scholarly journals Timing the Juvenile-Adult Neurohormonal Transition: Functions and Evolution

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Celia G. Barredo ◽  
Beatriz Gil-Marti ◽  
Derya Deveci ◽  
Nuria M. Romero ◽  
Francisco A. Martin

Puberty and metamorphosis are two major developmental transitions linked to the reproductive maturation. In mammals and vertebrates, the central brain acts as a gatekeeper, timing the developmental transition through the activation of a neuroendocrine circuitry. In addition to reproduction, these neuroendocrine axes and the sustaining genetic network play additional roles in metabolism, sleep and behavior. Although neurohormonal axes regulating juvenile-adult transition have been classically considered the result of convergent evolution (i.e., analogous) between mammals and insects, recent findings challenge this idea, suggesting that at least some neuroendocrine circuits might be present in the common bilaterian ancestor Urbilateria. The initial signaling pathways that trigger the transition in different species appear to be of a single evolutionary origin and, consequently, many of the resulting functions are conserved with a few other molecular players being co-opted during evolution.

Author(s):  
Nataliya Alekseevna Zavyalova

The analysis of civilizational pictures of the world through the prism of linguistic universals allows one to reveal the general and the particular in the «human — world» system, which contributes to a more complete understanding of their cultural semantics. Cultural standards vary across civilizations. Their description on the material of multi-structural, genetically heterogeneous languages, civilizations and cultures makes it possible to reveal the common foundations of people's social life despite the fact that their cultural codes are different, often creating the impression of a complete incompatibility of the thinking and behavior of their representatives. Therefore, studies based on the description of fundamentally dissimilar civilizations and cultures, demonstrating the groundlessness of such impressions, are relevant. The article examines cultural and communicative formulae as a reflection of the civilizational pictures of the world. Cultural and communicative formulae (CCF) are defined by the author as the simplest, stable, high-frequency units of culture used at all levels of social and cultural life, which, being a combination of signs, compactly represent the culture in its similarity and difference with other cultures and make it possible to establish a dialogue of cultures in minimum of data involved. CCF provide communication through verbal forms of language, gestures, styles, etc., i.e. through all cultural forms that can be translated into signs of a given culture and are sufficient to have a minimal idea of it. The article examines the CCF using the example of concise verbal forms belonging to folk speech, which include proverbs and sayings, «winged words», precedent phrases that are a component of the civilizational picture of the world. The materials of the article may be of interest for preparation at the higher educational institution in the framework of the fields of «Linguistics», «International relations» and «Culturology».


1972 ◽  
Vol 121 (562) ◽  
pp. 281-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin H. Davies

The treatment of neurotic emotional responses and behaviour patterns has probably generated more controversies and fewer verifiable observations than any other aspect of psychiatric practice. Tentative hypotheses have been all too quick to take root, expanding into comprehensive theoretical systems, and often obscuring the growth of objective information. Lately, however, a more cautious and empirical attitude appears to be gaining ground. For example, Marks (1971) has pointed out that workers in this field increasingly recognize the presence of factors influencing outcome which are not explained or even contradicted by those concepts and strategies which underlie the techniques employed. Psychotherapists of both behaviourist and psychodynamic persuasions are beginning to express an awareness of the limitations and dangers of a too rigid theoretical approach. Such a movement towards uncommitted empiricism seems a healthy trend. This may be furthered by the more careful examination of specific treatment regimes applied to a variety of diagnostically homogeneous groups of patients, an approach which is clearly preferable to sterile arguments about their relative overall effectiveness in the usual heterogeneous collections of neurotic patients with which the literature abounds. In the recently published Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change (1971), the editors comment on the frequency with which their contributors criticize the lack of replicated studies and the common failure to describe in adequate detail the specific features of patient, method and therapist. From whatever aspect it is viewed, psychotherapy emerges as a complex personal interaction containing many components, all difficult to quantify and unlikely to combine their effects in an easily predictable way.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Hongyi Zhao ◽  
Jiangyu Chen

