scholarly journals Flipping the switch on the hub cell: Islet desynchronization through cell silencing

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. e0248974
Author(s):  
Janita P. Hogan ◽  
Bradford E. Peercy
Keyword(s):  
Insulin Secretion ◽  
Functional Connectivity ◽  
Gap Junctions ◽  
Experimental Work ◽  
Mechanistic Model ◽  
Centrality Measures ◽  
Calcium Dynamics ◽  
Scale Free ◽  
Coupled Cells ◽  
Recent Experimental Work

Pancreatic β cells, responsible for secreting insulin into the bloodstream and maintaining glucose homeostasis, are organized in the islets of Langerhans as clusters of electrically coupled cells. Gap junctions, connecting neighboring cells, coordinate the behavior of the islet, leading to the synchronized oscillations in the intracellular calcium and insulin secretion in healthy islets. Recent experimental work has shown that silencing special hub cells can lead to a disruption in the coordinated behavior, calling into question the democratic paradigm of islet insulin secretion with more or less equal input from each β cell. Islets were shown to have scale-free functional connectivity and a hub cell whose silencing would lead to a loss of functional connectivity and activity in the islet. A mechanistic model representing the electrical and calcium dynamics of β cells during insulin secretion was applied to a network of cells connected by gap junctions to test the hypothesis of hub cells. Functional connectivity networks were built from the simulated calcium traces, with some networks classified as scale-free, confirming experimental results. Potential hub cells were identified using previously defined centrality measures, but silencing them was unable to desynchronize the islet. Instead, switch cells, which were able to turn off the activity of the islet but were not highly functionally connected, were found via systematically silencing each cell in the network.

Photoreceptor coupling in turtle retina

1998 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 755-764 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.L. FIRSOV ◽  
D.G. GREEN
Keyword(s):  
Receptive Field ◽  
Gap Junctions ◽  
Direct Evidence ◽  
Physiological Responses ◽  
The Other ◽  
Morphological Data ◽  
Chelydra Serpentina ◽  
Intracellular Injection ◽  
Coupled Cells ◽  
High Degree

Photoreceptors in the isolated turtle retina of two species of turtle, Chelydra serpentina and Pseudemus scripta elegans, were penetrated with double-barrel electrodes. Physiological responses were recorded through one barrel and Neurobiotin tracer was injected from the other. Intracellular injection of Neurobiotin revealed patterns of tracer-coupled photoreceptors. Both the patterns of tracer coupling and the electrophysiology suggest a high degree of specificity of connections. Rods seem to be coupled only to rods and green and red cones seem to be coupled to cones of the same spectral type. Receptive-field profiles, measured with a thin, sharply focused slit of light, often had well-defined peaks and troughs in sensitivity. We have taken advantage of this observation and used the position of a peak in sensitivity to locate the position on the retina of a coupled cell. In one rod, it was possible to correlate physiological and morphological data and to show that the peaks in the physiological receptive field occurred at positions on the retina where there were dye-coupled cells. This provides direct evidence that gap junctions produce the physiological coupling between rods.

Taxonomic studies on Archigetes Leuckart, 1878 (Cestoda: Caryophyllaeidae)

Parasitology ◽  
1965 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 439-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. R. Keneedy
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Experimental Work ◽  
Nature Conservancy ◽  
The Family ◽  
Single Genus ◽  
Biological Characters ◽  
Taxonomic Studies ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Recent Experimental Work ◽  
The Relationship

Recent experimental work has indicated that species of Archigetes are capable of infecting and maturing in fishes in addition to tubificids.The genus Archigetes is re-defined on the basis of morphological and biological characters, with particular emphasis on recent life history studies. All species capable of neotenic development have been re-united in a single genus.A description of all species of Archigetes together with a key for their identification are included. New synonomies are discussed.The relationship of Archigetes to other genera of the family is briefly considered, and it is concluded that it forms the terminal stage in a series showing the attainment of neotenic development.I wish to thank Professor R. J. Pumphrey in whose Department the work was carried out, and Dr J. C. Chubb for advice and help in the preparation of this manuscript. I am also grateful to Professor K. Berg and Dr R. L. Calentine for the loan of specimens. The work was carried out during the tenure of a Nature Conservancy Research Studentship.

