Melanism is an important component of insect cuticle and serves numerous functions that enhance fitness. Despite its importance, there is little information on its genetic basis or its phenotypic and genetic correlation with fitness-related traits. Here, we examine the heritability of melanism in the wing dimorphic sand cricket and determine its phenotypic and genetic correlation with wing morphology, gonad mass and size of the dorso-longitudinal muscles (the principle flight muscles). Previously demonstrated trade-offs among these traits are significant factors in the evolution of life history variation. Using path analysis, we show that melanization is causally related to gonad mass, but not flight muscle mass. Averaged over the sexes, the heritability of melanism was 0.61, the genetic correlation with gonad mass was -0.36 and with wing morph was 0.51. The path model correctly predicted the ranking of melanization score in lines selected for increased ovary mass, increased flight muscle mass, an index that increased both traits and an unselected control. Our results support the general hypothesis that melanization is costly for insects and negatively impacts investment in early reproduction.

OBJECTIVE:

To identify the blood supply to the vulval fold and adjacent skin, and evaluate it as a transposition flap for closing perineal wounds in dogs.

STUDY DESIGN:

Prospective study. ANIMALS OR SAMPLE

POPULATION:

Five female canine cadavers and 2 cases referred for excision of mast cell tumors adjacent to the vulva.

METHODS:

Dissection was performed to identify the vascular supply to the vulval fold in two cadavers following arterial injection of red latex and methylene blue, respectively. In three cadavers, barium sulfate mixed 1:1 with water was injected into the terminal aorta. The vulval fold and surrounding perineal skin was excised and radiographed. Transposition flaps using the vulval fold and adjacent skin were used to close skin defects in two dogs presented for wide excision of mast cell tumors situated ventro-lateral and dorso-lateral to the vulva, respectively.

RESULTS:

The vulval fold and adjacent skin was perfused bilaterally by branches of the ventral perineal and external pudendal arteries, which entered dorsally and ventrally, respectively. As incisions used to create a transposition flaps from the skin surrounding the vulval fold transect these vessels, the flap is dependent on the sub-dermal plexus for survival. There was 100% survival of transposition flaps in the 2 clinical cases and healing proceeded uneventfully with acceptable cosmetic and functional results.

CONCLUSIONS:

The vulval fold and surrounding skin can be used as a subdermal plexus flap to close large perineal defects in dogs.

CLINICAL RELEVANCE:

Availability of a defined local skin flap will improve treatment of diseases resulting in large perineal skin defects in female dogs.

In Spriralia, the specification of cell lines in the course of development is provided by maternal factors. However, recent studies demonstrated the importance of inductive processes whose significant element is cellular signaling. Our data allow us to speak of the dependent specification of a number of cell lines at the early stages of development of the mollusk Testudinalia testudinalis (Testudinalia tessellate, Patellogastropoda), including the period when the determination of the 3D cell takes place, which is accompanied by a change in the shape and establishing of contacts with animal micromeres by one of the macromeres of the third quartet. It is exactly at this moment that activation of MARK was registered in the 3D blastomere-organizer. An analysis of the influence of the U0126 blocker of the MAP-kinase way on the development of Testudinalia showed that the greatest effect of the inhibitor is observed during the cultivation of embryos until the sixth cycle of fragmentation. It should be noted that a scale of correlation of the degree of defects and increase in concentration exists. Absence of the functioning retractor, disorganization of the muscle system, and abnormal structure of the shell (to the extent of complete absence of the shell), as well as velum, foot, and mantle fold, were observed in a considerable part of larvae after a lengthy upkeep of the objects in the U0126 solution. At the same time, none of the experiments showed a complete disruption of the specification of the dorsoventral axis, which produces a larva with a four-ray radial symmetry. This attests in favor of the existence of various molecular mechanisms of determination of the secondary body axis among the animals from the group Spiralia.