ADHD is a common disease in children, and the pathogenesis is still unclear. Attention deficit is the main manifestation of ADHD, which has a serious impact on children’s learning and growth. The treatment of ADHD is mainly western medicine, supplemented by psychotherapy. More and more studies have shown that ADHD has similar characteristics to psychological diseases, and dopamine beta hydroxylase gene abnormality is the common feature of most mental diseases. In view of the potential relationship between ADHD and dopamine β hydroxylase gene, this paper will study the polymorphism of dopamine β hydroxylase gene in children with ADHD under the nursing intervention mode. This paper is divided into three parts. The first part is theoretical research. In this part, we deeply analyze ADHD. We think that the pathogenesis of ADHD mainly comes from four factors: heredity, environment, nutrition, and behavior. In order to further test the relationship between ADHD and dopamine beta hydroxylase gene, the corresponding experimental model was established in the second part of this paper. All the samples in the experiment are from real cases. The experimental principle and specific operation steps are given in detail. In order to facilitate comparison, the same number of control groups was established in addition to the real disease. The third part is the experimental results and analysis. After a number of comparative experiments, through the analysis of experimental data, we believe that ADHD is closely related to the gene of dopamine beta hydroxylase. Among them, the A2 gene in the patient group was significantly more than that in the normal group, which further verified that ADHD has the characteristics of common psychological diseases.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (21) ◽  
pp. 8106
Author(s):  
Prasanta K. Subudhi ◽  
Richard S. Garcia ◽  
Sapphire Coronejo ◽  
Teresa B. De Leon

Plant architecture is critical for enhancing the adaptability and productivity of crop plants. Mutants with an altered plant architecture allow researchers to elucidate the genetic network and the underlying mechanisms. In this study, we characterized a novel nal1 rice mutant with short height, small panicle, and narrow and thick deep green leaves that was identified from a cross between a rice cultivar and a weedy rice accession. Bulked segregant analysis coupled with genome re-sequencing and cosegregation analysis revealed that the overall mutant phenotype was caused by a 1395-bp deletion spanning over the last two exons including the transcriptional end site of the nal1 gene. This deletion resulted in chimeric transcripts involving nal1 and the adjacent gene, which were validated by a reference-guided assembly of transcripts followed by PCR amplification. A comparative transcriptome analysis of the mutant and the wild-type rice revealed 263 differentially expressed genes involved in cell division, cell expansion, photosynthesis, reproduction, and gibberellin (GA) and brassinosteroids (BR) signaling pathways, suggesting the important regulatory role of nal1. Our study indicated that nal1 controls plant architecture through the regulation of genes involved in the photosynthetic apparatus, cell cycle, and GA and BR signaling pathways.


Diversity ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martín J. Ramírez ◽  
Peter Michalik

Spiders are a diverse group with a high eco-morphological diversity, which complicates anatomical descriptions especially with regard to its terminology. New terms are constantly proposed, and definitions and limits of anatomical concepts are regularly updated. Therefore, it is often challenging to find the correct terms, even for trained scientists, especially when the terminology has obstacles such as synonyms, disputed definitions, ambiguities, or homonyms. Here, we present the Spider Anatomy Ontology (SPD), which we developed combining the functionality of a glossary (a controlled defined vocabulary) with a network of formalized relations between terms that can be used to compute inferences. The SPD follows the guidelines of the Open Biomedical Ontologies and is available through the NCBO BioPortal (ver. 1.1). It constitutes of 757 valid terms and definitions, is rooted with the Common Anatomy Reference Ontology (CARO), and has cross references to other ontologies, especially of arthropods. The SPD offers a wealth of anatomical knowledge that can be used as a resource for any scientific study as, for example, to link images to phylogenetic datasets, compute structural complexity over phylogenies, and produce ancestral ontologies. By using a common reference in a standardized way, the SPD will help bridge diverse disciplines, such as genomics, taxonomy, systematics, evolution, ecology, and behavior.


2017 ◽  
Vol 96 (11) ◽  
pp. 1248-1256 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Juuri ◽  
A. Balic

In past decades, morphologic, molecular, and cellular mechanisms that govern tooth development have been extensively studied. These studies demonstrated that the same signaling pathways regulate development of the primary and successional teeth. Mutations of these pathways lead to abnormalities in tooth development and number, including aberrant tooth shape, tooth agenesis, and formation of extra teeth. Here, we summarize the current knowledge on the development of the primary and successional teeth in animal models and describe some of the common tooth abnormalities in humans.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Floria M.K. Uy ◽  
Christopher M. Jernigan ◽  
Natalie C. Zaba ◽  
Eshan Mehrotra ◽  
Sara E. Miller ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTSocial interactions have large effects on individual physiology and fitness. In the immediate sense, social stimuli are often highly salient and engaging. Over longer time scales, competitive interactions often lead to distinct social ranks and differences in physiology and behavior. Understanding how initial responses lead to longer-term effects of social interactions requires examining the changes in responses over time. Here we examined the effects of social interactions on transcriptomic signatures at two points, at the end of a 45-minute interaction and 4 hours later, in female Polistes fuscatus paper wasp foundresses. Female P. fuscatus have variable facial patterns that are used for visual individual recognition, so we separately examined the transcriptional dynamics in the optic lobe and the central brain. Results demonstrate much stronger transcriptional responses to social interactions in the central brain compared to the optic lobe. Differentially regulated genes in response to social interactions are enriched for memory-related transcripts. Comparisons between winners and losers of the encounters revealed similar overall transcriptional profiles at the end of an interaction, which significantly diverged over the course of 4 hours, with losers showing changes in expression levels of genes associated with aggression and reproduction in paper wasps. On nests, subordinate foundresses are less aggressive, do more foraging and lay fewer eggs compared to dominant foundresses and we find losers shift expression of many genes, including vitellogenin, related to aggression, worker behavior, and reproduction within hours of losing an encounter. These results highlight the early neurogenomic changes that likely contribute to behavioral and physiological effects of social status changes in a social insect.


