Rectal gastric heteroptopia in a child. Case-report of casuistic pathology

Heterotopy of gastric mucosa in the rectum in children is a rare malformation to keep in mind when examining a child with a rectal bleeding. About 5 such clinical cases in children were described in the literature over the past 10 years. This condition is congenital, due to impaired tissue differentiation during embriogenesis. This case-report demonstrates the diagnostics and treatment of a child with rectal gastric heteroptopia.

Enhancing the Efficiency of Distraction Osteogenesis through Rate-Varying Distraction: A Computational Study

Distraction osteogenesis (DO) is a mechanobiological process of producing new bone and overlying soft tissues through the gradual and controlled distraction of surgically separated bone segments. The process of bone regeneration during DO is largely affected by distraction parameters. In the present study, a distraction strategy with varying distraction rates (i.e., “rate-varying distraction”) is proposed, with the aim of shortening the distraction time and improving the efficiency of DO. We hypothesized that faster and better healing can be achieved with rate-varying distractions, as compared with constant-rate distractions. A computational model incorporating the viscoelastic behaviors of the callus tissues and the mechano-regulatory tissue differentiation laws was developed and validated to predict the bone regeneration process during DO. The effect of rate-varying distraction on the healing outcomes (bony bridging time and bone formation) was examined. Compared to the constant low-rate distraction, a low-to-high rate-varying distraction provided a favorable mechanical environment for angiogenesis and bone tissue differentiation, throughout the distraction and consolidation phase, leading to an improved healing outcome with a shortened healing time. These results suggest that a rate-varying clinical strategy could reduce the overall treatment time of DO and decrease the risk of complications related to the external fixator.

The tissue differentiation and cancer manifolds in gene and protein expression spaces

It is well known that, for a particular tissue, the homeostatic and cancer attractors are well apart both in gene expression and in protein expression spaces. By using data for 15 tissues and the corresponding tumors from The Cancer Genome Atlas, and for 49 normal tissues and 20 tumors from The Human Protein Atlas, we show that the set of normal attractors are also well separated from the set of tumors. Roughly speaking, one may say that there is a cancer progression axis orthogonal to the normal tissue differentiation and cancer manifolds. This separation suggests that therapies targeting common genes, which define the cancer axis, may be effective, irrespective of the tissue of origin.

Autophagy—an underestimated coordinator of construction and destruction during plant root ontogeny

Main Conclusion Autophagy is a key but undervalued process in root ontogeny, ensuring both the proper development of root tissues as well as the senescence of the entire organ. Abstract Autophagy is a process which occurs during plant adaptation to changing environmental conditions as well as during plant ontogeny. Autophagy is also engaged in plant root development, however, the limitations of belowground studies make it challenging to understand the entirety of the developmental processes. We summarize and discuss the current data pertaining to autophagy in the roots of higher plants during their formation and degradation, from the beginning of root tissue differentiation and maturation; all the way to the aging of the entire organ. During root growth, autophagy participates in the processes of central vacuole formation in cortical tissue development, as well as vascular tissue differentiation and root senescence. At present, several key issues are still not entirely understood and remain to be addressed in future studies. The major challenge lies in the portrayal of the mechanisms of autophagy on subcellular events in belowground plant organs during the programmed control of cellular degradation pathways in roots. Given the wide range of technical areas of inquiry where root-related research can be applied, including cutting-edge cell biological methods to track, sort and screen cells from different root tissues and zones of growth, the identification of several lines of evidence pertaining to autophagy during root developmental processes is the most urgent challenge. Consequently, a substantial effort must be made to ensure whether the analyzed process is autophagy-dependent or not.