Adult hippocampus is one of the brain structures selectively vulnerable to stress factors. In the hippocampus, stress-induced neuroinflammation, neurodegeneration, epileptic activity and disturbances of neurogenesis take place. Stress of different modality specifically affects hippocampal structural and functional plasticity, the primary target of the stress hormones are corticosteroid receptors (glucocorticoid and mineralocorticoid receptors). Different parts of the hippocampus along the septo-temporal axis are functionally different. The dorsal hippocampus is in charge for definite forms of learning and memory, primarily spatial, while the ventral part is involved in stress response and anxiety behavior. Differences in basal and stress-induced molecular and cellular mechanisms of neuronal plasticity underlie this functional differentiation.

Insects act as vectors for diseases of plants, animals, and humans. Replacement of wild insect populations with genetically modified individuals unable to transmit disease provides a potentially self-perpetuating method of disease prevention. Population replacement requires a gene drive mechanism in order to spread linked genes mediating disease refractoriness through wild populations. We previously reported the creation of synthetic Medea selfish genetic elements able to drive population replacement in Drosophila. These elements use microRNA-mediated silencing of myd88, a maternally expressed gene required for embryonic dorso-ventral pattern formation, coupled with early zygotic expression of a rescuing transgene, to bring about gene drive. Medea elements that work through additional mechanisms are needed in order to be able to carry out cycles of population replacement and/or remove existing transgenes from the population, using second-generation elements that spread while driving first-generation elements out of the population. Here we report the synthesis and population genetic behavior of two new synthetic Medea elements that drive population replacement through manipulation of signaling pathways involved in cellular blastoderm formation or Notch signaling, demonstrating that in Drosophila Medea elements can be generated through manipulation of diverse signaling pathways. We also describe the mRNA and small RNA changes in ovaries and early embryos associated from Medea-bearing females. Finally, we use modeling to illustrate how Medea elements carrying genes that result in diapause-dependent female lethality could be used to bring about population suppression.

Unexpected changes in the location of a target for an upcoming action require both attentional reorienting and motor planning update. In both macaque and human brain, the medial posterior parietal cortex is involved in both phenomena but its causal role is still unclear. Here we used on-line rTMS over the putative human V6A (pV6A), a reach-related region in the dorsal part of the anterior bank of the parieto-occipital sulcus, during an attention and a reaching task requiring covert shifts of attention and planning of reaching movements toward cued targets in space. We found that rTMS increased RTs to invalidly cued but not to validly cued targets during both the attention and reaching task. Furthermore, we found that rTMS induced a deviation of reaching endpoints toward visual fixation and that this deviation was larger for invalidly cued targets. The results suggest that reorienting signals are used by human pV6A area to rapidly update the current motor plan or the ongoing action when a behaviorally relevant object unexpectedly occurs in an unattended location. The current findings suggest a direct involvement of the action-related dorso-medial visual stream in attentional reorienting and a more specific role of pV6A area in the dynamic, on-line control of reaching actions.

Study Design. Biomechanical volunteer study.

Objective.

To quantify the stabilizing effect of two different semirigid thoracolumbar orthoses during various body movements.Summary of Background Data. Various spinal diseases need to be treated by immobilization. The literature shows, that the immobilizing effect of orthoses strongly depend on the orthosis design and on the loading direction. Few data are available for loading directions other than flexion and extension.Methods. Ten young and healthy volunteers (22-44 years, 5 male, 5 female) performed four different tasks: full active flexion/extension, lateral bending and axial rotation as well as a full active everyday movement (flexion plus lateral bending plus axial rotation). These tasks were carried out without orthosis, with the DorsoFX (BORT GmbH, Germany) and with the SofTec Dorso orthosis (Bauerfeind AG, Germany). The flexibility of the spine was measured using a three-dimensional motion capturing system (Zebris Medical GmbH, Germany). Additionally, the pressure exerted by the orthoses on the subject's body surface was measured using a pressure sensor (Tekscan Inc., USA).

Results.

The range of motion significantly decreased in all loading planes by 42 to 69%. The movement with the largest decrease was axial rotation, and the smallest decreases were observed in extension (DorsoFX), resp. flexion and the everyday movement (SofTec Dorso). The differences between the two orthoses were small and not statistically significant. The pressure between orthosis and the body surface was similar for both orthoses but differed between the movements.

Conclusions.

