scholarly journals An FMRFamide Neuropeptide in Cuttlefish Sepia pharaonis: Identification, Characterization, and Potential Function

Molecules ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (7) ◽  
pp. 1636 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yang Zhu ◽  
Lian-lian Sun ◽  
Jun-hong Wu ◽  
Hui-hui Liu ◽  
Li-bing Zheng ◽  
...  

Neuropeptides are released by neurons that are involved in a wide range of brain functions, such as food intake, metabolism, reproduction, and learning and memory. A full-length cDNA sequence of an FMRFamide gene isolated from the cuttlefish Sepia pharaonis (designated as SpFMRFamide) was cloned. The predicted precursor protein contains one putative signal peptide and four FMRFamide-related peptides. Multiple amino acid and nucleotide sequence alignments showed that it shares 97% similarity with the precursor FMRFamides of Sepiella japonica and Sepia officinalis and shares 93% and 92% similarity with the SpFMRFamide gene of the two cuttlefish species, respectively. Moreover, the phylogenetic analysis also suggested that SpFMRFamide and FMRFamides from S. japonica and S. officinalis belong to the same sub-branch. Tissue expression analysis confirmed that SpFMRFamide was widely distributed among tissues and predominantly expressed in the brain at the three development stages. The combined effects of SpFMRFamide+SpGnRH and SpFLRFamide+SpGnRH showed a marked decrease in the level of the total proteins released in the CHO-K1 cells. This is the first report of SpFMRFamide in S. pharaonis and the results may contribute to future studies of neuropeptide evolution or may prove useful for the development of aquaculture methods for this cuttlefish species.

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (20) ◽  
pp. 7734
Author(s):  
Ying Liu ◽  
Jiayin Man ◽  
Yinghao Wang ◽  
Chao Yuan ◽  
Yuyu Shi ◽  
...  

MYB transcription factors have a wide range of functions in plant growth, hormone signaling, salt, and drought tolerances. In this study, two homologous transcription factors, PtrMYB55 and PtrMYB121, were isolated and their functions were elucidated. Tissue expression analysis revealed that PtrMYB55 and PtrMYB121 had a similar expression pattern, which had the highest expression in stems. Their expression continuously increased with the growth of poplar, and the expression of PtrMYB121 was significantly upregulated in the process. The full length of PtrMYB121 was 1395 bp, and encoded protein contained 464 amino acids including conserved R2 and R3 MYB domains. We overexpressed PtrMYB121 in Arabidopsis thaliana, and the transgenic lines had the wider xylem as compared with wild-type Arabidopsis. The contents of cellulose and lignin were obviously higher than those in wild-type materials, but there was no significant change in hemicellulose. Quantitative real-time PCR demonstrated that the key enzyme genes regulating the synthesis of lignin and cellulose were significantly upregulated in the transgenic lines. Furthermore, the effector-reporter experiment confirmed that PtrMYB121 bound directly to the promoters of genes relating to the synthesis of lignin and cellulose. These results suggest that PtrMYB121 may positively regulate the formation of secondary cell wall by promoting the synthesis of lignin and cellulose.


1970 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Muskinul Fuad

The education system in Indonesia emphasize on academic intelligence, whichincludes only two or three aspects, more than on the other aspects of intelligence. For thatreason, many children who are not good at academic intelligence, but have good potentials inother aspects of intelligence, do not develop optimally. They are often considered and labeledas "stupid children" by the existing system. This phenomenon is on the contrary to the theoryof multiple intelligences proposed by Howard Gardner, who argues that intelligence is theability to solve various problems in life and produce products or services that are useful invarious aspects of life.Human intelligence is a combination of various general and specific abilities. Thistheory is different from the concept of IQ (intelligence quotient) that involves only languageskills, mathematical, and spatial logics. According to Gardner, there are nine aspects ofintelligence and its potential indicators to be developed by each child born without a braindefect. What Gardner suggested can be considered as a starting point to a perspective thatevery child has a unique individual intelligence. Parents have to treat and educate theirchildren proportionally and equitably. This treatment will lead to a pattern of education that isfriendly to the brain and to the plurality of children’s potential.More than the above points, the notion that multiple intelligences do not just comefrom the brain needs to be followed. Humans actually have different immaterial (spiritual)aspects that do not refer to brain functions. The belief in spiritual aspects and its potentialsmeans that human beings have various capacities and they differ from physical capacities.This is what needs to be addressed from the perspective of education today. The philosophyand perspective on education of the educators, education stakeholders, and especially parents,are the first major issue to be addressed. With this step, every educational activity andcommunication within the family is expected to develop every aspect of children'sintelligence, especially the spiritual intelligence.


Antioxidants ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. 1311
Author(s):  
Faraz Ahmad ◽  
Ping Liu

Lead (Pb) neurotoxicity is a major concern, particularly in children. Developmental exposure to Pb can alter neurodevelopmental trajectory and has permanent neuropathological consequences, including an increased vulnerability to further stressors. Ascorbic acid is among most researched antioxidant nutrients and has a special role in maintaining redox homeostasis in physiological and physio-pathological brain states. Furthermore, because of its capacity to chelate metal ions, ascorbic acid may particularly serve as a potent therapeutic agent in Pb poisoning. The present review first discusses the major consequences of Pb exposure in children and then proceeds to present evidence from human and animal studies for ascorbic acid as an efficient ameliorative supplemental nutrient in Pb poisoning, with a particular focus on developmental Pb neurotoxicity. In doing so, it is hoped that there is a revitalization for further research on understanding the brain functions of this essential, safe, and readily available vitamin in physiological states, as well to justify and establish it as an effective neuroprotective and modulatory factor in the pathologies of the nervous system, including developmental neuropathologies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Medelin Ocejo ◽  
Beatriz Oporto ◽  
José Luis Lavín ◽  
Ana Hurtado

