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009). Our findings suggested that there is an AD variant characterized by right focal atrophy and visuospatial dysfunction.Diseases pose an ongoing threat to aquaculture, fisheries and conservation of marine species, and determination of risk factors of disease is crucial for management. Our objective was to decipher the effects of host, pathogen and environmental factors on disease-induced mortality of Pacific oysters (Crassostrea gigas) across a latitudinal gradient. We deployed young and adult oysters at 13 sites in France and we monitored survival, pathogens and environmental parameters. The young oysters came from either the wild collection or the hatchery while the adults were from the wild only. We then used Cox regression models to investigate the effect of latitude, site, environmental factors and origin on mortality risk and to extrapolate this mortality risk to the distribution limits of the species in Europe. We found that seawater temperature, food level, sea level atmospheric pressure, rainfall and wind speed were associated with mortality risk. Their effect on hatchery oysters was generally higher than on wild animals, probably reflecting that hatchery oysters were free of Ostreid herpesvirus 1 (OsHV-1) whereas those from the wild were asymptomatic carriers. The risk factors involved in young and adult oyster mortalities were different, reflecting distinct diseases. Mortality risk increases from 0 to 90% with decreasing latitude for young hatchery oysters, but not for young wild oysters or adults. Mortality risk was higher in wild oysters than in hatchery ones at latitude > 47.6°N while this was the opposite at lower latitude. Therefore, latitudinal gradient alters disease-induced mortality risk but interacts with the initial health status of the host and the pathogen involved. Practically, we suggest that mortality can be mitigated by using hatchery oysters in north and wild collected oysters in the south.An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.Poor maternal sleep quality during pregnancy may act as a prenatal stress factor for the fetus and associate with neonate neurocognition, for example via fetal programming. The impacts of worsened maternal sleep on neonatal development and, more specifically on neonatal auditory brain responses, have not been studied. A total of 155 mother-neonate dyads drawn from the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study participated in our study including maternal self-report questionnaires on sleep at gestational week 24 and an event-related potential (ERP) measurement among 1-2-day-old neonates. For sleep quality assessment, the Basic Nordic Sleep Questionnaire (BNSQ) was used and calculated scores for (1) insomnia, (2) subjective sleep loss and (3) sleepiness were formed and applied in the analyses. In the auditory ERP protocol, three emotionally uttered pseudo words (in happy, angry and sad valence) were presented among neutrally uttered pseudo words. To study the relations between prenatal maternal sleep quality and auditory emotion-related ERP responses, mixed-effects regression models were computed for early (100-200 ms) and late (300-500 ms) ERP response time-windows. check details All of the selected BNSQ scores were associated with neonatal ERP responses for happy and angry emotion stimuli (sleep loss and sleepiness in the early, and insomnia, sleep loss and sleepiness in the late time-window). For sad stimuli, only maternal sleep loss predicted the neonatal ERP response in the late time-window, likely because the overall ERP was weakest in the sad condition. We conclude that maternal sleep quality during pregnancy is associated with changes in neonatal auditory ERP responses.Inhibition of return (IOR) is the reduction of detection speed and/or detection accuracy of a target in a recently attended location. This phenomenon, which has been discovered and studied thoroughly in humans, is believed to reflect a brain mechanism for controlling the allocation of spatial attention in a manner that enhances efficient search. Findings showing that IOR is robust, apparent at a very early age and seemingly dependent on midbrain activity suggest that IOR is a universal attentional mechanism in vertebrates. However, studies in non-mammalian species are scarce. To explore this hypothesis comparatively, we tested for IOR in barn owls (Tyto alba) using the classical Posner cueing paradigm. Two barn owls were trained to initiate a trial by fixating on the center of a computer screen and then turning their gaze to the location of a target. A short, non-informative cue appeared before the target, either at a location predicting the target (valid) or a location not predicting the target (invalid). Inin the invalid conditions. The findings support the notion that IOR is a basic mechanism in the evolution of vertebrate behavior and suggest that the effect appears as a result of the interaction between lateral and forward inhibition in the tectal circuitry.The simulation of membrane proteins requires compatible protein and lipid force fields that reproduce the properties of both the protein and the lipid bilayer. Cytochrome P450 enzymes are bitopic membrane proteins with a transmembrane helical anchor and a large cytosolic globular domain that dips into the membrane. As such, they are representative and challenging examples of membrane proteins for simulations, displaying features of both peripheral and integral membrane proteins. We performed molecular dynamics simulations of three cytochrome P450 isoforms (2C9, 2C19 and 1A1) in a 2-oleoyl-1-palmitoyl-sn-glycerol-3-phosphocholine bilayer using