2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (7) ◽  
pp. 270-279
Author(s):  
P.S. Sreevidya

This is an endeavor to seek the possibilities of the application of ethical principles of yoga in present day of ecological issues. The relevance of this research paper is evident from the fact that ecological issues are not only scientific but also an ethical and this research paper is reliable and informative in the extent that it seeks to challenge the existing relationship between human beings and nature with the description of the present crisis of ecology as a crisis of human-nature relationship. To talk of ecological issues signifies that most of the issues may occur because of the attitude and behavior patterns of man towards environment. The confluence of ethical principles of yoga and ecology offer profoundly relevant response to the ecological issues and brings forth an ecological virtue ethics, which care for all natural entities with main focus of the relationship between man and environment. It offer systematic framework for understanding the traits of character and types of action that cause problems for environment. Yoga approach on ecology is intrinsic in nature, which includes moral expansionism that tries to expand outward from human centered ethics towards animals and sentient life in general. All life forms of plants and animals are interrelated and have an intrinsic value. Ethical principles of yoga give greater importance to the attitude of the mind rather than on postulation of the elaborate theories of what is right and wrong.  So the virtues of yoga ethics would be used as a remedy towards changing an attitude of the common man towards his environment.


2016 ◽  
Vol 113 (52) ◽  
pp. 15036-15041 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sébastien Leclercq ◽  
Julien Thézé ◽  
Mohamed Amine Chebbi ◽  
Isabelle Giraud ◽  
Bouziane Moumen ◽  
...  

Sex determination is a fundamental developmental pathway governing male and female differentiation, with profound implications for morphology, reproductive strategies, and behavior. In animals, sex differences between males and females are generally determined by genetic factors carried by sex chromosomes. Sex chromosomes are remarkably variable in origin and can differ even between closely related species, indicating that transitions occur frequently and independently in different groups of organisms. The evolutionary causes underlying sex chromosome turnover are poorly understood, however. Here we provide evidence indicating that Wolbachia bacterial endosymbionts triggered the evolution of new sex chromosomes in the common pillbug Armadillidium vulgare. We identified a 3-Mb insert of a feminizing Wolbachia genome that was recently transferred into the pillbug nuclear genome. The Wolbachia insert shows perfect linkage to the female sex, occurs in a male genetic background (i.e., lacking the ancestral W female sex chromosome), and is hemizygous. Our results support the conclusion that the Wolbachia insert is now acting as a female sex-determining region in pillbugs, and that the chromosome carrying the insert is a new W sex chromosome. Thus, bacteria-to-animal horizontal genome transfer represents a remarkable mechanism underpinning the birth of sex chromosomes. We conclude that sex ratio distorters, such as Wolbachia endosymbionts, can be powerful agents of evolutionary transitions in sex determination systems in animals.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 227
Author(s):  
Bastian Schirmer ◽  
Klaudia Giehl ◽  
Katharina F. Kubatzky

The annual meeting “Signal Transduction—Receptors, Mediators, and Genes” of the Signal Transduction Society (STS) is an interdisciplinary conference open to all scientists sharing the common interest in elucidating signaling pathways in physiological or pathological processes in humans, animals, plants, fungi, prokaryotes, and protists. On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the STS, the 22nd joint meeting took place in Weimar from 5–7 November 2018. With the focus topic “Signaling: From Past to Future” the evolution of the multifaceted research concerning signal transduction since foundation of the society was highlighted. Invited keynote speakers introduced the respective workshop topics and were followed by numerous speakers selected from the submitted abstracts. All presentations were lively discussed during the workshops. Here, we provide a concise summary of the various workshops and further aspects of the scientific program.


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