry is estimated for these hemispheres using the above 6 parameters.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Danielle M. Nash ◽  
Zohra Bhimani ◽  
Jennifer Rayner ◽  
Merrick Zwarenstein

Abstract Background Learning health systems have been gaining traction over the past decade. The purpose of this study was to understand the spread of learning health systems in primary care, including where they have been implemented, how they are operating, and potential challenges and solutions. Methods We completed a scoping review by systematically searching OVID Medline®, Embase®, IEEE Xplore®, and reviewing specific journals from 2007 to 2020. We also completed a Google search to identify gray literature. Results We reviewed 1924 articles through our database search and 51 articles from other sources, from which we identified 21 unique learning health systems based on 62 data sources. Only one of these learning health systems was implemented exclusively in a primary care setting, where all others were integrated health systems or networks that also included other care settings. Eighteen of the 21 were in the United States. Examples of how these learning health systems were being used included real-time clinical surveillance, quality improvement initiatives, pragmatic trials at the point of care, and decision support. Many challenges and potential solutions were identified regarding data, sustainability, promoting a learning culture, prioritization processes, involvement of community, and balancing quality improvement versus research. Conclusions We identified 21 learning health systems, which all appear at an early stage of development, and only one was primary care only. We summarized and provided examples of integrated health systems and data networks that can be considered early models in the growing global movement to advance learning health systems in primary care.


Pharmaceutics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 892
Author(s):  
Elisa L. J. Moya ◽  
Elodie Vandenhaute ◽  
Eleonora Rizzi ◽  
Marie-Christine Boucau ◽  
Johan Hachani ◽  
...  

Central nervous system (CNS) diseases are one of the top causes of death worldwide. As there is a difficulty of drug penetration into the brain due to the blood–brain barrier (BBB), many CNS drugs treatments fail in clinical trials. Hence, there is a need to develop effective CNS drugs following strategies for delivery to the brain by better selecting them as early as possible during the drug discovery process. The use of in vitro BBB models has proved useful to evaluate the impact of drugs/compounds toxicity, BBB permeation rates and molecular transport mechanisms within the brain cells in academic research and early-stage drug discovery. However, these studies that require biological material (animal brain or human cells) are time-consuming and involve costly amounts of materials and plastic wastes due to the format of the models. Hence, to adapt to the high yields needed in early-stage drug discoveries for compound screenings, a patented well-established human in vitro BBB model was miniaturized and automated into a 96-well format. This replicate met all the BBB model reliability criteria to get predictive results, allowing a significant reduction in biological materials, waste and a higher screening capacity for being extensively used during early-stage drug discovery studies.


Publications ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 14
Author(s):  
Eirini Delikoura ◽  
Dimitrios Kouis

Recently significant initiatives have been launched for the dissemination of Open Access as part of the Open Science movement. Nevertheless, two other major pillars of Open Science such as Open Research Data (ORD) and Open Peer Review (OPR) are still in an early stage of development among the communities of researchers and stakeholders. The present study sought to unveil the perceptions of a medical and health sciences community about these issues. Through the investigation of researchers` attitudes, valuable conclusions can be drawn, especially in the field of medicine and health sciences, where an explosive growth of scientific publishing exists. A quantitative survey was conducted based on a structured questionnaire, with 179 valid responses. The participants in the survey agreed with the Open Peer Review principles. However, they ignored basic terms like FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) and appeared incentivized to permit the exploitation of their data. Regarding Open Peer Review (OPR), participants expressed their agreement, implying their support for a trustworthy evaluation system. Conclusively, researchers need to receive proper training for both Open Research Data principles and Open Peer Review processes which combined with a reformed evaluation system will enable them to take full advantage of the opportunities that arise from the new scholarly publishing and communication landscape.


Author(s):  
Chuan De Foo ◽  
Shilpa Surendran ◽  
Geronimo Jimenez ◽  
John Pastor Ansah ◽  
David Bruce Matchar ◽  
...  

The primary care network (PCN) was implemented as a healthcare delivery model which organises private general practitioners (GPs) into groups and furnished with a certain level of resources for chronic disease management. A secondary qualitative analysis was conducted with data from an earlier study exploring facilitators and barriers GPs enrolled in PCN’s face in chronic disease management. The objective of this study is to map features of PCN to Starfield’s “4Cs” framework. The “4Cs” of primary care—comprehensiveness, first contact access, coordination and continuity—offer high-quality design options for chronic disease management. Interview transcripts of GPs (n = 30) from the original study were purposefully selected. Provision of ancillary services, manpower, a chronic disease registry and extended operating hours of GP practices demonstrated PCN’s empowering features that fulfil the “4Cs”. On the contrary, operational challenges such as the lack of an integrated electronic medical record and disproportionate GP payment structures limit PCNs from maximising the “4Cs”. However, the enabling features mentioned above outweighs the shortfalls in all important aspects of delivering optimal chronic disease care. Therefore, even though PCN is in its early stage of development, it has shown to be well poised to steer GPs towards enhanced chronic disease management.


2021 ◽  
pp. 026666692199750
Author(s):  
Noore Alam Siddiquee ◽  
Md Gofran Faroqi

This paper explores the impacts of Bangladesh’s Union Digital Centers (UDCs) as government information and service delivery hubs in rural areas. Drawing on user-surveys and semi-structured individual interviews it demonstrates that the UDCs have produced generally positive yet modest impacts on governance of service delivery. It shows that the UDCs are at an early stage of development, and that they offer only a limited set of services. While they helped extend ICT-enabled services to sections of population that would otherwise have missed them, the UDCs do not have much to do with rural livelihoods and empowerment of the poor and marginalized groups. These findings point to current inadequacies and pitfalls of the UDC approach to development. We argue that enhanced viability and effectiveness of the UDC experiment would warrant embedding more value-added governmental services and further strengthening of their capacity, mandate, and connectivity with government agencies at various levels, among others.


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