Acceptability ratings cannot be taken at face value

2020 ◽  
pp. 189-214
Author(s):  
Carson T. Schütze
Keyword(s):  
Rate Of Convergence ◽  
Experimental Work ◽  
Rates Of Convergence ◽  
Original Method ◽  
Journal Articles ◽  
True Rate ◽  
Acceptability Judgments ◽  
Critical Words ◽  
Recent Experimental Work

This chapter addresses how linguists’ empirical (syntactic) claims should be tested with non-linguists. Recent experimental work attempts to measure rates of convergence between data presented in journal articles and the results of large surveys. Three follow-up experiments to one such study are presented. It is argued that the original method may underestimate the true rate of convergence because it leaves considerable room for naïve subjects to give ratings that do not reflect their true acceptability judgments of the relevant structures. To understand what can go wrong, the experiments were conducted in two parts. The first part had visually presented sentences rated on a computer, replicating previous work. The second part was an interview where the experimenter asked the participants about the ratings they gave to particular items, in order to determine what interpretation or parse they had assigned, whether they had missed any critical words, and so on.

scholarly journals Scale-free dynamics of global functional connectivity in the human brain

2004 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cornelis Jan Stam ◽  
Eveline Astrid de Bruin
Keyword(s):  
Functional Connectivity ◽  
Human Brain ◽  
Scale Free

scholarly journals ROTATIONAL TUNNELLING SPECTROSCOPY WITH NEUTRONS

1993 ◽  
Vol 07 (16n17) ◽  
pp. 3113-3151 ◽  
Author(s):  
C.J. CARLILE ◽  
M. PRAGER
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Work ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Theoretical Point ◽  
Instrument Performance ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
Recent Experimental Work ◽  
Fruitful Field

Neutron tunnelling spectroscopy has been a very fruitful field for almost two decades and is still expanding into new areas, both experimentally and theoretically. The development of the topic is reviewed from the theoretical point of view, highlighting new approaches, and selected examples of more recent experimental work are presented. A brief discussion of instrument performance and experimental requirements is given.

Numerical Prediction of Various Cavitation Erosion Mechanisms

2020 ◽  
Vol 142 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ignacijo Biluš ◽  
Marko Hočevar ◽  
Matevž Dular ◽  
Luka Lešnik
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Work ◽  
High Speed ◽  
Cavitation Erosion ◽  
Cavitating Flow ◽  
Numerical Prediction ◽  
Quantitative Prediction ◽  
Navier Stokes ◽  
Erosion Mechanisms ◽  
Recent Experimental Work ◽  
Collapse Phase

Abstract Numerical prediction of cavitation erosion is a great scientific and technological challenge. In the past, many attempts were made—many successful. One of the issues when a comparison between a simulation and erosion experiments is made, is the great difference in time scale. In this work, we do not attempt to obtain quantitatively accurate predictions of erosion process but concentrate qualitatively on cavitation mechanisms with quantitative prediction of pressure pulses which lead to erosion. This is possible, because of our recent experimental work on simultaneous observation of cavitating flow and cavitation erosion by high speed cameras. In this study, the numerical simulation was used to predict details of the cavitation process during the vapor collapse phase. The fully compressible, cavitating flow simulations were performed to resolve the formation of the pressure waves at cavitation collapse. We tried to visualize the mechanisms and dynamics of vapor structures during collapse phase at the Venturi geometry. The obtained results show that unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (URANS) simulation of cavitation is capable of reproducing four out of five mechanisms of cavitation erosion, found during experimental work.

Efficient weighting strategy for enhancing synchronizability of complex networks

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (11) ◽  
pp. 1850128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Youquan Wang ◽  
Feng Yu ◽  
Shucheng Huang ◽  
Juanjuan Tu ◽  
Yan Chen
Keyword(s):  
Complex Networks ◽  
Structural Properties ◽  
Real World ◽  
Centrality Measures ◽  
Node Degree ◽  
Scale Free ◽  
High Propensity ◽  
Network Link ◽  
Weighting Strategy ◽  
Weighting Methods

Networks with high propensity to synchronization are desired in many applications ranging from biology to engineering. In general, there are two ways to enhance the synchronizability of a network: link rewiring and/or link weighting. In this paper, we propose a new link weighting strategy based on the concept of the neighborhood subgroup. The neighborhood subgroup of a node i through node j in a network, i.e. [Formula: see text], means that node u belongs to [Formula: see text] if node u belongs to the first-order neighbors of j (not include i). Our proposed weighting schema used the local and global structural properties of the networks such as the node degree, betweenness centrality and closeness centrality measures. We applied the method on scale-free and Watts–Strogatz networks of different structural properties and show the good performance of the proposed weighting scheme. Furthermore, as model networks cannot capture all essential features of real-world complex networks, we considered a number of undirected and unweighted real-world networks. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed weighting strategy outperformed the previously published weighting methods by enhancing the synchronizability of these real-world networks.

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