AbstractCampylobacter, a leading cause of gastroenteritis in humans, asymptomatically colonises the intestinal tract of a wide range of animals.Although antimicrobial treatment is restricted to severe cases, the increase of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a concern. Considering the significant contribution of ruminants as reservoirs of resistant Campylobacter, Illumina whole-genome sequencing was used to characterise the mechanisms of AMR in Campylobacter jejuni and Campylobacter coli recovered from beef cattle, dairy cattle, and sheep in northern Spain. Genome analysis showed extensive genetic diversity that clearly separated both species. Resistance genotypes were identified by screening assembled sequences with BLASTn and ABRicate, and additional sequence alignments were performed to search for frameshift mutations and gene modifications. A high correlation was observed between phenotypic resistance to a given antimicrobial and the presence of the corresponding known resistance genes. Detailed sequence analysis allowed us to detect the recently described mosaic tet(O/M/O) gene in one C. coli, describe possible new alleles of blaOXA-61-like genes, and decipher the genetic context of aminoglycoside resistance genes, as well as the plasmid/chromosomal location of the different AMR genes and their implication for resistance spread. Updated resistance gene databases and detailed analysis of the matched open reading frames are needed to avoid errors when using WGS-based analysis pipelines for AMR detection in the absence of phenotypic data.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Linuo Wang

Injuries and hidden dangers in training have a greater impact on athletes ’careers. In particular, the brain function that controls the motor function area has a greater impact on the athlete ’s competitive ability. Based on this, it is necessary to adopt scientific methods to recognize brain functions. In this paper, we study the structure of motor brain-computer and improve it based on traditional methods. Moreover, supported by machine learning and SVM technology, this study uses a DSP filter to convert the preprocessed EEG signal X into a time series, and adjusts the distance between the time series to classify the data. In order to solve the inconsistency of DSP algorithms, a multi-layer joint learning framework based on logistic regression model is proposed, and a brain-machine interface system of sports based on machine learning and SVM is constructed. In addition, this study designed a control experiment to improve the performance of the method proposed by this study. The research results show that the method in this paper has a certain practical effect and can be applied to sports.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 3397
Author(s):  
Gustavo Assunção ◽  
Nuno Gonçalves ◽  
Paulo Menezes

Human beings have developed fantastic abilities to integrate information from various sensory sources exploring their inherent complementarity. Perceptual capabilities are therefore heightened, enabling, for instance, the well-known "cocktail party" and McGurk effects, i.e., speech disambiguation from a panoply of sound signals. This fusion ability is also key in refining the perception of sound source location, as in distinguishing whose voice is being heard in a group conversation. Furthermore, neuroscience has successfully identified the superior colliculus region in the brain as the one responsible for this modality fusion, with a handful of biological models having been proposed to approach its underlying neurophysiological process. Deriving inspiration from one of these models, this paper presents a methodology for effectively fusing correlated auditory and visual information for active speaker detection. Such an ability can have a wide range of applications, from teleconferencing systems to social robotics. The detection approach initially routes auditory and visual information through two specialized neural network structures. The resulting embeddings are fused via a novel layer based on the superior colliculus, whose topological structure emulates spatial neuron cross-mapping of unimodal perceptual fields. The validation process employed two publicly available datasets, with achieved results confirming and greatly surpassing initial expectations.


2020 ◽  
pp. 108705472096456
Author(s):  
Yue Yang ◽  
Gang Peng ◽  
Hongwu Zeng ◽  
Diangang Fang ◽  
Linlin Zhang ◽  
...  

Objective: The present study aimed to examine the effects of SNAP25 on the integration ability of intrinsic brain functions in children with ADHD, and whether the integration ability was associated with working memory (WM). Methods: A sliding time window method was used to calculate the spatial and temporal concordance among five rs-fMRI regional indices in 55 children with ADHD and 20 healthy controls. Results: The SNAP25 exhibited significant interaction effects with ADHD diagnosis on the voxel-wise concordance in the right posterior central gyrus, fusiform gyrus and lingual gyrus. Specifically, for children with ADHD, G-carriers showed increased voxel-wise concordance in comparison to TT homozygotes in the right precentral gyrus, superior frontal gyrus, postcentral gyrus, and middle frontal gyrus. The voxel-wise concordance was also found to be related to WM. Conclusion: Our findings provided a new insight into the neural mechanisms of the brain function of ADHD children.


Folia Medica ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 289-296
Author(s):  
Jakob Korf

Abstract Qualia are private conscious experiences of which the associated feelings can be reported to other people. Whether qualia are amenable to scientific exploration has often been questioned, which is challenged by the present article. The following arguments are given: 1. the configuration of the brain changes continuously and irreversibly, because of genetic and environmental influences and interhuman communication; 2. qualia and consciousness are processes, rather than states; 3. private feelings, including those associated with qualia, should be positioned in the context of a personal brain as being developed during life; 4. consciousness and qualia should be understood in the context of general system theory, thus concluding that isolated, in vitro, properties of neurons and other brain constituents might marginally contribute to the understanding of higher brain functions, mind or qualia; 5. current in vivo approaches have too little resolution power - in terms of space and time - to delineate individual and subjective brain processes. When subtle personalized properties of the nervous system can be assessed in vivo or in vitro, qualia can scientifically be investigated. We discuss some approaches to overcome these barriers.


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