two AMBER force field combinations GAFF-LIPID with ff99SB for the protein, and LIPID14 with ff14SB for the protein. Comparison of the structural and dynamic properties of the proteins, the lipids and the protein-membrane interactions shows differing sensitivity of the cytochrome P450 isoforms to the choice of force field, with generally better agreement with experiment for the LIPID14 + ff14SB combination.The dorsal striatum is a brain region involved in action control, with dorsomedial striatum (DMS) mediating goal-directed actions and dorsolateral striatum (DLS) mediating habitual actions. Presynaptic long-term synaptic depression (LTD) plasticity at glutamatergic inputs to dorsal striatum mediates many dorsal striatum-dependent behaviors and disruption of LTD influences action control. Our previous work identified mu opioid receptors (MORs) as mediators of synapse-specific forms of synaptic depression at a number of different DLS synapses. We demonstrated that anterior insular cortex inputs are the sole inputs that express alcohol-sensitive MOR-mediated LTD (mOP-LTD) in DLS. Here, we explore mOP-LTD in DMS using mouse brain slice electrophysiology. We found that contrary to DLS, DMS mOP-LTD is induced by activation of MORs at inputs from both anterior cingulate and medial prefrontal cortices as well as at basolateral amygdala inputs and striatal cholinergic interneuron synapses on to DMS medium spiny neurons, suggesting that MOR synaptic plasticity in DMS is less synapse-specific than in DLS. Furthermore, only mOP-LTD at cortical inputs was sensitive to alcohol's deleterious effects. These results suggest that alcohol-induced neuroadaptations are differentially expressed in a synapse-specific manner and could be playing a role in alterations of goal-directed and habitual behaviors.Malaria parasites have a complex life cycle comprising development in two hosts, the vertebrate and the vector mosquito. In the gut of the mosquito, the parasite develops into the oocyst, which is settled beneath the epithelium and attached to the basal lamina of the gut until the maturation of the cyst and its rupture concomitant with the release of the sporozoites, the infectious form of the parasite. The oocyst represents the longest stage of the parasite life cycle but it is poorly understood, mainly because of the difficulties to separate the oocysts from the mosquito midgut tissue but also the lack of a robust method to reproduce this stage in vitro. Here we describe a simple and reproducible protocol for purification of oocysts from mosquitoes. Midguts were dissected from infected mosquitoes and treated with trypsin which resulted in the degradation of the basal lamina and the release of the oocysts from the midgut tissue. The results obtained showed that the isolated oocysts were free of the mosquito protein E-cadherin. Purified oocysts were alive as judged by a strong GFP signal at least up to 2 h after treatment and furthermore sporozoites that had developed in the cyst were able to glide. Our new method will allow the study of the oocyst composition, formation and development in more details leading to advances in knowledge of this Plasmodium stage.Antibiotic Microbial Resistance (AMR) is a major global challenge as it constitutes a severe threat to global public health if not addressed. To fight against AMR bacteria, new antimicrobial agents are continually needed, and their efficacy must be tested. Historically, many transition metals have been employed, but their cytotoxicity is an issue and hence must be reduced, typically by combination with organic polymers. Cellulose of natural origin, especially those derived from unavoidable residues in the food supply chain, appears to be a good capping agent for the green synthesis of silver nanoparticles. Herein, we describe a green synthesis method to produce a novel biocomposite, using ascorbic acid as reducing agent and microfibrillated cellulose as a capping agent and demonstrate this material to be an efficient antimicrobial agent. Silver nanoparticles were obtained in the cellulose matrix with an average size of 140 nm and with antimicrobial activity against both sensitive and resistant Gram positive (using 1500 ppm) as well as sensitive and resistant Gram negative (using 125 ppm) bacteria. Also, an inverted disk-diffusion methodology was applied to overcome the low-solubility of cellulose compounds. This novel silver nanoparticle-cellulose biocomposite synthesized by a green methodology shows the potential to be applied in the future development of biomedical instruments and therapeutics.Alterations of Young's modulus (YM) and Poisson's ratio (PR) in biological tissues are often early indicators of the onset of pathological conditions. Knowledge of these parameters has been proven to be of great clinical significance for the diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of cancers. Currently, however, there are no non-invasive modalities that can be used to image and quantify these parameters in vivo without assuming incompressibility of the tissue, an assumption that is rarely justified in human tissues. In this paper, we developed a new method to simultaneously reconstruct YM and PR of a tumor and of its surrounding tissues based on the assumptions of axisymmetry and ellipsoidal-shape inclusion. This new, non-invasive method allows the generation of high spatial resolution YM and PR maps from axial and lateral strain data obtained via ultrasound elastography. The method was validated using finite element (FE) simulations and controlled experiments performed on phantoms with known mechanical properties.
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