Both orthoses had a similar stabilizing effect on the thoracolumbar spine. The stabilizing effect differed between the four movements, which indicates that all loading planes should be tested to completely understand the effect of an orthosis. Complete immobilization of the thoracolumbar spine was not possible with either of the two orthoses but the stability increase was statistically significant.

The regulation of emotions is an integral part of our mental health. It has only recently been investigated using brain imaging techniques. In most studies, participants are instructed by a cue to inhibit a specific emotional reaction. The aim of the present study was to investigate the alternative situation where a person decides to inhibit an emotion as an act of endogenous self-control. Healthy participants viewed highly arousing pictures with negative valence. In the endogenous condition, participants could freely choose on each trial to inhibit or feel the emotions elicited by the picture. In an exogenous condition, a visual cue instructed them to either feel or inhibit the emotion elicited by the picture. Participants' subjective ratings of intensity of experienced emotion showed an interaction effect between source of control (endogenous/exogenous) and feel/inhibit based on a stronger modulation between feel and inhibition for the endogenous compared to the exogenous condition. Endogenous inhibition of emotions was associated with dorso-medial prefrontal cortex activation, whereas exogenous inhibition was found associated with lateral prefrontal cortex activation. Thus, the brain regions for both endogenous and exogenous inhibition of emotion are highly similar to those for inhibition of motor actions in Brass and Haggard (J Neurosci 27:9141-9145, 2007), Kühn et al. (Hum Brain Mapp 30:2834-2843, 2009). Functional connectivity analyses showed that dorsofrontomedial cortex exerts greater control onto pre-supplementary motor area during endogenous inhibition compared to endogenous feel. This functional dissociation between an endogenous, fronto-medial and an exogenous, fronto-lateral inhibition centre has important implications for our understanding of emotion regulation in health and psychopathology.

Radial nerve compression is seldom encountered in the upper arm, and most commonly described compression syndromes have their anatomical cause in the forearm. The teres major, the triceps muscle, the intermuscular septum region and the space between the brachialis and brachioradialis muscles have all been identified as radial nerve compression sites above the elbow. We describe the case of a 38-year-old male patient who presented with dorso-lateral forearm pain and paraesthesias without neurological deficit. Surgical exploration revealed radial nerve compression at the humeral origin of the brachioradialis muscle. Liberation of the nerve at this site was successful at relieving the symptoms. To our knowledge, this compression site has not been described in the literature.

Many lophotrochozoans (i.e., molluscs, annelids, nemerteans, and polyclad flatworms) display a well-conserved early developmental program called spiral cleavage that contrasts with the high diversity of adult body forms present in this group. Due to this stereotypical development, each cell can be uniquely identified and its lineage history known following intracellular injection of lineage tracers. Cell deletion experiments performed mainly in molluscs have demonstrated that one or two cells associated with the endomesodermal lineage represent an embryonic organizer of subsequent development and are causally involved in cell fate and body patterning. Utilizing the published fate map of the spiral-cleaving annelid Capitella teleta, we used infrared laser cell deletions to dissect the role of individual cells on the patterning of the larval body. Thirteen uniquely identifiable individual blastomeres and two double cell combination deletions were studied to assess larval phenotypes by scoring multiple morphological structures and cell type-specific molecular markers differentially expressed along the antero-posterior and dorso-ventral axes. Surprisingly, our results show that in C. teleta, the cellular identity of the "organizing cell" and the timing of the organizing activity are different from that of other spiralians. retain-->In C. teleta, the ectodermal primary somatoblast, 2d, is the key cell responsible for organizing activity during early embryonic development, and is necessary for bilateral symmetry and dorso-ventral axis organization of the head as well as neural, foregut and mesoderm tissue formation. Furthermore, we show that the ERK/MAPK signaling pathway does not appear to be involved in organizing activity in retain-->C. teleta. This contrasts with data from molluscs and the molecular mechanism suggested for another polychaete, Hydroides elegans, highlighting likely molecular level variation among spiralian embryos. These results reinforce the idea that an embryonic organizing activity is present across spiralians. Our data also emphasize the developmental variation within lophotrochozoans, and may ultimately provide insight into the role of developmental processes in the evolution of diverse body forms in metazoans.